Well yes, to a degree. But now the newest issue of Time magazine posits: “How The Right Went Wrong.”
Time author Karen Tumulty writes:
These are gloomy and uncertain days for conservatives, who — except for the eight-year Clinton interregnum — have dominated political power and thought in this country since Reagan rode in from the West. Their tradition goes back even further, to Founding Fathers who believed that people should do things for themselves and who shook off a monarchy in their conviction that Big Government is more to be feared than encouraged. The Boston Tea Party, as Reagan used to point out, was an antitax initiative.
Star Parker, however, in Townhall.com writes:
The liberal media are having a field day trying to portray the Republican Party and conservatives in disarray. The crescendo has reached a new peak this week with Time magazine’s cover picture of Ronald Reagan with a tear on his cheek.
Further, she hits a Reality Home Run:
The idea that anything as American as differences of opinion within a party and political struggles for leadership would bring Reagan to tears is a joke. The only tears about his party and this country that he shed were tears of joy to be part of this great, free country.
So as we approach an election year with an outgoing second-term president, and a vice president who is not stepping forward for his party’s nomination, intra-party strife, as competing candidates try to define their own uniqueness, is as natural and American as apple pie. Ronald Reagan would have been perfectly at home.
It is actually not Republicans who are confused, but Time magazine.
When Reagan said, in 1985, that the “other side” was “bankrupt of ideas,” he was right. He meant that Democrats had no answer to the challenges this country was facing other than the big-government materialism that had already been shown to be the problem, not the solution.
This is as true today as it was 20 years ago.
It is also true that the ideological core of the Reagan revolution — traditional values and limited government — points the way to our future as much today as it did then. And Time’s reporters or anyone else would have a hard time finding conservatives who would question this.
Star Parker manages to whip it right back at Karen Tumulty when she says:
If journalists want to examine party disarray, perhaps they should be asking what it tells us about the state of the Democratic Party that Sen. Barack Obama, an unknown, with barely two years’ experience in a major political office, can be a serious candidate for its nomination for president.
You go, girl.
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Now to comment:
I’ve already done a post on this. Thousands of bloggers have done thousands of posts on this. They primarily come down on party lines. And there are those within each party who do nothing more than trot out what they expect to be the Standard Party Line, dependent on which side of the aisle one serves.
I have been taken to task on occasion for not completely towing said line for the GOP. OFW. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if we Conservatives cannot stop and stand a little introspection or some spit and lightning thrown our direction, then we truly are lost.
C’mon, get serious. We KNOW what to do. We KNOW how to get back to our basic values and tenets. It’s just a matter of finding the politicians with the proper set of balls, male or female, to get us back on track. I’ve already written about it here, following the recent election, and here following introspection on Reagan.
I don’t know why the President didn’t mention Ngo Dinh Diem in his speech yesterday. Is there just too much terror to be president of the war on?
The Democrats and the MSM are trying to will the Republican Party and the conservatives to obsolescense. The problem is, they still have no answers to our problems and they still suffer from a lack of original ideas. This is born out in every speech they make and every article they write.
Being on the defensive is where conservatives thrive. When handed the reigns of power, they don’t know what to do with them. It’s time we find people that can take it to them and vote them into office. Hopefully, another Reagan will emerge from the ranks to lead the movement in the political realm again. Lord knows we have enough of them in the alternative media.
Shimmy: okay, so Deim was the first Pres of the new Republic of Vietnam. I must be missing something, such as the point.
Nightcrawler: Dems and the DEM complain about the so-called lack of ideas — as you so wisely point out, they proffer a dearth of them as well. And I COMPLETELY concur with your view that, once in power, the GOP doesn’t have a CLUE as to how to handle it. They’re customarily WAY too soggy.
BZ
Shimmy: but I sure like your photos on the blog though I tend to disagree with “imprint” (get it?) of your politics.
Hope your owner grooms you daily!
BZ
Oh, that’s right — cat’s don’t have owners, they have “staff.”
BZ
Dems, as usual, are confused by the facts, something they never like to acknowledge. So they, as usual, use some form of deflection to hide from the truth.
Good article, IMO it is correct that the GOP is falling apart, or at the very least divided.
Conservatives are about ready to send a clear message to the RINO’s…I fear we are in for at least one term of Democrat rule from the Whitehouse.
I hear some conservatives state that voting Dem or throwing away a vote because of a few issues, is going to doom our nation.
I disagree with that thought, I think that you should vote for whoever best represents your views. I don’t see ANY GOP or DEM candidate that accomplishes this, other than Tancredo and I doubt he’ll get the GOP nod.
I’m not towing the party line when my party has stabbed us in the back. I feel a message is order.
I thought this quote from Star Parker from Grey Ghost’s blog was the best:
“Conservatives have no identity crisis. We’re just in search of that leader who is as great as the agenda.”
Well said!!
Bushwack: these are turbulent times but they are not, as the Dems and DEM would have us believe, the End Of Days.
LMC: I concur with Star. The agenda hasn’t changed; it’s the GOP’s ability to STAY ON TRACK that has changed. And of course, the challenge is to find the best candidate possible to stay on track WITH the agenda. As I wrote, we all know what has to be done and which track to follow!
BZ
I agree with you, BZ, and I suppose I should also say that I am one of those conservatives who will vote Republican regardless of what Republican runs because to throw away my vote would be the same as giving a vote to the Dems which I absolutely will not do. Having said that, I wish for a true conservative, but it doesn’t look like we are going to get one. 🙁
Time magazine putting that phony tear on Reagan’s cheek really ticked me off and I’m positive it would have ticked Reagan off too, if they had had the cajones to do such a thing when he was alive!
Gayle: don’t get me wrong, I’ll vote Republican when I can. When I can’t, I will NOT vote Democrat. I’ll likely not fill in that particular box. When I take the GOP to task it isn’t that I’ll vote for a Democrat in their stead; it’s that I won’t vote for anyone in that category.
BZ
The only reason so many republicans got ousted in the last election is that they FAILED themselves. They turned on those that supported them in a bid to appease the libs for votes. The failed to pass true immigration reform, failed to require current laws be enforced and allowed those that did enforce the law be sacrificed to the libs.
If they stand by their word and at least fight for the position they were elected on the support would not have disappeared.