Why can't the Republicans nominate a genuine right-wing nut?

Verne Strickland Blogmaster / November 12, 2011

CONSERVATIVES JUST NEED TO COME TO GRIPS WITH THE FACT THAT IT'S ALWAYS GOING TO BE A MITT ROMNEY TYPE WHO LEADS THE TICKET.

By Frank J. Fleming

November 10, 2011 - 12:00 am

Conservatives are fired up. Thanks to the Tea Party and Obama’s general left-wing bungling, we’re mad and ready to go for the throat on government spending.

So who does Intrade show as having a 70% chance of winning the Republican nomination for president? Mitt “Social Security is just fine” Romney.

The left is always shrieking that the Republicans are going to nominate some right-wing nut for the presidency; if only that were true. The Republican base’s perfect candidate would be someone who emerged from his bomb shelter toting a shotgun with the sole purpose of dismantling government.

We want someone who can barely restrain himself from violence when talking to the normal useless, arrogant, tax-and-spend politician. Someone who, when given a bill to raise taxes, wouldn’t only veto it but would also publicly burn it and then hunt down the perpetrators who wrote it.

So who have the we nominated for president in the past? John McCain. George W. Bush with his “compassionate” conservatism — not that mean old conservatism that holds people responsible for their actions. Bob Dole. Exciting, right?

Obviously there is some sort of disconnect between what the conservative base of the Republican party wants and who the party ends up nominating for president. The states that go first in the primary and thus hold the most influence — New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina, Florida — seem random, but from the results in past elections one has to conclude they were chosen by some sort of RINO genius to ensure that only a milquetoast right-of-center candidate will win the nomination.

Right now the country is a car speeding towards a cliff due to out-of- control spending, and conservatives want a president who will seize the wheel of that car and turn it around. But the Republican we nominate is always someone who only promises to ease up on the gas a little.

The left don’t have this problem. They nominate impractical left-wing nuts for president all the time. In fact, their more centrist candidates like Bill Clinton are the exceptions, not the rule. So why is that? Are the left just more devoted to their cause than we are?

The problem is that at the end of the day, conservatives are just practical people. Why do we have the bomb shelters? We like to survive. And you don’t survive by getting caught up in wild-eyed fantasies.

While we want to nominate some crazed anti-politician, at the end of the day we can’t pull the trigger when we know it just means we’re guaranteeing four more years of having a far left Democrat in charge. Sure, we’d love to send an extreme right-winger to the White House screaming about how Gardasil makes you retarded — if for no other reason than to make the left apoplectic — but we know that’s not going to happen.That’s why we always end up with someone like Mitt Romney, the creator of Obamacare’s predecessor.

Yes, conservatives loathe him, and he loathes us, but he seems like the best chance to win.
And maybe it’s best that there is some loathing between conservatives and our presidential nominee. The last thing we want to do is fall in love with a politician. Because what type of people become skilled politicians? People who hate government? No, those people never learn to work in the system. The people who succeed in politics are those who kinda like government and see it as a great tool for change — i.e., they’re the enemy.

No one gets to the level of being able to run a skilled campaign for president and remains a true conservative. So that’s why conservatives holding onto Reagan as the ideal politician hurts us in the end. We have this fantasy that the move to reduce government will one day be led from the top, but it’s just not going to happen. Anyone who makes it to that level is no longer one of us.

Conservatives just need to come to grips with the fact that it’s always going to be a Mitt Romney-type who leads the ticket, which is why we can’t make the president the standard bearer for conservatism.

When the car is speeding towards the cliff, we have to be on the hood of that car, screaming at the driver, “TURN THIS THING AROUND!” So the ideal candidate for conservatives isn’t some extreme right-winger. It’s a skilled politician we know we can bully.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/why-cant-the-republicans-nominate-a-genuine-right-wing-nut/?singlepage=true

Frank J. Fleming is the author of the ebook "Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything" (coming out November 15th from HarperCollins), writes columns for PJ Media and the New York Post, blogs at IMAO.us, and knows that true conservatives never emerge from their bomb shelters when a Democrat is president.

Iconic conservative statesman Jesse Helms died on July 4, 2008. He made the Reagan Revolution possible. Here's the story.

March 22, 2011

By John Dodd
President, Jesse Helms Center
Wingate, NC


WINGATE -- Thirty-five years ago, on March 23, 1976, voters in North Carolina helped shape the course of history. Their decision to support the presidential hopes of former California Gov. Ronald Reagan in the Republican presidential primary kept Reagan in the race for the 1976 GOP nomination and opened the way for his 1980 election as the 40th president of the United States.

Why did North Carolina voters choose Reagan instead of his opponent Gerald Ford? Ford, after all, was the sitting president. Primaries had been held in six other states, and Ford won every one of them. How did Reagan win in North Carolina?

While the full answers to those questions offer rich lessons for campaign strategists, the single most important reason for Reagan's victory was obvious. In North Carolina, Reagan had the promise of U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms' support. That promise meant something.

We know that in 1980 Reagan was elected to the first of two successful terms as president. We know that today that there probably are not enough stadiums in our nation to hold all of the politicians who claim some sort of kinship to Reagan. We've seen the highlight reels. 

We assume that the popular figure we remember moved from victory to victory. The real-time circumstances in the winter of 1975 and the spring of 1976 were quite different. Just about all of the seats on the Reagan bandwagon were empty. That did not deter Helms when he made his decision to support Reagan in the fall of 1973.

In mid-October of that year, the two enjoyed lunch together at Reagan's Los Angeles home. Friends since they met years earlier, they had followed each other's political careers with interest. When Helms ran for Senate in 1972, his TV ads included an endorsement from Gov. Reagan. Now, as they talked privately, Helms offered his strong support if Reagan ran for president in 1976.

Coincidentally, that same day in Washington, D.C., Rep. Gerald Ford was selected as President Nixon's vice presidential nominee. Ten months later, upon Nixon's resignation, Ford became president.

As circumstances developed, no one would have blamed Helms for determining that as a first term senator, it would be sensible for him to support Ford, whom he personally liked. However, Helms had made a promise and he disagreed with the Ford administration on some matters, particularly in the areas of foreign policy and the ever-expanding federal budget.

In what would become a familiar pattern over his 30 years of public service, Helms refused to pick pragmatism over principle. Helms had made a promise to a man whom he believed could make America "the shining city on the hill" once again, and that promise meant more than including his name on a list of supporters.

Helms devoted his efforts to the Reagan campaign. For more than a year, he traveled across the country. In Florida he rallied supporters at a statewide Reagan Steering Committee meeting with a blistering speech detailing the differences between President Ford and Gov. Reagan. In a Wisconsin television spot, Helms candidly said, "Now, you may ask: Why is a senator from North Carolina presuming to talk with us -- the people of Wisconsin? It's a fair question, and my answer is this: We're all Americans; we share the same concerns about our country."

Between mid-summer 1975 and late summer 1976, Helms pursued every possible vote. In North Carolina, he was at Reagan's side at breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and rallies across the state. He maintained his own barnstorming schedule to speak on Reagan's behalf wherever he was invited. At every stop he took pains to state that his support of Reagan over Ford was about the conservative philosophy of governance that he and Reagan shared.

Ignoring the Washington, D.C., professionals who wanted to feature Reagan's resume, Helms focused on Reagan's conservative views and the difference those views would make in the way the United States made decisions on national defense, control of the Panama Canal, and relations with the USSR.

In North Carolina, with the considerable help of his political ally Tom Ellis, Helms proved that voters cared much more about these issues than the Reagan operatives realized. Following Helms' lead, the Reagan campaign won seven more primaries in May and three in June.

When the Republican National Convention opened in Kansas City, Mo. in mid-August, Reagan received more than 1,000 delegate votes. That wasn't enough to prevent Ford's nomination, but it was a powerful showing. Reagan delegates strongly influenced the GOP platform, adding conservative planks that would influence the direction of the Republican Party well into the 21st Century.

At the close of the convention, Ford graciously invited Reagan to speak. With that speech, Reagan solidified his place as a party leader and the probable GOP nominee in 1980. 

It was a victory for Helms as well. By following through on his principled decision to support Reagan, he helped restructure the Republican Party to better represent conservative views. And as he watched the stream of new supporters climb on the once-empty bandwagon, he was certain that Reagan could indeed become president of the United States.

John Dodd is president of the Jesse Helms Center in Wingate.

http://www.carolinajournal.com/opinions/display_story.html?id=7548

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Poll: Americans say Reagan the best president, favor George W. Bush over Thomas Jefferson.

Verne Strickland Blogmaster   June 25, 2011

THIS ISN'T BREAKING NEWS, IT'S JUST SOMETHING I WANTED TO SHARE AFTER COMING ACROSS A NOTE ABOUT THE REMARKABLE AND BELOVED RONALD REAGAN, ABOUT SEVEN YEARS AFTER HIS PASSING ON JUNE 5, 2004.

DETRACTORS HAVE HAD PLENTY OF TIME TO TEAR DOWN HIS LEGACY -- BUT THEY HAVEN'T SUCCEEDED. THEY NEVER WILL.  

Ronald Reagan, in office from 1981-89, helped redefine the political framework as he led the country into a new conservative view of itself. The Republican Party still draws much of its ideological authority from this period.

The actor-turned-politician took two long-held tenets to the White House: The federal government was not the solution to the nation's problems, and the Communist Soviet Union was the "evil empire."

At the start of his presidency, Reagan favored the supply-side theory of growth, cutting taxes and social spending to jump-start a sluggish economy suffering with high inflation.

A deep recession forced some tax increases, but over the course of his tenure Wall Street responded appreciatively to "Reaganomics" and the economy boomed.

At the same time he fought to cut taxes, Reagan ordered a massive defense buildup to intimidate the Soviet Union, an expansion that required large-scale Pentagon spending. Critics called the effort corporate welfare for the defense industry.
In an attempt to stay ahead of the Soviets, Reagan supported the Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed "Star Wars," which promised to deflect incoming missiles.

The plan was mocked and derided, but has experienced a resurgence with some major new technology and components.It still concerns the Russians -- the best proof yet that the plan is feasible and potentially of value to U.S. defense.


Monday, February 21st, 2011 

Who is the greatest president in the history of the United States?


If you're asking a random sampling of Americans, as the Gallup polling firm recently did, it would be none other than Ronald Reagan.

A recent Gallup survey found that at 19 percent, Reagan topped the list for the third time in 12 years. 

President Abraham Lincoln came in second at 14 percent, followed by President Bill Clinton at 13 percent.

President John F. Kennedy rounded out fourth at 11 percent, and President Barack Obama came in seventh, at five percent.

Amazingly enough, President George W. Bush was chosen by just two percent, placing him in 10th: one spot ahead of President Thomas Jefferson, an influential member of the nation's founders.

In eight surveys over the last 12 years, Americans have always chosen Reagan, Lincoln or Kennedy to top the list. Reagan was the first choice in 2001, 2005 and 2001. Lincoln topped the list in 1993, and twice in 2003. President John F. Kennedy won out in 2000.

On President's Day Monday, Americans celebrated the birthday of President George W. Washington, but only 10 percent picked him as the greatest.

The poll, like many political questions, was seen through a partisan lens. At 38 percent, most Republicans were more likely to pick Reagan, while 22 percent of Democrats picked Clinton.

Reagan's return to the top may have been helped by his image being used in recent advertising campaigns.

In August, the Republican Study Committee (RSC) created an Internet advertisement called "Those Voices Don't Speak for the Rest of Us," juxtaposing video of a famous Reagan speech with context-free clips of Democrats such as Rep. Barney Frank, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama.

Reagan has also been a media cause celebre in recent weeks, with his 100th birthday passing recently.
Reagan administration budget director David Stockman recently told Raw Story that military spending policies of Reagan era have all but doomed the US economy, even today.

"The Cold War is long over," he explained. "The wars of occupation are almost over and were complete failures -- Afghanistan and Iraq. The American empire is done. There are no real seriously armed enemies left in the world that can possibly justify an $800 billion national defense and security establishment, including Homeland Security."

Americans also seem willing to ignore a recent book by the president's son, Ron Reagan, that said the conservative icon may have been exhibiting signs of Alzheimer's disease while still in the White House.

His son, who's identified himself as a liberal and an atheist, wrote that in 1984, as his father went on to become the oldest president ever reelected at age 74, the younger Reagan began to "experience the nausea of a bad dream coming true" with regards to his father's mental condition.

He'd already suspected "something beyond mellowing" had begun to affect President Reagan and characterized his debate performance against Democratic nominee Walter Mondale as "fumbling," "lost," "tired and bewildered."

In fact, CBS reporter Leslie Stahl had recalled in her 2000 book, "Reporting Live," that Reagan had acted like a "doddering space cadet," in a 1986 meeting.

She even suggested that CBS News came extremely close to reporting that Reagan's condition had deteriorated so far that he was no longer fit to be president..
The results of Gallup's poll follow.

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-- With earlier reports

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