Reagan’s GOP
Guest Blogger: Brian Kirwin

Ronald Reagan ranks among the most popular Presidents in the history of the United States. His two electoral victories (44 states in ’80 and 49 in ’84) are sweeps that leaves today’s candidates scratching heads and wondering “How?”

Pat Buchanan said Presidents are remembered with but a single Sentence. “George Washington was the Father of our Country, Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and saved the Union, and Ronald Reagan won the Cold War.”

But he was so much more…..so much more that people can selectively choose parts of the Reagan record to claim his mantle.

A few facts that make the Reagan legacy interesting:

Ronald Reagan was blasted by the far right for reaching out to moderates and lost the Republican nomination for President in ’76 because of it.

Ronald Reagan’s shift from the joint Republican-Democrat policies of détente and accommodation with regards to the Soviet Union was deeper than the Strategic Defense Initiative, but a complete economic and diplomatic assault that ended a puny grain embargo and shifted to an aggressive effort to choke Soviet oil revenues, sabotage Soviet natural gas development, and crippled the Soviet efforts to fund a military race that we absolutely had to win.

Ronald Reagan slashed marginal income tax rates, but when roads needed repair (and jobs needed a rebound) he doubled the gas tax. When social security needed a boost, he launched the largest tax increase in American history.

Ronald Reagan’s view of illegal immigration was that America’s shining city on a hill was a beacon of hope to the world. Of course, people throughout the world are willing to do anything to live here, and he signed the broadest amnesty for non-citizens in history.

While he stood up to the Soviet Union and refuse to negotiate US defense for treaties about Soviet offense, he also pulled the military out of Lebanon after a terrorist bombing left hundreds of Marines dead.

So, today’s question is “Is the Republican Party of today truly any more divided than the Republican Party of yesterday?”

When the 2008 Republican primary became a race about whose the most like Ronald Reagan, we at Reagan’s GOP chuckled because we knew the answer.

They all are, at least partially.

Reagan had two strengths that made him different, though, and in ways that today’s politics make it difficult to succeed today.

He was willing to compromise on the details in order to move his larger agenda forward. Today’s politicians live in a communications world of internet blogs, talk radio and 24-hour news channels. The details ARE the story today, and today’s politician negotiates them away at his peril.

And Reagan was the true uniter not a divider. Despite being universally attacked by the press and the left, Reagan’s direct radio and television addresses superseded both and millions of “Reagan Democrats,” people mostly in the center who became increasingly offended by the politics of their usual party of choice, listened to Reagan tell how he used to be a Democrat, but that today’s Democratic Party bore no resemblance to the Party of FDR that he so frequently spoke of so highly.

Yes, not only did Reagan flipflop, he bragged about it. And after winning 93 states in 2 elections, it was obvious that he wasn’t the only one.

That’s the Ronald Reagan record we focus on at Reagan’s GOP. We use speeches, press conferences, and Reagan’s diaries and comment on the news of the day, the candidates of today, and the direction our Party is taking, or should take.

And maybe, at the end of the conversations, we can come together again and win one for the Gipper.

Brian Kirwin is the author of Reagan’s GOP, a blog focusing on the record and works of America’s last great president.