Excuse me, Jeb Bush, but your daddy and brother already helped push the Republican Party beyond “the good old days” of its Reagan legacy, and we all see how well that’s been working for the GOP since 2006, don’t we.
And excuse me, Gen. Colin Powell, but which election did you win because “Americans are looking for more government in their lives, not less …”?
Forgive me if I seem a bit cranky here, but, being a card-carrying Reaganaut since 1964, it’s hard not to be whenever the national media lectures the GOP on how to regain voters’ trust. Inevitably, the advice involves abandonment of Ronald Reagan and the core conservative principles he advanced.
Ever wonder why they never tell Republicans to forget Teddy Roosevelt or Abe Lincoln, the GOP’s other great presidents, or admonish Democrats to stop glorying in FDR and the New Deal? There’s a simple reason, which we’ll discuss shortly.
The former Florida governor got caught up in this all-too-familiar game in the wake of Sen. Arlen Specter’s return to the party of his heart. Bush likely wasn’t thinking specifically about Reagan, but that hardly mattered to media headline writers or legions of talking heads eager to see the GOP forever abandon things like limited government and individual freedom.
That’s why it’s futile to make angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin distinctions between not “living in the past” or not “worshipping the Reagan era,” but applying his values and principles in new ways. You might as well be playing craps with a loaded pair of dice.
The difference with Reagan is that he was the only modern president to reverse Leviathan’s expansion into every facet of everyday American life. Bush I raised taxes and increased spending so he could be “the environment president.”
Bush II, admittedly preoccupied by the aftermath of 9/11, presided over the biggest pre-OBama explosion in federal spending since LBJ. But then at the end of his White House tenure, he launched the federal takeover of the financial system that set the table for Obama’s “Gangster Government.” (HT to the Examiner’s Michael Barone for coining that entirely suitable phrase).
And don’t forget that, once the GOP’s Contract with America majority in Congress lost their nerve and the budget battle with Bill Clinton in 1995, all most of them had to offer in the years thereafter was lip service for Reagan’s values and principles. They richly deserved to be tossed out of power in 2006.
So, the demand is always to forget Reagan because, as The Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell reminded us earlier this week, Reagan effectively challenged Leviathan and began the process of restoring limited government in Washington. Here’s one measure Morning Bell noted of that process:
“Under President Jimmy Carter, the percentage of state expenditures coming from federal funds rose to 35.4%. Reagan lowered that number to 24.9%. Unfortunately, under President George H.W. Bush, President Bill Clinton, and President George Bush that number shot up again; reaching 42.5% in 2005.”
With President Obama, the federal treasury is becoming the largest single state funding source. Soon, the states will be mere administrative organs for Washington bureaucrats. Then, the liberal dream of destroying federalism – the constitutional heart of the Republic – will be fully realized.
Thanks to Bush I, as soon as Reagan left town, Leviathan resumed the growth path it was on when Reagan arrived. And let’s remember why he came (as he explained in his 1982 State of the Union Address): “Our citizens feel they’ve lost control of even the most basic decisions made about the essential services of government, such as schools, welfare, roads, and even garbage collection.”
Republicans win when they promise to restore our citizens’ ability to control their government and their own destinies (remember, we all have a rendezvous with destiny), and then actually deliver on that promise. They lose when they deliver more government instead.
Here’s something else Reagan said, in his first inaugural:
“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?”
Reagan’s maxim is as true today as it was in 1981, and it will be true across a thousand tomorrows. The crucial question for Republican leaders now is, as always, will they heed or ignore that truth?
Mark Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner and proprietor of Tapscott’s Copy Desk blog on washingtonexaminer.com.
