Redstate

By Josh Painter Posted in 2008 — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Remember the Reagan Coalition? Some, like Ed Rollins, think this coalition is dead and buried. Others know better:

SPARTANBURG, SC (AP) - Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson says Tuesday he thinks the legacy of Ronald Reagan is alive and well in the United States.

The former Tennessee senator told a crowd of more than 100 people at a Spartanburg restaurant Tuesday morning that to say the Reagan coalition is dead is like saying the Constitution is dead.

As Sen. Thompson has said, "This is a battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party and its future." To many conservatives, that future may seem to be a rather bleak one at this point in time.

Indeed, ever since Ronald Reagan packed up and left the White House for his beloved California Ranch, many of those that should have been responsible caretakers of his house and continued his tradition lost their way and thus allowed the Republican Party to drift far off course. They allowed a fallacy to take root in the GOP that in order to beat the Democrats, the Republican Party must become more like them, i.e. Democrat Lite.

A very large number of conservatives reject that notion. We have learned from history that when the GOP embraces conservatives as its candidates, it wins. When it tries to become an ersatz copy of the Democrats, it loses. It was Satayana who warned us that when we fail to learn from history, we are doomed to repeat our mistakes. And it was Ronald Reagan who taught us that we must be true to our guiding principles:

Our task now is not to sell a philosophy, but to make the majority of Americans, who already share that philosophy, see that modern conservatism offers them a political home. We are not a cult, we are members of a majority. Let’s act and talk like it.

Reagan was right. Bruce Walker has analyzed the numbers, and conservatives are in the majority. Walker explains:

As I noted in my January 2007 article "The Battleground Poll and Conservative Strength," in the January 2007 Battleground Poll, fifty-nine percent of Americans described themselves as "very conservative" or "somewhat conservative" while only thirty-four percent of Americans described themselves as 'very liberal" or "somewhat liberal." I also note that in all the Battleground Polls, the percentage of Americans who call themselves "very conservative" or "somewhat conservative" has never been lower than fifty-nine percent of the population and the number of Americans who call themselves "very liberal" or "somewhat liberal" has never been greater than thirty-eight percent of the population.

So what happened to that conservative majority? It splintered into smaller factions, each selfishly and foolishly focused on advancing only one or two of the four guiding principles that Ronald Reagan dedicated himself to in his first inaugural address - fiscal responsibility, small government, national security and moral steadfastness.

We can now see how well that worked in the recent Republican presidential primaries. We must learn from that mistake. We must come together to defeat the evils of socialism, Islamic facism and moral decay which threaten our republic. We have to discard those qualifiers we have placed before "conservative" when we describe ourselves. We must let go of "social," "fiscal," "security," and "small-government" as identifiers because they are limiters. They place restrictions on our conservative appeal, not only to fellow conservatives, but to the important factions of the Reagan Coalition made up by independents and Reagan Democrats. It was across-the-board conservatism which Ronald Reagan was able to sell to these two very important components of his coalition. If we cannot embrace all aspects of the conservative philosophy, we must at least have respect for them. It is as true today as it was when Abraham Lincoln paraphrased the words of Jesus from 1,858 years earlier:

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

Right now, conservatism is a house divided against itself. But a number of dedicated conservatives are coming together to right that wrong. Our aim is to move the Republican Party back to its conservative roots in the Reagan tradition. We are working from the ground up to build organizations at the local, state, regional and national levels. Some of us were involved in the grassroots effort to draft Fred Thompson as a candidate for the presidency. Others of us worked hard to support other conservative candidates in the same race. We have learned much from our efforts. We know what worked and what did not work so well. Almost all of us worked outside of the official campaigns, and we have studied their triumphs and failures.

We know a lot about organizing at the grassroots level. Our efforts in that regard were more succcessful than the actual campaigns the candidates hired highly-paid professionals to run for them. We're wiser and more experienced now, but we realize we don't have all the answers. We will, however, get them. We bring many talents and experiences to this endeavor from many fields - law, politics, finance, communication, and many more. We are determined, and we will prevail. The house that Reagan built still rests on a solid foundation despite the years of neglect. We have his blueprints, and we are using them to restore and expand the structure.

We see politicians, pundits and voters at odds over the 2008 presidential election. While some of us are taking part in the arguments, our organization does not take an official position on any of them and refuses to let the bickering take our eyes off of the real prize. We are looking to the future, to positive outcomes for conservatives, to making sure that we don't find ourselves in the predicament of having such arguements again.

We begin with our focus on the Congress. We will support and encourage solid conservatives who are making a difference there such as the members of the Republican Study Committee, a caucus of conservatives in the House, and the Senate Steering Committee, a similar caucus in the Senate. We will encourage and support candidates for both houses who will pursue a conservative agenda. And we will identify potential conservative candidates for both houses who will advance the cause of conservatism.

We will cooperate and coordinate with other conservative organizations that believe in and work to advance the same conservative principles which guiided Ronald Reagan and those who followed him into public service but never lost sight of his vision for America.

We welcome Reagan conservatives who are determined to make a difference. We cordially invite you to visit our website and our forum to join us in this grassroots effort.

- JP