Jeffrey Lord should be on your list of "must read" authors. He cogent and insightful, always thought provoking. In today's essay, The Conservative Revolt: Principles And Leverage, he gives the method of operation that animated Reagan's presidency. It's one that every conservative should adopt as his or her own. And it's one that the successful new leaders of conservatism will consistently display. The leader who gets this will be one whom grassroots conservatives line up behind and work for.
Some excerpts:
Ronald Reagan was always clear-eyed about the people he was negotiating with in these Cold War episodes. He knew what was driving them philosophically and intellectually -- and he believed passionately that what the Soviets had been doing since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 was not only politically unsound but morally wrong. Evil.
Or are GOP leaders too worried they would offend the President and his media allies if they, again using Reagan's words, "struck at anything so basic." Well, so what? Who cares if they offend the President and his liberal media allies? Redistributionist thought -- socialist thought -- is every bit the empty cupboard today as it was when Reagan was president.
Let's see the House GOP start talking relentlessly, in Reagan-style, about the underpinnings of what Obama is demanding. Connect the dots just as Reagan connected the dots between a specific -- negotiations in Geneva, a summit in Reykjavik, the barring of the Soviet Ambassador's once privileged access to the State Department etc., etc., etc. -- and the bedrock reason they are being done. In the Cold War case, a quest for world domination; in the Fiscal Cliff case, the re-making of America into a socialist country.
Some excerpts:
Ronald Reagan was always clear-eyed about the people he was negotiating with in these Cold War episodes. He knew what was driving them philosophically and intellectually -- and he believed passionately that what the Soviets had been doing since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 was not only politically unsound but morally wrong. Evil.
Or are GOP leaders too worried they would offend the President and his media allies if they, again using Reagan's words, "struck at anything so basic." Well, so what? Who cares if they offend the President and his liberal media allies? Redistributionist thought -- socialist thought -- is every bit the empty cupboard today as it was when Reagan was president.
Let's see the House GOP start talking relentlessly, in Reagan-style, about the underpinnings of what Obama is demanding. Connect the dots just as Reagan connected the dots between a specific -- negotiations in Geneva, a summit in Reykjavik, the barring of the Soviet Ambassador's once privileged access to the State Department etc., etc., etc. -- and the bedrock reason they are being done. In the Cold War case, a quest for world domination; in the Fiscal Cliff case, the re-making of America into a socialist country.
Use principle. Use leverage.
Grover gets it. Brent Bozell gets it. The Heritage Foundation gets. Rush and Sean and Mark and their millions of listeners get it.
It's time for the House GOP leadership to get it.
Or there will be another use of conservative principle and leverage in 2014.
You could call it The Conservative Revolt.
Or cleaning the House.
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