Republicans Are Stuck in a Reagan Time Warp

Even as the Republicans appear poised to possibly win control of the U.S. Senate, in the longer view, the future does not look good for the GOP, particularly with aging whites comprising less and less of the overall population.  The party base is shrinking and, worse yet, the party remains in a time warp where nothing has seemingly changed since 1980 even thought the world has moved on in many, many ways.  The result?  2014 may be a last hurrah for the GOP.  Conservative columnist Michael Gerson  looks at the GOP troubling inability to move forward in time.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post:

The Republican debate about the shape of the political future has begun, typically for conservatives, as a fight about the past. As President Obama has become a ­Jimmy Carter-like figure — hapless, luckless and increasingly friendless — most prospective GOP presidential candidates are positioning themselves as Ronald Reagan’s rightful heir. A thick fog of historical analogy has settled over the Republican field. 

“It took Jimmy Carter to give us Ronald Reagan,” argues Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who clearly sees (and admires) a resemblance to the latter in the mirror each morning. “I’m a great believer in Ronald Reagan,” claims Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), even while proposing a Carthage-like destruction of Reagan’s foreign policy. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has called Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) “the son of Ronald Reagan when it comes to national security” — though Rubio is actually young enough to be Reagan’s great-grandson.

The squabble over this inheritance is recounted in a recent essay by Henry Olsen and Peter Wehner . . . . They warn, however, that “the constant invocation of Reagan’s name to bolster arguments for present-day policies (and present-day politicians) actually hinders our understanding of the substance of Reagan’s legacy — and undermines the Republican Party’s ability to make a case for itself in the here-and-now.” 

It is Republicans who now struggle in the shade of presidential greatness, even when they win congressional elections. 

Olsen and Wehner point to two serious risks in seeking “a posthumous seal of approval” from Reagan. First, there is the consistent temptation of all idolatry — to craft a figure in our own image. Those who claim Reagan as the first and purest tea party leader find support not in history but in mythology. 

In fact, Reagan’s presidency represented an accommodation of the theory of the New Deal and the Great Society (the existence and constitutionality of Social Security and Medicare), coupled with a strong objection to the coercive, uniform and bureaucratic methods of modern liberalism. On economic policy, Reagan was deeply committed to cutting marginal tax rates but willing to accept tax increases in other areas. He operated, according to Olsen and Wehner, “within the four corners of reality.” He was “more a Burkean conservative than a Jacobin.” The authors diagnose a second risk of Republican claims to be the vicar of Reagan.

The authors diagnose a second risk of Republican claims to be the vicar of Reagan. This strategy is employed as a conversation-stopper: Reagan said it; I believe it; that settles it. But this produces a Republican policy debate encased in amber. “Some of his epigones,” argue Olsen and Wehner, “today appear caught in a time warp, acting as if every year is 1980. Reagan, while conservative to the bone, would never have allowed himself to become captive to the past.

This is a lesson that is particularly urgent for newly elected Republicans and prospective presidential candidates. A party truly animated by the spirit of Reagan will address the problems of our time, not of his.

Don't expect the GOP to follow this last advice.  The party base is lost in insanity, religious extremism and a desire to bring back racial segregation.   Meanwhile, the GOP elected officials fall all over themselves to prostitute themselves to the ever more ugly party base.  The downward spiral continues.