No, She’s Not
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Richard Viguerie, the cranky old school dean of the conservative movement who has obliterated George Bush and John McCain for their various apostasies, declared flatly this morning: “Sarah Palin is the next Ronald Reagan.” ~Tom Bevan
I’m sorry, but this is getting out of hand. Whatever you think about the substance of Reagan’s speech in 1964, to which some drunken enthusiasts may want to compare Palin’s acceptance speech, there is no comparison between them. Part of this is in the nature of the speeches. Reagan’s speech was entirely focused on policy and the differences between the candidates, it was delivered in a different register, and he said next to nothing about himself, while Palin’s speech was necessarily part introduction and part apology. There is certainly no comparison between Reagan at a similar time in his career, c. 1976, and Palin today. Of course, the point of this statement about Palin is to use a comparison to Reagan to express approval and admiration. Calling someone the next Reagan is a trope of Republican praise just as calling a foreign leader the next Hitler or Stalin is a trope of condemnation, and all this does is diminish the significance of both the famous person and shows the one compared to him to be unworthy of the comparison. Reagan’s name has become almost entirely dissociated from the man, and it has simply become an identity marker to be trotted out to sanctify this or that person or proposal. Reagan nostalgia has become an effort to cover up for the distortions and perversions of the last twenty years. As Justin Raimondo said of the convention yesterday:
Now we are being treated to a video about … Ronald Reagan. There they go again — with that Soviet-lke iconography, the Great Helmsman’s visage displayed on the screen like an emblem of the Old Ideology, the one no one pays any attention to anymore. “Get government off our backs” exclaims Dutch, and the words ring hollow as the theme of the video, which is that McCain is the real inheritor of the Reaganite mantle. Just as Lenin’s successors, from Stalin to Gorbachev, claimed the mantle of an orthodox Marxism that was all form and no substance.
Filed under: politics
Hear, hear. For all her talk (and Mitt’s, and Rudy’s, and Fred’s, and Rush’s) about how Obama has done “zero” or “nada” and speaks only in platitudes, Palin is the candidate of all three who’ve spoken so far who said the LEAST about what it is she would actually DO. “Shake up Washington” sounds nice, but how? Vetoing earmarks? She’s been the would-be collector of a few of them. “Winning” the war while Obama gives up? At this point, we wouldn’t be able to tell what “victory” is if it hit us in the face like so much Cheney-fired muzzleloader shot.
Reagan — and, yes, Obama — are inspiring in way that lifts people up, pinning their eyes on hopes of a brighter tomorrow, and with concrete (if flawed) policy ideas to back that talk up. Palin offers nothing that McCain didn’t already have (character, biography, self-proclaimed “maverick” status) except a better speech, a prettier face and a redder cut of meat for the party base.
The goal of the Republican party is no longer to make America strong. It’s to make American culture revert to 1950. Of course they rely on form instead of substance – there’s no there there.
Then too, the conservative ideology seems to be about claiming the mantle of greatness earned by earlier generations. Merit is ignored in favor of the new aristocracy. Palin is Reagan because whoever is the candidate is Reagan.
“The goal of the Republican party is no longer to make America strong. It’s to make American culture revert to 1950.”
Not really. The goal is to make you think that they will make American culture revert to 1950 so you will vote for them, and they can then spend the time until the next election ensuring that nothing of the kind will happen…while starting the occasional war. If they were ever judged on the state of the culture, they would not win.
If they were judged on their own running of the government, they would not win. See Mitt Romney’s “Is that liberal or conservative?” call and response last night… and how, essentially, all that he deemed liberal has been sustained (if not pushed forward) by a Republican president (20 of last 28 years) and Republican congress (10 of last 12 years). It is totally Orwellian, and yet it still seems to work, at least among the base (and I use that term in both noun and adjective form).
But hey, at least Ben Stein gets it, right?
Daniel – did you happen to catch Justin Raimondo accusing me of “sucking McCain’s dick” over at Taki’s, before the whole thread got deleted?
I can’t help wondering why you continue to keep such vulgar ideological company.
All your base are belong to us.
No, Steve, I never saw that, and I think that’s a deplorable thing to say to you. To the extent that I am “keeping company” with Justin Raimondo or anyone else, it is because we are in agreement that aggressive war, torture and lawless government are atrocious things that should be halted and must be opposed. I’m not going to make any excuses for crude language that I would not use, but I am a good deal more incensed by terrible things that people do and policies they support than by crass things that they say. Maybe that helps to explain it.
Presumably we all find McCain’s own penchant for vulgar insults aimed at his colleagues to be equally deplorable? Or are all of the people supporting him also keeping “vulgar ideological company”?
I miss hearing about Newt Gingrich’s quest to name one monument to Ronald Reagan in each of America’s 3000-odd counties, as well as to place his face on the $10 bill.
If only Newt and the Reagan Idolaters would take the next rational step, and require us to adopt Reagan’s surname. If adopted, this would be some great identity politics in the making.
More appropriate would be renaming the title of the Presidency to an honorific adoption of the name Reagan, as the Romans did with Caesar’s name–that way every new President would be called Reagan as the official form of address, they could begin shouting, “Hail, Reagan!” and that way Reagan could be in charge forever.
“Not really. The goal is to make you think that they will make American culture revert to 1950 so you will vote for them, and they can then spend the time until the next election ensuring that nothing of the kind will happen…while starting the occasional war. If they were ever judged on the state of the culture, they would not win.”
Heh – I stand corrected.
“Not really. The goal is to make you think that they will make American culture revert to 1950 so you will vote for them, and they can then spend the time until the next election ensuring that nothing of the kind will happen…while starting the occasional war.”
Furthermore the 1950’s they want you to think they are reverting back to, never really existed. Fleming talked about this in the August 2008 issue of “Chronicles” magazine. The current Republican regime has tried to create a monopoly on nostalgia and use their perverted sense of the past to get people to vote for them. This is direct manipulation of the American people. It is really too bad the the RNC cannot use their talent of invoking nostalgia in a positive way. Instead we are forced to witness the unethical abuse of such a powerful emotion.
Daniel, with all respect: you have a certain penchant for the fallacy of the false alternative.
You need to leave Justin Raimondo behind.
Care to elaborate on that? The fallacy of the false alternative is the belief that only two alternatives exist. I can see a number of alternatives here, but denouncing someone because he sometimes uses crude language is not one that leaps to the forefront as one I would prefer. Do you hold yourself accountable for every utterance of the people with whom you agree on certain policy issues? Of course you don’t. You would have to dissociate yourself from a great many people.
It’s worth noting that none of this has anything to do with the post in question or the observations Raimondo made about the convention.