By Bruce Walker
As a Republican victory in 2010
becomes increasingly likely, conservatives need to understand that the fight to
keep the Republican Party really stand for something is not new. In the
last eighty years, except for Reagan and Goldwater, every Republican
presidential nominee has been what we today would call a RINO. Does that
statement sound extreme? Consider the history.
Republicans in 1928 and then
again in 1932 nominated Herbert Hoover as the party’s standard bearer. In
1920, Hoover was universally recognized as a brilliant administrator of war
relief efforts. Democrats wanted Hoover, who had never held political
office, to be the Democrat nominee for President in 1920, and Hoover considered accepting that
nomination. Although Hoover served in Republican administrations as
Secretary of Commerce, he substantially increased the role of the federal
government and was hardly a conservative.
In 1936, Republicans picked Alf
Landon to run against Franklin Roosevelt. Landon was a liberal Republican from
Kansas who supported much of the New Deal. Wendell Willkie, the 1940
nominee, was not just a RINO: he was a Democrat delegate to
the convention that nominated Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. Willkie had
never held political office before, and after he lost to FDR, the “Republican”
nominee spent a good deal of his time supporting Roosevelt’s policies,
ostensibly representing the Republican Party.
The next two men nominated by
Republicans – the nominees at the 1944, 1948, 1952, and 1956 conventions –
looked very much like two contemporary “Republican” leaders, Rudy Giuliani and
Colin Powell. Tom Dewey, like Rudy, was a fearless and effective New York
prosecutor who then ran for higher office (Dewey was elected Governor of New
York.) A decent man, Dewey was the penultimate moderate, nominated over
genuine conservatives at Republican conventions.
Dwight Eisenhower, like Colin
Powell, rose through the ranks of the United States Army to become Army Chief
of Staff. Both
Democrats and Republicans wanted Eisenhower to be their party’s
presidential nominee in 1948, showing just how wholly removed from politics the
general had been. Eisenhower appointed leftist Earl Warren to be Chief
Justice; he made no effort to reduce taxes or roll back the New Deal in the
prosperity of the 1950s; and later, when a real conservative was nominated by
Republicans in 1964, former President Eisenhower pointedly stayed on the
sidelines.
Eisenhower also bequeathed to
the Republican Party as its 1960 standard bearer Richard Nixon, a pedigree
RINO. Kennedy, in 1960, ran a foreign policy campaign to the right of
Nixon. Kennedy also would implement vital and deep tax cuts, something
Nixon ignored. Nixon chose as his running mate in 1960 Henry Cabot Lodge,
a strong supporter of the United Nations and in 1965 the man Lyndon Baines
Johnson chose to be Ambassador to Vietnam.
In 1964 – finally! – the mass
of conservatives in the Republican Party rallied behind Barry Goldwater, a
genuine and outspoken conservative. It was the first time in forty years
that a Republican nominee could honestly claim to be following the political
tradition of Washington and Jefferson. The Republican establishment
almost wholly abandoned him. Governor Rockefeller and Governor Romney
refused to endorse him; Governor Scranton of Pennsylvania and former Vice
President Nixon gave very tepid support. The only people who supported
Goldwater, it seemed, were ordinary Republicans. The senator lost in one
of the dirtiest campaigns in memory by one of the worst rascals to inhabit the
White House, yet “moderate” Republicans until Reagan won would continue to warn
against a clear articulation of conservative values.
Nixon won the nominations and
then the elections in 1968 and 1972. He created the Environmental
Protection Agency and OSHA (Occupation Safety and Health Administration),
supported SSI ( a new entitlement), instituted wage and price controls, removed
America completely from the Gold Standard, and announced – in response to
criticism of high government spending – “Now I am a Keynesian.” His
foreign policy was almost utterly Realpolitik, a Machiavellian disinterest in
morality which led him to meet Mao, perhaps the greatest mass murderer in
history, and to hug Brezhnev, the boorish and doctrinaire Marxist boss of
Russia.
Conservatives opposed
Nixon. Reagan sought the nomination in 1968. John Ashbrook actively
campaigned against Nixon when the president sought re-nomination in 1972, and
this principled conservative was supported by National
Review and by Human Events, which was practically all of the conservative
media at the time. Nixon and McGovern were the major party nominees in
1972, but there was one significant third party candidate in the general
election, John Schmidz,
a conservative Republican from California.
After Nixon resigned in
disgrace, Gerald Ford, as sitting president, sought the Republican nomination
in 1976. He was strongly opposed by Ronald Reagan, who ran against the
entire Republican establishment and the power of the Presidency, and yet almost
won. Ford, who declined to meet with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who
introduced the pathetic “WIN” (Whip Inflation Now) campaign, who appointed John
Paul Stevens to the Supreme Court, and who chose Nelson Rockefeller as his Vice
President, was a perfect example of a modern RINO. In 1976, the sitting
President Ford just barely defeated Reagan for the Republican nomination.
Reagan, of course, won four
years later and his policies prevailed, while he was president. George H.
Bush, however, almost immediately purged the White House of conservatives and
hailed a “Kinder, gentler America” disgusting conservatives who
flocked to Ross Perot in 1992. Bob Dole, because it was his “turn,”
won the 1996 nomination and ran an aimless campaign. After which Republicans in succession
nominated George W. Bush twice and then John McCain.
Why do RINOs recoil from Palin, Goldwater and
Reagan? These Americans actually do what the left urges us all to
do: Speak truth to power. They
eschew party interest – Reagan was a Democrat until 1962; Palin first
took on the Republican establishment of Alaska; Goldwater, famously, went
to the White House to insist that Nixon resign. These good people are
Americans first, and they recognize that the lynchpin of America is
liberty. RINOs? The history of
RINOs in America is no better (and no worse) than the history of politics in
human affairs.
© 2010 Bruce Walker — All Rights Reserved
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