Who was the night’s biggest winner?

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Is Mitt Romney the New Nelson Rockefeller?

@ The American Spectator

In the world of politics it was Nelson Rockefeller who had the misfortune to have all the political assets one could possibly imagine — looks, charm, brains, energy and literally all the money he could use. Yet with all of this Rockefeller was totally unable — if not stubbornly unwilling — to understand the significance of the conservative revolution that was swirling around him as his own career unfolded. And in not understanding, much less not leading that conservative revolution Rockefeller not only failed spectacularly as a presidential candidate but made himself into a defiant symbol of resistance. He transformed himself into a man so stubbornly enamored of the liberal status quo and its supporting Establishment that his very name attached to that of his party became not simply a descriptive to conservatives but an epithet:

“The Rockefeller Republican.”

– a short-hand, derisive description for Republicans now labeled as a “RINO” …

The Rockefeller Republican became immutably identified as someone whose philosophical moorings and political instincts lay not in the Constitution but rather with the American progressive movement and the liberal Establishment that movement had become. Or, as Rockefeller’s longtime intra-party rival Ronald Reagan once described the problem to Time magazine:

“I think the division of the Republican Party grew from pragmatism on the part of some, the Republicans who said, ‘Look what the Democrats are doing and they’re staying in power. The only way for us, if we want to have any impact at all, is somehow to copy them.’ This was where the split began to grow, because there were other people saying, ‘Wait a minute. There is great danger in following this path toward Government intervention.’”

Is Mitt Romney the new Nelson Rockefeller?

The question takes on even more import in the wake of the New Hampshire GOP debate last night as [progressive "pragmatist"] Romney reinforced the doubts of Reaganites.

How did Rockefeller actually beat his match of an opponent as Gov./NY? By playing Mr. Congeniality, real or not, to the T.

There was Rockefeller rhetoric — [vs.] Rockefeller in action as chief executive.

Say what people want to hear, regardless of what you do.

Nelson Rockefeller was not just a follower of the Establishment line — as a Rockefeller he was a card carrying member of that Establishment. His hand was literally no sooner off the swearing-in bible than he was enthusing about the need for this long range planning group and that future-oriented commission. He wanted to pour endless amounts of money into [x, y, z]. …

How to pay for all of this?

A mere two weeks after taking office Governor Rockefeller let the world glimpse how he really thought by ramming tax increases through the legislature for gasoline and diesel fuel. Then he really got going. A month later he was demanding a staggering $227 million increase in state taxes that would come from taxes on everything, from personal income taxes to cigarette fees. …

Eventually it would be a Rockefeller brain child, so-called “Urban Development Corporation Bonds” that … was presented with the usual liberal moral glow of a “moral obligation.” … Note: by 1974 Governor Rockefeller was Vice President Rockefeller — gone from state politics and any direct responsibility for coping with the results.

What this Rockefeller pattern demonstrated in a particularly vivid fashion was his inability to break away from the liberal Establishment thinking of the day. That, in sum, was his major flaw. While Ronald Reagan was already crisscrossing the country challenging the Establishment by laying out conservative principle in speeches for General Electric, Rockefeller was busy playing the Establishment game.

WHAT REALLY SEALED the image and the derisive coining of the term “Rockefeller Republican” was Rockefeller’s quite visible and verbal disdain for those who parted politically from the liberal Establishment way of thinking. Nelson Rockefeller would not — could not — contain his contempt for those who were beginning to abandon Republican liberalism in droves. It wasn’t simply that he could not summon the vision that was already crystal clear to Reagan … Rockefeller castigated them as not being “in the mainstream of American political thought and action,” sneering at them as “the radical Right lunatic fringe.” Conservatives, he insisted, employed the “tactics of totalitarianism” as they sat out there on the “extreme Right.”

Nelson Rockefeller accepted — believed to the core of his being — in the Establishment way of government. And the modern conservative movement was nothing if not a threat to the liberal Establishment way of doing business. But Rockefeller was wrong. He had misjudged conservatives completely.

Which is precisely the pattern of misjudgment that Mitt Romney is exhibiting with every increasing moment he spends campaigning for the very Republican presidential nomination that eluded Nelson Rockefeller. A pattern Romney reinforced yet again in last night’s New Hampshire debate.

As Rockefeller was great on what we now call Reagan-esque rhetoric of freedom and economic growth, Mitt Romney is Nelson Rockefeller on steroids.

“the base.”

Yet unmistakably, the Nelson Rockefeller mind-set oozes not only from Romney’s book but his presentations on the campaign trail. To say, as Romney does in his book, that “Despite my affiliation with the Republican Party I don’t think of myself as highly partisan” is simply one way of summing up the creed of the Rockefeller Republican — pragmatism. Which Reagan, of course, disdained.

From RomneyCare and its health insurance mandates (or, as rival Tim Pawlenty slyly called it, “ObamneyCare”) to his belief in climate change (which inevitably means the government must do X), to last night’s double confirmation that his goal as president would be merely to clip the hedges of big government, Mitt Romney is displaying his bona fides to the GOP liberal Establishment as the consummate Rockefeller Republican.

Says the group of Romney in this regard:

His contribution to history reads like a roster of “who’s who” of the Republican establishment.

The ultimate question for Republican primary voters, then, is whether the next Republican president should be a Rockefeller Republican or a Reagan Republican.

Or, as Mark Levin said of Romney with his usual sharp eye to discerning those who love to cite Ronald Reagan while in fact demonstrating they are anything but:

In Iowa he’s for ethanol subsidies [and] in New Hampshire he’s for controlling man-made global warming. I can’t support this man in the Republican Primary. There’s just no way without compromising all my principles.

Romney “basically destroyed health care in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Levin added, and with no pleasure, speculating on the disaster that would ensue in an administration where the Romney mind-set was appointing an EPA administrator.

Rockefeller Republicanism is Mitt Romney’s political core, his every political instinct, and it expresses itself and will continue to express itself as Romney moves through this campaign. Asking him to stop is like demanding the Pope not sound so, well, Catholic.

All of which poses an interesting dilemma for Republicans.

Here’s a great candidate for president. He’s got the looks, the charm, the energy, the brains and, if not Rockefeller-style money, at least enough plus the ability to raise more.

The problem:

He tries hard to sound like Ronald Reagan.

But he thinks like Nelson Rockefeller.

maverick muse on June 14, 2011 at 6:07 PM

IlikedAUH2O on June 14, 2011 at 10:05 PM

Yes, “conservatism” depends upon contextual application, referential to what is being conserved.

Re: Reagan’s political party affiliation, sure the name changed. But so far as being anti-communist, Reagan was always that sort of conservative who loved preserving the Constitution “the American Way” promoting “the American Dream”. Having not served American in WWII/Korean combat, he fought Communism politically. And as a neoconservative POTUS, he felt compelled to fight undeclared military wars against communism in Latin America, and to illegally sell arms to fight against anti-American Jihad in the Middle East.

Given the Polish Solidarity Movement of Labor to (ironically) gain independence from the USSR, of course Reagan supported that Union cause. After all, Reagan’s original executive experience as the president of the screen actors’ union (pro-FBI)? That Reagan would sign amnesty for illegal aliens and promote farm workers’ rights also defines his affinity with GHBW/GWB neoconservative “compassionate conservatism”.

As things developed, he certainly was known to delegate authority, and chose an inner circle Cabinet of neoconservatives. NIXON/Kissinger would likely win the unprecedented prize being the first neoconservative Republican administration.

maverick muse on June 15, 2011 at 3:50 PM

Best you figure out now just how much you support him. Me .. I know who he is and I won’t expect any more than I know if he gets in.

Texas Gal on June 14, 2011 at 10:44 PM

Excellent advice.

But when GWB initially campaigned with the “compassionate” propaganda, most people had no idea just how far revisionism of language usage had already gone to effectively invert “meaning” into the opposite.

With President GWBush, we supported his best efforts to protect America after 9/11. But obviously, chronologically Bush did not initially campaign publicly for a war against terror, the Patriot Act to result should another WTC act of terrorism succeed, or the international agenda that he established.

As events unfolded, it was not simply our American right but our duty as citizens to protest our President when he acted in favor of open borders despite criminal illegal aliens and his wars against drugs and against terror. There is absolutely no excuse for the Bush/Paulson Federal Reserve Ponzi scheme “requiring” TARP, claiming to bail-out bankrupted homeowners with mortgages under water, but instead paying off the very globalist investment industry that ripped off the world’s various mutual interest funds and pensions.

We can admire good manners. But just because someone smiles and speaks well while they piss on us doesn’t mean we’re supposed to let it happen, let alone thank them.

maverick muse on June 15, 2011 at 4:08 PM