Haley Barbour to conservatives: Reagan was no purist
“In the 2012 campaign every candidate for the Republican nomination has invoked Reagan and compared him or herself to Reagan. I don’t blame them a bit,” said Mr. Barbour. “But let me make sure that one thing is clear about Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party: Reagan did not demand or expect everyone to agree with him on every issue. He wasn’t a purist.”
“Some candidates are vying to be the most conservative candidate, and some voters are seeking purity in their choice,” he added. “Well, in politics purity is a dead-dog loser. You need unity. And purity is the enemy of unity.”…
“Ronald Reagan had an ideology, a strong philosophy with matching principles,” Mr. Barbour said. “But he was not an ideologue. He didn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
Blowback
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I assume that’s a joke…. Bush was to the left of his dad and his dad to the left of Reagan and Romneycare to the left of them all.
FloatingRock on February 7, 2012 at 11:15 AM
All that Mittfilth have are lies, see Coulter and her worship of Mitt’s pants crease.
ebrown2 on February 7, 2012 at 11:16 AM
I’m so sick of this RINO/RNC BS. Yeah, no shit Haley, Reagan wasn’t perfect. Nobody thinks he was. And nobody expects anyone else to be an exact clone of Reagan.
But Reagan would have resigned before signing into law Obamneycare.
angryed on February 7, 2012 at 11:19 AM
Haley Barbour.
This is who the NYT thinks conservatives take seriously? For real?
Haley Barbour who just pardoned murders before leaving office in Mississippi.
I understand the message, but this isn’t the messenger to be giving it.
Dr Evil on February 7, 2012 at 11:21 AM
Ironically, Bill Buckley didn’t support Reagan for the nomination in 1980.
Even more ironic, both King Gold and Christine O’Donnell support Willard, Lord Romney.
Emperor Norton on February 7, 2012 at 11:21 AM
Big Tent, remember. Big Tent.
aryeung on February 7, 2012 at 11:22 AM
ronald-reagan-on-medicare-circa-1961-prescient-rhetoric-or-familiar-alarmist-claptrap-.html
It’s nice to expose lying Mittfilth, yet again.
ebrown2 on February 7, 2012 at 11:09 AM
The problem is that a great man’s OWN WORDS never quite fit the current Socialist propaganda template. It’s just a little more convenient to shove their hands up his corpse’s ass and use it as a meat puppet to advance whatever program they’re working on today — and call that “paying him respect.”
logis on February 7, 2012 at 11:30 AM
None of the GOP candidates are “perfect”. None of the GOP candidates are even “good”. A few of them are good enough when the alternative is Obama. But one (Mitt Romney) is not even “good enough”. He has no “ideology”, no “strong philosophy”, no “matching principles”. Reagan may not have expected everyone to agree with him on every issue, but based on Romney’s record of governance, I agree with Romney on what appears to be zero issues.
besser tot als rot on February 7, 2012 at 11:31 AM
There’s no room in a big tent for someone looking to burn down the tent if everyone else doesn’t comply with their worldview.
There’s more than one way to have an entitlement mentality, folks.
KingGold on February 7, 2012 at 11:33 AM
The tent shouldn’t be so big as to make the parties indistinguishable (in practice if not rhetoric). When a party refuses to take a stand and give the people the option to do what is right and necessary on the seminal issues of the day, they die – like the Whigs.
besser tot als rot on February 7, 2012 at 11:37 AM
Well folks, as we’ve seen on this thread, Mittfilth have an “entitlement mentality” about libeling the dead.
ebrown2 on February 7, 2012 at 11:38 AM
Yep, they’re necromancers of filth and lies.
ebrown2 on February 7, 2012 at 11:39 AM
Yes, CO’D endorsed Romney.
Which, I maintain, means she was far wiser about things like this than the fools who boosted her in the first place for an office she clearly couldn’t win.
KingGold on February 7, 2012 at 11:42 AM
What was that famous Obama line you all used to joke over, “just lines? just speeches?” Reagan was a wonderful advocate of conservative principles in speech. In action, he compromised on the issues that would get him called a RINO today. KingGold is quite right, the party has moved further and further to the right since the 1960s.
libfreeordie on February 7, 2012 at 11:44 AM
Right.. I guess they were bowing when Hebollah blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing nearly 300 people, and the single greatest loss of military life since the first day of the Tet offensive.
And I guess they respected us more when we promptly got the hell out of there.
And then just to show how much they respected and feared us, they kidnapped the CIA station chief William Buckley, and killed him after holding him captive.
Yeah – Reagan really showed them! Or maybe it was when he traded arms to Iran to gain the release of other hostages.
inklake on February 7, 2012 at 11:44 AM
Nope.
besser tot als rot on February 7, 2012 at 11:47 AM
Reagan had at least 5 excellent principles, by which he stuck.
Name such for any of the current contenders, left or right.
Schadenfreude on February 7, 2012 at 11:52 AM
P.S. But hey – those Grenadians sure got a can of whoop-a-s opened on them!
inklake on February 7, 2012 at 11:52 AM
Always count on the righties to betray you.
See the entire array of sissies.
Schadenfreude on February 7, 2012 at 11:53 AM
You’re quite clearly at trolling levels at this point.
That said, nobody’s “libeling the dead.” But nobody’s nominating Reagan for sainthood either. He wasn’t some model of perfection and conservative purity, and those who look for what they believe Reagan to be, and not who he actually was, are going to be eternally disappointed.
KingGold on February 7, 2012 at 11:53 AM
If you’re impressed now with Christine O’Donnell’s judgment, would you vote for her for office now if you lived in Delaware?
After all, you say you voted for the arch-conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate from New York, Carl Paladino. If you held your nose to vote for Paladino, you could hold your nose for O’Donnell, right?
Or is that a nose too far?
Emperor Norton on February 7, 2012 at 11:53 AM
If I have to hear Romney’s snivelling voice for the next 4-8 years, I’ll throw the TV through the window. Hearing/seeing the current Liar in Chief nearly ruined my brain, ears and eyes.
Schadenfreude on February 7, 2012 at 11:55 AM
There’s a big difference between nominating a non-purist Reagan and a non-purist Romney.
J.E. Dyer on February 7, 2012 at 11:59 AM
They’ve gone from tu quoque to fallacy of the beard. They’re willfully defective in reasoning. Truth is trolling to them.
ebrown2 on February 7, 2012 at 11:59 AM
+1000000
ebrown2 on February 7, 2012 at 12:00 PM
Who are you talking about, and what the hell are you trying to say?
Emperor Norton on February 7, 2012 at 12:05 PM
This is why Reagan attracted so many Democrats. He was absolutely NOT a purist. And he absolutely did NOT want to shove his personal values down the throats of other people. What he did want was a smaller federal government with more of the major decisions going to the individual states and the people could “vote with their feet” as he put it. States with failed policies would lose people and thereby political clout.
Reagan was more about the role of government and less about shoving “conservative” social agendas onto people.
We have 50 different states. Each state has their own set of challenges and is blessed with their own set of resources. Each state should be free to address their problems as they see fit.
crosspatch on February 7, 2012 at 12:35 PM
Reagan…the same guy who challenged a sitting moderate Republican president? The same guy who said the GOP couldn’t be all things to all people? The guy who gave a speech called A Time For Choosing?
therightwinger on February 7, 2012 at 12:39 PM
No, Reagan was no purist. But he was a conservative.
So if this is just another long-winded excuse for why we should pretend Romney is conservative, then count me out. Nobody’s perfect, but that’s no excuse to accept just anything and pretend it doesn’t matter.
didymus on February 7, 2012 at 12:49 PM
As a president, Reagan would not have interfered in Romneycare. As a governor, though, Reagan would have fought against Romneycare-type plans in his own state.
Predictably, people are trying to use the “non-purist” argument to excuse what is clearly unacceptable to conservatives.
didymus on February 7, 2012 at 12:53 PM
Mittbots, of course. They have gone from the tu quoque fallacy (“Newt’s just as bad”) to the continuum fallacy (argument of the beard)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_fallacy
since they argue that since both Reagan and Romney are not ideologically inflexible that they share the same ideology, or that Reagan would not object to Romney as a candidate.
ebrown2 on February 7, 2012 at 1:29 PM
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