The Affordable Care Act is a giant, nanny state, one-size-fits-all, top-down government overreach that appalls economic conservatives. Meanwhile, its stringent requirements that employers do such things as provide “free” contraceptive care is an affront to social conservatives, not to mention the Catholic Church. To every Republican, the thing is a parody of liberal excess.
Republicans now know what they are against, as they did in the Cold War. This will not be enough, however, no matter what Ted Cruz believes. “A conservative,” William F. Buckley famously said, “is someone who stands athwart history, yelling ‘Stop.’”
But Alex Castellanos, an Alexandra, Va., political consultant, advises Republicans that success in a national election will require more. Ronald Reagan, Castellanos reminds his clients, didn’t just say “no” when Nikita Khrushchev vowed that history was on the Soviets’ side and that they would bury us. Nor did he just call them “an evil empire.”
Reagan told Americans in 1964 that they had a “rendezvous with destiny,” one that would preserve for our children “the last best hope of man on Earth.” The Gipper was cribbing from both Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. But even that isn’t enough for today’s Republicans. They may detest Obamacare, but the task before Republicans is to produce something better.
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