Rush Responds to the ‘Coordinated Avalanche’: ‘If Nancy Reagan thought … that Newt was anti-Reagan, she would never have been on the same platform with him’
So says Rush. More here.
The core argument by Team Romney that Newt Gingrich was not a Reagan true believer is Gingrich’s 1988 assertion that “If (George H.W.) Bush Runs as a Continuation of Reaganism, He Will Lose.”
Gosh, nobody beat up on Al Gore for not staking his campaign on saying “I’m going to keep on doing Clintonism,” did they?
Gore could have run on that basis and perhaps have won (well, he would have had to make an exception for avoiding repeats of the Lewinsky saga). Instead, he tacked so far to the left that George W. Bush got enough of an opening to win.
Nobody beat up on Dick Nixon in 1960 for failing to say that he would continue doing what the Eisenhower administration had done during the past eight years.
And it would have been really, really dumb for the vice-presidential candidate who ended up becoming Bush 41 to say that “I’m going to keep on doing everything Reagan did,” and offer nothing else, which was the true context of Gingrich’s comment. Why? He had to establish his own persona and identity. He did so, and beat Mike Dukakis. Whether “kinder, gentler America” was the way to go is highly debatable, but the fact that he did this to establish himself as an electable and qualified presidential candidate is not.
Similarly, Newt Gingrich in 1988 was telling George W. Bush to be his own man and not to merely pledge a continuation of Reaganism. There’s nothing wrong with that; he was not rejecting Reagan. Desperate Romniacs, whose candidate has pointedly rejected virtually every Reagan platform which ever existed, are acting as if Newt’s campaign-related strategy statement is a capital crime.
I can’t wait for Hugh Hewitt to denounce Romney’s gutter tactics. (/sarc)
Rush Limbaugh’s full defense is here (“Coordinated Avalanche Against Newt Doesn’t Match My Memory of Reagan Years”) at his place.