It’s presidential election season and once again, the establishment gets it wrong every time.
Every four years since 1976, the Republican back-room establishment has thrown their support behind either the moderate or unelectable candidate in the primaries.
Now, in 2024, it’s Nikki Haley’s turn. Her delusional ego and the big-money donors want her to stay in the race because they both want former President Donald Trump to be convicted and thrown in prison based off a political witch-hunt and persecution waged by the Biden Department of Justice. “Hey, I was number two, I should be president!,” Ms. Haley will claim should that ever happen to the leading GOP candidate. Fat chance Nikki! But once again, the usual suspects are out there saying Trump cannot win, he’s too conservative, or dangerous.
Sounds like a similar story being repeated from time ago.
Let’s look back into some history.
In 1976, President Gerald Ford was running as a first-time presidential candidate since he was never elected by the people, having been picked by President Nixon to replace disgraced Vice President Spiro Agnew who was charged with felony tax evasion and subsequently resigned. Then after the Watergate scandal engulfed Nixon and forced his resignation from office in August of 1974, Vice President Ford was elevated to the presidency. Calling President Ford a moderate is quite generous. For brevity, we will not deep-dive into Ford’s policies but he was certainly not a conservative.
But there was a strong leader who was the ideologically polar opposite (conservative) of President Gerald Ford who would disrupt the entire GOP establishment. His name was Ronald Reagan.
Reagan was a two-term governor of California from 1967-1975. He defeated the incumbent governor, Pat Brown, by 15% points in 1966!
Though unofficially a candidate in the 1968 Republican presidential primary, Reagan’s first serious attempt to upend the modern establishment and clean up the mess of the Nixon/Ford administrations was in 1976.
Reagan laid out a positive, conservative vision for the United States during a time of political, economic, and foreign policy turmoil. When he took on President Ford in 1976, there was a major contrast between what the moderates’s vision for the future of the United States should be and that of Ronald Reagan’s conservative, individual freedom view. Conservatives and others had already seen enough of Ford. The debate was on for what the Republican Party would stand for in the late 1970s and who would lead it.
Reagan had a strong conservative following whose belief in him was matched or succeeded by his belief in them, the American people. Despite this connection, though, he faced strong head-winds and opposition within the Republican Party during the 1976 primary campaign. The media, in coordination with President Ford’s White House team, constantly lied about who Reagan was and what his administration would do to undermine the country. Reagan persisted on, battling Ford in state after state . In the end, however, President Ford secured the nomination narrowly over Reagan by winning over just enough of the undeclared delegates inside the GOP convention in Kansas City to become the nominee. The finally tally of delegates was 1,187 for President Ford to Reagan’s 1,070.
In a sign of trying to unify the Republican Party that was fractured after a bitter primary battle and to defeat Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter in the fall, President Ford’s convention acceptance speech and celebration afterward onstage ended with him asking Reagan to come on stage to say a few words. Reagan, though disappointed it was not him on stage, graciously declined. But after the crowd inside Kemper Arena began to chant his name, President Ford waved he and Nancy Reagan to join them on stage and the Reagans accepted.
Ronald Reagan smiled at the president and shook his hand. After introducing his primary opponent, President Ford stepped aside and Reagan took to the podium, waving and grinning from ear to ear while the delegates shouted in excitement. Trying to speak through the loud and delighted chants, Reagan continued to smile and wave at the crowd. When the noise finally settled down, Reagan spoke for a few minutes about individual freedom. After his words, he stood at the podium and graciously accepted the support from the Kemper Arena crowd.
According to reports, when Reagan finished speaking, the delegates inside the arena, turned to each other and said, “I think we picked the wrong guy!” Ford would go on to lose to Jimmy Carter in the fall.
After a disastrous Carter Administration which consisted of long lines for gasoline and being told to put on a sweater instead of turning up the thermostat, Reagan ran again in 1980. This time it was more of the same for the Gipper. The strong establishment resistance, being led this time by George H.W. Bush and those who supported Ford just four short years earlier, continued the tactics that had barely worked in 1976.
Another hard-fought battle ripped open the Republican Party with the top two candidates, Reagan and Bush, both drawing a sharp contrast on how the GOP should govern and the best man to lead it. Conservatism versus establishment moderatism.
In the end, the American people loved Reagan’s optimism, economic roadmap for future success, and his vow to defeat Soviet communism. The Bush vision for America, however, was more of the same moderatism of Ford: detente (appeasement) with the Soviet Union, liberal on social issues, and raising taxes. In his defense, though, President Ford did reverse course during his term and cut taxes to stimulate an economy wrecked by inflation.
Reagan’s conservatism finally won over the Republican Party and he secured the nomination with nearly 60% of the total vote and nearly double the delegate count over Bush.
Reagan selecting Bush to be his running mate during the GOP Convention in Detroit’s newly minted Joe Louis Arena turned out to be a smart move, despite the backlash from conservatives who were shocked and angry that the Vice President would be a man who called Reagan’s economic plan “voodoo economics.” Reagan, from his perspective, felt that Bush’s supporters would help unify the party and win the general election. Two landslide elections proved that conservatism wins. To his credit, Vice President Bush was a loyal soldier to President Reagan who was pleased at Bush’s duty as VP and not overstepping the tradition and boundaries of being number two.
After two terms in office, President Reagan’s conservatism and popularity helped propel Vice President Bush to win the White House in 1988. In essence, Bush rode the coattails of his former running mate. The Bush Administration was a mixed bag of successes (Iraq War, the Berlin Wall collapse, Clarence Thomas) and failures (David Souter to the Supreme Court, one of the most heinous picks of all time; raising taxes after vowing with his pledge of “no new taxes” and then being duped by the Democrats, who of course didn’t hold up their part of the bargain). He lost his re-election bid in 1992 to womanizer Bill Clinton.
The era of Ronald Reagan conservatism died during the only term of President George H.W. Bush and hasn’t ever fully recovered though President Donald Trump did his best.
Governor George W. Bush of Texas squeaked by and secured the presidency by winning Florida by 537 votes in the 2000 presidential race versus Al Gore. Though a strong leader throughout 9/11 and afterwards, it was more of the same for conservatives. No Child Left Behind expanded the federal government in education as did creating the unnecessary Department of Homeland Security. In 2004, President Bush was able to win re-election but barely won the popular vote.
His second term was a disaster. Led by Karl Rove, (a young Ford supporter and not a fan of Reagan, by the way), the Bush Administration got the United States further bogged down with the continued wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and never knew how to respond to the criticisms and failures. Rove, the “architect”, led the 2006 midterms that became an absolute slaughter. He brought Nancy Pelosi into national prominence.
When Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist passed away in 2005, President Bush nominated John Roberts (who was initially picked to replace Sandra Day O’Connor) to replace Rehnquist who had died just two days after Roberts was nominated for the O’Connor seat. Need we say more what a disaster Chief Justice John Roberts has been??
For the O’Connor vacancy, President Bush nominated White House counsel Harriet Miers which drew such ire and outrage from conservatives that he was embarrassingly forced to remove her nomination. His pick of Samuel Alito has been a highlight among very few for the 43rd president.
The elections of 1996, 2008, 2012 were disasters for the GOP Party and a slap in the face for conservatives.
Senators Bob Dole (1996) and John McCain (2008), though admired for their military careers and public service, were nominated by the same establishment GOP operatives that led and supported the campaigns of Ford and both Bush administrations. Both went on to be clobbered at the ballot box. An important side note: Ford’s running mate in 1976? Bob Dole.
After McCain’s disastrous 2008 loss that led to President Obama and the worst presidency in the past 100 years (until President Biden showed up), the moderate establishment went back to the well once again and pushed for extreme moderate and liberal Mitt Romney in 2012.
Despite President Obama being very unpopular after four years (going on an apology tour just weeks being just one of his many, many failures), he was able to win re-election but also became the first president to ever win a second term with fewer electoral votes and a smaller percentage of the popular vote than his first term.
The reason he won: a terrible candidate and now a worse U.S. senator and person, Mitt Romney. He ran a terrible campaign and conservatives were left in the dark. It was all set up by the moderates and GOP D.C. swamp creatures that have made losing presidential elections the rule rather than the exception.
In 2016, it was light-weights Jeb Bush and John Kasich who received the support and money to defeat candidate Donald Trump and conservatism. Despite the likes of Karl Rove and Mitch McConnell (another Ford guy who despised Reagan), Trump went on to defeat terrible person and candidate Hillary Clinton and save our country from what would have been a third term of President Obama.
Despite all the arrows slung at Donald Trump and the lies, accusations, and openly opposing a Trump presidency, the man we needed at the time fought through all the garbage of politics to become the 45th president of the United States.
The election year of 2020 was a joke of an election with state judges, not state legislatures, changing voting rules to allow people to vote by mail six months before election day, illegal ballot harvesting, drop boxes, and allowing ballots to be counted days after election day!! You can research more about 2020 if you want but it doesn’t warrant any further historical information here.
Finally, we get to this year’s election for presidency and the the ghosts of Ford, Bush 41, and John McCain continue to shape the GOP for all the wrong reasons . Former President George W. Bush and his ilk, though not all, are pushing for Nikki Haley to stay in the race and defeat the candidate who is winning bigly early in the GOP primaries. Their hatred of Trump is the same as their hatred of Ronald Reagan in 1976. They hate conservative principles and values. Though both Trump and Reagan had both similar and vastly different personalities in office, can you name one candidate since 1976 who won the nomination and most personifies Ronald Reagan?
We are not saying the men are exactly alike in policy and demeanor, but when it comes to the love of the country, cutting taxes, a strong military, and choosing Supreme Court justices, they have much in common.
Reagan’s pick of Justice Antonin Scalia was one, if not the best, in United States Supreme Court history while the picks of Justices Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor are surely in historical hindsight ones he would want back. Meanwhile, Trump’s picks of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney-Barrett need much more time to put into historical review. But for all the second-guessing, the justices appointed by President Trump all voted in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade. And let’s give credit where it is also due. Justices Thomas (Bush 41) and Alito, (Bush 43), who wrote the majority opinion in the case were instrumental in overturning this historical court case.
Will President Trump win in 2024 and defeat Biden in November? If you are on social media, read The Wall Street Journal, or watch cable news (even Fox), you would conclude no because voters can’t stand how he speaks or how he treats certain people.
If you ask conservatives, the answer is yes. If you ask American men and women who love this country, who drive the trucks that feed our families, professionals watching the government pay student loans for those with low-paying degrees like dance theory, the answer is a resounding yes. Or how about the American people who are paying more for groceries, more for gas, and see the fabric of our nation torn apart by racial division (created by the media and the left with no serious push back by the establishment right), men playing women sports, an open southern border that has seen over 6 million illegal migrants come into the country since 2021, tampons in boys school bathrooms, etc, the answer is yes.
Sound familiar? Different eras, different set of issues and yet, in some ways, the same old issues.
Like Reagan before, President Trump is the leader we need right now. Forget the nonsense talk that if he is elected he becomes a lame duck president. Would you rather have four years of Trump or four more embarrassing years of a man who clearly cannot function?
Hostile countries such as Iran, Russia, and terrorist groups like Hamas and the Houthis have started wars under Joe Biden, and others, like China and North Korea, probably will if he is somehow re-elected. The chaos around the globe will be even worse should that happen. Hey establishment, how about a President Kamala Harris? You okay with that?
Putin, Hamas, Iran, and others want more of the same feckless leadership from Biden and want him to be re-elected.
You think the Soviet Union wanted Reagan to be president? No way.
President Trump is hated by the GOP establishment and moderates. So was Reagan.
Tell those Republicans who would rather see Nikki Haley or even Joe Biden become president to shove it. Our country needs a strong leader, not a moderate Nikki Haley or worse, a president whose mental capacities are on full display.
In 1976, it was Reagan but they chose the wrong guy.
In 2024, it’s former President Donald J. Trump who will restore the United States to its greatness. Make America Great Again!
