If Republicans are looking for another Ronald Reagan, perhaps they should look no further than Barack Obama

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Steve Benen, as many others have, makes the connection. Basically, Obama is very much in the mold of Reagan, policy-wise, particularly with respect to taxes and the economy (though also, I would add, with respect to foreign policy):

Mike Huckabee recently said, "Ronald Reagan would have a very difficult, if not impossible, time being nominated in this atmosphere of the Republican Party." Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) had a nearly identical take last year, arguing Reagan "would have a hard time getting elected as a Republican today."

I agree, but what does that tell contemporary GOP officials? What should Republicans take away from the fact that, by 2011 standards, their party would dismiss their demigod as a tax-raising, amnesty-loving, pro-bailout, cut-and-run, big-government Democrat?

Or more to the point, doesn't it bother Republicans, just a little, that Barack Obama is more in line with the Reagan legacy than they are?

Given their utter lack of self-awareness, I doubt it does. Besides, their hagiography of Reagan is based largely on myth, on what they think Reagan was all about. Which is to say, they generally project themselves and their agenda onto Reagan and then revere him. It's not clear if they would revere the real Reagan, but probably not. After all, with their increasingly extremist ideology, they make him look like something of a moderate. 

So, yes, Obama is a lot like Reagan. But let's not overstate it. In terms of policy, Obama is very much a centrist who would have sought compromise with Reagan, just as he continues to seek compromise with Republicans (even if they clearly have no interest in compromise). And there would undoubtedly have been room for agreement between the two. (Who knows, Reagan may have supported Obama's health-care reform, not to mention the stimulus and bailouts, and may also have supported Obama's diplomatic-hawkish foreign/military policy. Surely Reagan would have agreed with Obama's conduct of the "war on terror," not to mention the Afghan War.)

But of course Obama is progressive in ways that Reagan never was. They may be somewhat similar in policy terms, but they are vastly different in style, image, and temperament, not to mention in broader historical terms. Both men can inspire, but Obama is more of a technocrat than Reagan ever was. And even if we grant that Obama is generally progressive, his policies are centrist and generally dismissive of progressivism, while Reagan was a movement conservative who played to the right and united the Republican Party as a party of ideological conservatism (even as his own policies often reflected a more conciliatory approach to politics, much like Obama's do).

Anyway, the point, I suppose, is that the Republican Party is really no longer the party of Reagan. As with so much else, Republicans can't grasp that basic reality.

Elephant Dung #7: Lindsey Graham lashes out at capitulating Republicans

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

Sen. Lindsey Graham, once the Robin to John McCain's Batman, is hardly much of a Republican spokesman these days, but he nonetheless carries some credibility with the media as a bit of a maverick willing to speak out against his party. Which he did yesterday:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) lashed out at fellow Republicans Tuesday for a "capitulation... of dramatic proportions" to Democrats and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in the lame-duck Congress.

Graham said Republicans have no one to blame but themselves for allowing ratification of the New START Treaty and other legislation in the period before new lawmakers are sworn in in January.

"When it's all going to be said and done, Harry Reid has eaten our lunch," Graham said on Fox News radio. "This has been a capitulation in two weeks of dramatic proportions of policies that wouldn't have passed in the new Congress."

Capitulation? Really? Yes, there have been a couple of high-profile Democratic victories, but DADT repeal, for example, is widely popular, including in the military. The new START may soon be ratified, but, as Fred Kaplan notes, "the treaty's text contains nothing objectionable in substance." So is Graham opposed to the health-care bill for 9/11 First Responders? If so, is he saying that providing much-needed benefits to these courageous men and women amounts to political capitulation?

So what else? The tax deal? Yes, that's seen as capitulation by the far right. The DREAM Act? Well, the GOP stood firm against that. The omnibus spending bill? Republicans killed that. What else is there? The food safety bill?

What's going on here? Obviously, Graham, trying to secure himself against attacks and challenges from the Tea Party right back home in South Carolina, is positioning himself as an extremist partisan opposed to any and all compromise with Obama and the Democrats -- much like Mitch McConnell in Kentucky. (So much for all that bipartisan work Graham did on a comprehensive climate/energy bill. Remember that?)

So maybe it isn't all that significant, in terms of the coming GOP Civil War, that Graham is lashing out at his fellow Republicans for personal political reasons. If a tree falls in the forest and all that.

But it's amusing nonetheless.

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Even more amusing, in a not-so-very funny sort of way, Graham demanded that Democrats apologize to fellow Republican Jon Kyl for moving ahead on START ratification:

I stand here very disappointed in the fact that our lead negotiator on the Republican side... basically is going to have his work product ignored and the treaty jammed through in the lame duck. How as Republicans we justify that I do not know. To Senator Kyl, I want to apologize to you for the way you've been treated by your colleagues.

Oh please. Such immature posturing. Greg Sargent:

Seriously? Senators who have agreed to ratify New START before the end of the lame-duck session are doing this because they've been asked to by the President of the United States, the military leadership, all the living secretaries of state under Republican presidents, and a whole range of national security experts across the political spectrum. They are doing this after more than a dozen public hearings and countless private briefings from military leaders and White House officials who did everything they could do address their concerns. They are doing this because they are persuaded that it is in the national security interests of the United States and is necessary to maintain global stability.

Yet Senators who are voting to ratify New START because they believe it's the right thing to do should feel apologetic to Kyl for defying his wishes, even though the evidence is overwhelming that Kyl's objections have been thoroughly addressed? Yeah, right: It's an absolute outrage that these Senators are prioritizing their own sense of what's right for the country and the world, over the influence, standing and fragile ego of a single fellow Senator.

Unreal.

Alas, all-too-real. It's the Republican Party, after all.