Today’s GOP presidential candidates could learn a lot from former president.
In this Oct. 28, 1980 file photo, President Jimmy Carter, left, and Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, shake hands in Cleveland, Ohio, before debating before a nationwide television audience. The Republican Party will hold a presidential candidate debate at the Ronald Reagan library Wednesday. It’s a bad fit. The GOP’s modern idol is exactly the opposite of Reagan in personality and character.
Yes, maybe that was a tad naive and corny, but it brought a collective smile — and won over many Democrats. Having covered Reagan up close for 20 years as a candidate, California governor and 40th president, I can’t believe he would support Trump even if he were the GOP standard bearer. Oh, he conceivably might whisper something about supporting the party ticket. But I very much doubt that in private he’d vote for Trump.
“Ronald Reagan could throw a political punch, but he did it with courtesy, with humor,” former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger once told a gathering at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley. Unlike Trump, Reagan also would never have questioned whether the late Sen. John McCain was a war hero after being captured by the North Vietnamese and held prisoner for more than five years. Reagan idolized McCain’s military service.But Reagan was no knee-jerk ideologue. He often governed as a moderate, especially in Sacramento — sometimes compromising with Democrats to achieve half a loaf, other times because that’s what he believed.
On taxes, Reagan raised and lowered them to fit the government’s revenue needs — both as governor and president.Could Reagan have won the Republican presidential nomination in today’s polarized, ultraconservative, uncompromising GOP? Many think not. Too suspiciously centrist. He’d be considered a dreaded RINO — Republican in name only.
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