Pete Wehner says he worked for Reagan as evidence of his Reagan or conservative credentials. Lots of people worked for Reagan as there are several thousand political positions in an administration. Reagan did not hire Wehner. I don’t know who hired Wehner. But that’s quite beside the point. It doesn’t appear he learned very much during his time there. Indeed, a few years back he insisted that George W. Bush, for whom he served in a senior position under Karl Rove, and I very decent man I should add, governed as a more thorough conservative than Ronald Reagan. This is delusional, yet he persisted in this position for some time. He did not link to those debates in his latest post.
Here’s one example of my response. Others can be found on the Internet. But Pete is an ideologue in this regard, insisting beyond fact and reason that something is true when it clearly is not.
Moreover, Pete ensures his readers that he is a conservative by including a mention of his attendance at Rush’s wedding, to which we and many others were invited. I don’t believe the invitation list was limited to conservatives but, in any event, what does that have to do with anything? As was widely reported, Elton John was the entertainment. Is he a conservative? (And he was excellent, by the way.) Has Pete not entered the Twilight Zone?
Pete has spent several years now methodically trashing prominent conservatives, the tea party, and attempting to re-define conservativism and Reagan, as he and others among the Bush staffers seek to clear the way for the next moderate Republican presidential candidate. I truly wish he would have linked to his seemingly endless parade of those posts, which he emails to his seemingly endless list of email addresses.
Respecting Reagan’s choice of Schweiker, I actually worked in that primary against Ford (no doubt Pete would have considered that an act of absolutism and purity) and I was extremely critical of the choice. That said, it was a mistake by Reagan, which actually may have cost him the Pennsylvania delegates. So, that proves what? Reagan was not a conservative, or he was a moderate, or he was a pragmatist? It proves nothing.
And yes, Reagan was a complex man. Aren’t all men complex? Honestly, I have rarely replied to a more trite and sophomoric post. The problem Pete is having is that he can’t quite square Reagan with the moderation that he insists defines conservativism because he is confused about what Edmund Burke and others meant by moderation. (By the way, Burke, was also a complex man.) He is largely a Republican Party man, defending the current leadership and most things establishment, and many historically average politicians who populate it. Pete is confused about the tea party movement, whose members insist on a more principled and less passive defense of basic notions of liberty, the Constitution, and free market capitalism, particularly in light of the radicalism of the current president and the Democratic Party. I have no doubt Reagan would have celebrated, no seek to crush it or smear it. After all, the tea party consists of untold numbers of citizens who were fed up with George W. Bush’s profligate spending, bailouts, stimulus programs, etc., and saw Obama as a great threat to republican government. The tea party has been right all along, as have other conservatives. Moreover, as I said earlier, Reagan, after all, challenged a sitting Republican president in 1976. He was the outsider taking on the GOP establishment. (His 1977 CPAC speech is outstanding, for those who wish to read it.) We know how McConnell, Boehner, Barbour, Rove, and, yes, Pete, have responded to conservatives daring to challenge incumbent establishment Republicans. I guess Reagan was a purist, right?
So, why did Reagan feel the need to challenge a sitting Republican president, whose allies included the Bush family, McConnell, Dole and the vast majority of the GOP establishment? And why did George H.W. Bush try to prevent Reagan’s nomination in 1980? (These are rhetorical questions, Pete.) I think Pete is caught between two worlds — the world of the GOP establishment and his insistence on his true conservatism (unlike us purists, of course). Keep writing and cherry-picking, Pete. No offense, but you’re not there yet.