Are we dinosaurs?
In the midst of one of my mental rants against "60s liberals", I suddenly realized that the start of the Reagan era was nearly 28 years ago. The 1980s are just as relevant to college kids today as the 1960s were to me. In other words, they're completely irrelevant.
In my political science classes (even at the liberal University of Wisconsin), the ideas of the 1960s were dead. They weren't even worth studying. They were swept aside in the giddy culmination of the Cold War.
While people like Christine Todd Whitman are rightly bitching about the state of the GOP, that's all that they're doing. Bitching. The reasonable wing of the Republican party is resting on the wilted laurels of the Reagan years.
Too many people have no idea what those ideas even are anymore. It took Reagan nearly 20 years to reap the benefits of the seeds of conservatism he sowed with his radio addresses in the 1960s and 1970s.
I really don't think the GOP needs new ideas so much as it needs to rearticulate and reinterpret the Reagan revolution to meet the concerns of the next generation. If it fails to do that, it really will go the way of the dinosaur (or at least the Whigs).
Posted by kris at November 24, 2008 09:36 PM
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| # November 25th, 2008 5:20 PM BVBigBro |
| The GOP is now in exile. The image of Reagan may be far more compelling to a party in exile. |
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