Gop Is Losing Sight Of Its Mandate

If the Reagan who resigned from the Republican Party had been Ronald instead of Michael, it might have had a greater impact. But radio talk show host Michael Reagan’s decision to become an independent - at least temporarily - still is significant.

On his radio show early last week, Michael Reagan said, “The Republican revolution my father began is by all appearances dead, sacrificed on the altar of civility by party leaders more interested in making friends and being liked than in fulfilling the mandate they were given by the voters.”

Ronald Reagan was fond of saying that he didn’t leave the Democratic Party - “the party left me.” Michael Reagan said he and the Republicans have parted ways for the same reason: “I’m leaving a Republican Party that is rudderless and in full retreat from the conservative values and beliefs my father championed. … When the Republicans come back to grass-roots America, I’ll come back to the Republican Party.”

The evidence seems to support his decision. From retreating on issues such as child care - Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, joined forces with Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., in support of health insurance for children because, said Hatch, he didn’t want to give the impression that Republicans “hate kids” - to surrendering on the bread-and-butter issue of tax cuts, funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and maintaining the U.S. Department of (re)Education, Republicans are behaving like a party still mired in the minority.

Some Republicans are apologizing now for the way Anthony Lake, the defeated nominee for director of the CIA, was treated at his confirmation hearings. But in fact, Republican senators were doing their job - publicizing policy decisions involving arms sales to Bosnia (while Congress was kept in the dark), questionable campaign contributions and Lake’s general lack of intelligence experience.

Republicans are being intimidated by Democrats, who never behaved in a civil way when they attempted to destroy Supreme Court nominees Clarence Thomas and Robert Bork. Nor was there a civil bone in any of their bodies when they drove Richard M. Nixon from office.

When Democrats are running the show, they care little for the feelings of Republicans and conservatives. But on the rare occasions during the past 50 years when Democrats have been in the congressional minority, they have tried to invoke a Rodney King strategy (“Can’t we all just get along?”) to put the Republican agenda on hold until they can regain the reins of power.

The problem with Republicans is not that they lack manners but that they lack vision and what Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in another context, referred to as “cojones.” Either one of these missing elements would be enough to wound a party, but missing both can put a party in critical condition.

Republicans in Washington have lost sight of the people - something Ronald Reagan never did. Instead, they lust after the approval of liberal Democrats and their fellow travelers in the big media. Republicans never will get that approval, but that doesn’t keep them from prostituting themselves in hopes of being respected in the morning.

Harry S. Truman’s wonderful line about getting a dog if you want a friend in Washington has been modified. Today, a Republican can substitute for the dog because so many of them have become lap dogs.

If Republicans would do what Ronald Reagan did and hold on to their principles while directing their comments to the people - always resisting seeking approval from the big media and from Democrats - they wouldn’t have to cave in on tax cuts and the rest of their agenda.

That’s what Michael Reagan hopes his “wake-up” resignation call will do - get the GOP back to its principles and back to the people.

In his autobiography, “An American Life” (which the current Republican majority should go back and read), Ronald Reagan writes of “a sense of incompleteness” when he left office and of a mission not fully accomplished. He bequeathed that mission to his successors.

But they have failed him and are allowing the morning he brought back to America to resemble a sunset.

Michael Reagan shares those sentiments. If the Republican Party fails to recall and act on the vision of his father, perhaps Michael Reagan will find himself with a lot of company in what could become an exodus.

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