As a Republican victory in 2010 becomes increasingly like, conservatives need to understand that the fight to keep the Republican Party really stand for something is not new. In the last eighty years, except for Reagan and Goldwater, every Republican presidential nominee has been what we today would call a RINO. Does that statement sound extreme? Consider the history.
Republicans in 1928 and then again in 1932 nominated Herbert Hoover as the party’s standard bearer. In 1920, Hoover was universally recognized as a brilliant administrator of war relief efforts. Democrats wanted Hoover, who had never held political office, to be the Democrat nominee for President in 1920, and
Hoover considered accepting that nomination. Although Hoover served in Republican administrations as Secretary of Commerce, he substantially increased the role of the federal government and was hardly a conservative.
In 1936, Republicans picked Alf Landon to run against Franklin Roosevelt. Landon was a
liberal Republican from Kansas who supported much of the New Deal. Wendell Willkie, the 1940 nominee, was not just a RINO: he was a
Democrat delegate to the convention that nominated Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. Willkie had never held political office before, and after he lost to FDR, the “Republican” nominee spent a good deal of his time supporting Roosevelt’s policies, ostensibly representing the Republican Party.
The next two men nominated by Republicans – the nominees at the 1944, 1948, 1952, and 1956 conventions – looked very much like two contemporary “Republican” leaders, Rudy Giuliani and Colin Powell. Tom Dewey, like Rudy, was a fearless and effective New York prosecutor who then ran for higher office (Dewey was elected Governor of New York.) A decent man, Dewey was the penultimate moderate, nominated over genuine conservatives at Republican conventions.
Dwight Eisenhower, like Colin Powell, rose through the ranks of the United States Army to become Army Chief of Staff.
Both Democrats and Republicans wanted Eisenhower to be their party’s presidential nominee in 1948, showing just how wholly removed from politics the general had been. Eisenhower appointed leftist Earl Warren to be Chief Justice; he made no effort to reduce taxes or roll back the New Deal in the prosperity of the 1950s; and later, when a real conservative was nominated by Republicans in 1964, former President Eisenhower pointedly stayed on the sidelines.
Eisenhower also bequeathed to the Republican Party as its 1960 standard bearer Richard Nixon, a pedigree RINO. Kennedy, in 1960, ran a foreign policy campaign to the right of Nixon. Kennedy also would implement vital and deep tax cuts, something Nixon ignored. Nixon chose as his running mate in 1960 Henry Cabot Lodge, a strong supporter of the United Nations and in 1965 the man Lyndon Baines Johnson chose to be Ambassador to Vietnam.
In 1964 – finally! – the mass of conservatives in the Republican Party rallied behind Barry Goldwater, a genuine and outspoken conservative. It was the first time in forty years that a Republican nominee could honestly claim to be following the political tradition of Washington and Jefferson. The Republican establishment almost wholly abandoned him. Governor Rockefeller and Governor Romney refused to endorse him; Governor Scranton of Pennsylvania and former Vice President Nixon gave very tepid support. The only people who supported Goldwater, it seemed, were ordinary Republicans. The senator lost in one of the dirtiest campaigns in memory by one of the worst rascals to inhabit the White House, yet “moderate” Republicans until Reagan won would continue to warn against a clear articulation of conservative values.
Nixon won the nominations and then the elections in 1968 and 1972. He created the Environmental Protection Agency and OSHA (Occupation Safety and Health Administration), supported SSI ( a new entitlement), instituted wage and price controls, removed America completely from the Gold Standard, and announced – in response to criticism of high government spending – “Now I am a Keynesian.” His foreign policy was almost utterly Realpolitik, a Machiavellian disinterest in morality which led him to meet Mao, perhaps the greatest mass murderer in history, and to hug Brezhnev, the boorish and doctrinaire Marxist boss of Russia.
Conservatives opposed Nixon. Reagan sought the nomination in 1968. John Ashbrook actively campaigned against Nixon when the president sought re-nomination in 1972, and this principled conservative was supported by
National Review and by Human Events, which was practically all of the conservative media at the time. Nixon and McGovern were the major party nominees in 1972, but there was one significant third party candidate in the general election,
John Schmidz, a conservative Republican from California.
After Nixon resigned in disgrace, Gerald Ford, as sitting president, sought the Republican nomination in 1976. He was strongly opposed by Ronald Reagan, who ran against the entire Republican establishment and the power of the Presidency, and yet almost won. Ford, who declined to meet with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who introduced the pathetic “WIN” (Whip Inflation Now) campaign, who appointed John Paul Stevens to the Supreme Court, and who chose Nelson Rockefeller as his Vice President, was a perfect example of a modern RINO. In 1976, the sitting President Ford just barely defeated Reagan for the Republican nomination.
Reagan, of course, won four years later and his policies prevailed, while he was president. George H. Bush, however, almost immediately purged the White House of conservatives and hailed a “Kinder, gentler America” disgusting conservatives who flocked to Ross Perot in 1992. Bob Dole, because it was his “turn,” won the 1996 nomination and ran an aimless campaign. After which Republicans in succession nominated George W. Bush twice and then John McCain.
Why do RINOs recoil from Palin, Goldwater and Reagan? These Americans actually do what the left urges us all to do: Speak truth to power. They eschew party interest - Reagan was a Democrat until 1962; Palin first took on the Republican establishment of Alaska; Goldwater, famously, went to the White House to insist that Nixon resign. These good people are Americans first, and they recognize that the lynchpin of America is liberty. RINOs? The history of RINOs in America is no better (and no worse) than the history of politics in human affairs
