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If the Republican Party Establishment really wants to reduce the amount of in-fighting, they should refuse to participate in the creation of such false narratives

The Convenient Myth of Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment



On December 7th, Sean Hannity, on his Fox News program, began an interview with Rudy Giuliani this way:
"While some candidates are adhering to former President Ronald Reagan's Eleventh Commandment, Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican, well, others are ignoring the Gipper's advice and they're going on the attack."
This introduction was immediately followed by clips from campaign ads by Michele Bachmann, John Huntsman, and Ron Paul, each of which criticized the positions or consistency of Newt Gingrich and/or Mitt Romney. Hannity then summarized his point this way: "So is playing dirty just part of the political process or are some campaigns taking it too far?" Notice the loaded question: The presumption is that criticizing an opponent's record constitutes "playing dirty." Throughout the subsequent interview, Giuliani pitched for Gingrich, praising him for, among other things, not joining the other candidates in criticizing the latest "frontrunner":

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"But every single one of them at one point or another did attacks because somebody else was getting to the number one position, so they would go after that person. And then you turn to Newt, and Newt would say our objective here is to defeat Barack Obama, not each other.... And then he would go to the point that had to be made about our economy being out of control or the failure Obama has been or the weak foreign policy that we have."
Putting it all together, then, from Hannity and Giuliani we have this: Criticizing an opponent is dirty politics, as it violates Reagan's Eleventh Commandment. It takes a big man to avoid dirty politics. In this campaign, only Gingrich has avoided such dirty tactics. That's why he is going to win. Right. Clever triangulation, depicting Romney as the non-conservative, and Newt as the only man who can stop him now, has had nothing to do with Gingrich's rise. Fox News' favoritism has had nothing to do with it. Rasmussen polling that explicitly asked voters whether they would vote third party if Romney were the Republican nominee, but not whether they were concerned about Gingrich's global warming pandering, has had nothing to do with it. The relative free ride given to Gingrich by the mainstream media, compared to the lynching they performed on previous conservative threats Bachmann and Herman Cain, has had nothing to do with it. No, Gingrich is "winning" simply because he has stayed above the fray, run a clean campaign, and been Mr. Congeniality towards his fellow Republicans. Sure. During the December 15th Fox News debate in Iowa, moderator Bret Baier's final question of the evening invoked Reagan's "Eleventh Commandment" again, directing it against the candidates on the stage who were supposedly guilty--"to varying degrees"--of violating it.
"So I guess the question is, how do you balance, on the one hand, trying to win the nomination, with, on the other hand, not weakening the eventual nominee to the point where he or she is less electable than President Obama?"
To their credit, every candidate but one defended the element of criticism involved in rigorous debate, argued for the value of vetting candidates by putting their records and statements under a microscope, and acknowledged that, within the bounds of basic human respect, they accept the necessity of having tough questions and challenges hurled at them. The one exception, of course, was Gingrich, who offered the following:
"I think it's pretty clear if you look at my ads, if you look at my website, if you look at how I've operated in the debates, that while I reserve the right to correct the attacks against me, overall I've worked very hard to talk about very big solutions, to go to the American people with a communication about what do we need to do, and I've said consistently [arms extended magnanimously] these are all friends of mine; any of these folks would be better than Barack Obama in the White House, any of them would be great in the next administration. Our only opponent is Barack Obama, and we need to come out of this process remembering, beating him is what we collectively have to do."
Leaving aside the Newt/Establishment keywords that should drive genuine conservatives up the wall--"very big solutions," "go to the American people," "all friends of mine"--it is the broader implication of Newt's speech that is most notable: If I've ever spoken a negative word about you, it was only as a natural and defensive response to your unfair attacks against me. Apart from those justifiable exceptions, I've always been positive and focused on our shared goals, and I wish you would join me in that approach. No wonder there seems to be a particular animosity between Gingrich and Bachmann. Gingrich's argument may sound comfortingly familiar to male listeners--but it is exactly the tone and message that sends wives to the brink of violence during marital fights. "Gee, I just don't understand why you always insist on fighting; I mean, I always try to be kind to you." Let's call this cleverly mixed attack "accusatory self-absolution." With it, Gingrich attempts to lay waste to all of his opponents simultaneously, while smarmily pretending that he's only thinking of the common good. Consider his words again: "Our only opponent is Barack Obama." Does anyone really think that Gingrich believes that? If he does, then why is he running for President? Doesn't he think he'd be a better President than any of the others? Doesn't that entail an intention to be the nominee? Doesn't this mean that he wants the others NOT to be the nominee? And doesn't that mean that he regards them as his opponents? Of course it does. All this talk of Reagan's Eleventh Commandment--which, as Rick Perry pointed out, was not in fact Reagan's, but California Republican Party Chairman Gaylord Parkinson's--is meant to achieve a purpose. Those interests at Fox News, and elsewhere, who decided that the race they could live with was Gingrich vs. Romney, used skewed polling (accompanied by efforts to downplay the large percentage of uncommitted voters surveyed), along with scare tactics about the Tea Party candidates' unreadiness to govern, to manufacture the illusion that Romney is the steady presence, and Gingrich the soaring conservative alternative. (I've explained the dynamic here and here.) Now, believing they have achieved the narrative they want, they are seeking to shut the door on the other candidates by creating a new narrative: Reagan wouldn't have wanted all this family fighting, so shouldn't we all stop taking pot-shots at poor Newt, who is the only candidate playing fair, as Reagan asked us to do? The December 15th Fox moderators bookended the debate with the two issues that--in their view--serve their man best, "electability" and the Eleventh Commandment. However, there was a hint of flustered desperation in their tone, as their sometimes was in Gingrich's answers during the debate. The reason is that the Gingrich faction feels their "momentum" slipping away. Too many people (and not only the other candidates) have explained away the absurdist fantasy of depicting Gingrich as the toughest opponent for Obama; and too much of the punditry in his defense has found itself inexorably reduced to this predictable argument: "Yes, he's imperfect, he's a manipulator, he's duplicitous, he's an egomaniac, he's condescending, he joined forces with Gore, Pelosi, and Kerry on global warming, he still defends his Freddie Mac association with pathetic pleas of 'that's what businessmen do' combined with non-conservative talk about finding ways to encourage home ownership--but man, just think of those debates against Obama!" As I've argued elsewhere, the wheels are coming off the Gingrich bandwagon, as Tea Partiers reawaken to their mission of saving their country before it's too late. The psychological gerrymandering being attempted by the Gingrich campaign and its backers, based on the invocation of "Reagan's" Eleventh Commandment, and designed to create an "incumbent advantage," as it were, for the perceived frontrunner, will probably fail. It is interesting, however, since every use of Reagan during a Republican primary campaign is designed to achieve an advantage for its user, to consider the real meaning of Parkinson's Eleventh Commandment, which Reagan approved of, and claimed to have lived by. First of all, Chairman Parkinson, according to Reagan's account, formulated this "commandment" specifically to defend Reagan against suffering the Goldwater effect at the hands of his more liberal opponents in the state primaries; in other words, the original intent of the rule was primarily to allow a conservative to be a conservative without fear of being branded an extremist by his own party. Secondly, what exactly did the commandment forbid? Surely not disagreements between Republican candidates. After all, if the candidates are not allowed to express disagreements in policy and principle, including sharp and extreme ones, then how can voters decide whom they prefer? Indeed, if a candidate believes an opponent represents a position that is dangerous for the country, or likely to be ineffectual, mustn't that candidate draw attention to it? A short and straightforward defense of criticisms of opponents which do not violate the Eleventh Commandment can be found here. And a good example of Reagan engaging in just this kind of criticism, against George H.W. Bush in 1980, can be seen here. It was personal attacks, unfair labels, and smears that this commandment forbade. Where this issue gets touchy, however, is in matters where a policy critique is indirectly linked to a character question. For example, how can a candidate be assailed on his past actions and statements--even ones within the past few years--if he simply claims that he no longer holds that view, or would not take the same action today, or if he attempts to hide from that past position altogether? Anyone is entitled to change his mind on an issue, of course; and even on many issues, over a lengthy period of time. However, if one perceives a pattern within a candidates' career of taking positions that suit the candidates' personal ambitions, or match the climatic changes of the moment, then is such a pattern off-limits for criticism, according to this commandment? For it cannot be assailed at all without implying certain things about that candidate that reflect on his character, or at least on the seriousness of his attachment to the principles he claims to represent now. Both Gingrich, and, to a lesser extent, Romney, are susceptible to such criticisms. Should they be protected by invocations of Reagan's name? Of course such "attacks" are generally more likely to be made by candidates who perceive themselves as being behind in the race. In this particular race, however, the impetus to make such charges is perhaps greater than usual, especially for the most legitimate Tea Party candidates, Bachmann and Santorum. For the thrust of Gingrich's campaign has been to seek to rally Tea Party support in his favor, through the techniques I alluded to above, and have discussed in detail elsewhere. Given the seriousness of the stakes in 2012--the virtual life and death struggle for the future of a republic on the verge of complete economic and cultural disintegration--can one really blame the genuine and consistent small government constitutional conservatives in the campaign for wanting to dispute the conservative claims of a man who, even when he is wearing his conservative hat, can't help espousing "big" rhetoric? That is to say, can they be blamed for wishing to speak out against a man who wishes, like almost all men of political ambition throughout history, to fix all problems personally (i.e. through his governmental grand designs) rather than trusting the free actions of private citizens to provide the best solutions that can be provided for almost every problem? Finally, if modern democratic processes had not been so distorted through the overemphasis on polls, with their manufactured and influential storylines of "frontrunners," "momentum," and the like, candidates would be less focused, prior to the start of any real voting, on who is "winning" or "losing." Thus, they would feel less need to fight against the perceived "frontrunner." If the Republican Party Establishment really wants to reduce the amount of in-fighting, they should refuse to participate in the creation of such false narratives.


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Daren Jonescu -- Bio and Archives

Daren Jonescu has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He currently teaches English language and philosophy at Changwon National University in South Korea.


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