Posted by
KsReaganite on Wednesday, December 27, 2006 5:34:21 PM
I have always liked the quiet civility and genteel manners of the late President Gerald Ford. Nobody would assume him to be anything but a good chap and a thorough gentleman. It is always sad to see a decent man leave us for good. With his passing, the last living legatee of the Rockefeller Republican creed is gone. Sure, there are silly pretenders like Rudy Giuiliani and the half a dozen or so lesser known prima donna wannabees that make up the entire Republican parties of places like Delaware and Vermont. And even these people take a fairly moderate road (by Northeast standards) on crime and taxes most of the time. Thus, by and large Jerry Ford was the last national epitome of the liberal Republicans..you know those nice folks who want to discuss and gently debate with the Democrats how much to raise taxes, how much to fund Planned Parenthood, and how much to cut national defense.
I know quite a few in Kansas who are nostalgic for those days..and blame every little GOP misfortune on its supposed closeness to ordinary people of faith. The problem is that as long as Republicans were simply good ‘ole boy go along-get along version of more proletarian, loud Democrats, they were but a small minority in Congress and shut out entirely from the most heavily growing region of the country. Rockefeller Republicans, good decent people, were largely comfortable with that, happy to leave the nitty gritty of hard-edged politics to Democrats…as long as these Democrats kept the working class happy and provided pork to Republican pet projects.
That started changing in 1980 and changed in 1994 marking the return of a competitive two-party system to the country’s politics. Unfortunately, this also meant that the genteel, compromise-at-any-cost country club Republicans became upstaged by younger, hungrier, much more energetic folks who were willing to vigorously engage Democrats in robust debates at every level of public policy.
May God Bless Jerry Ford and keep him in eternal peace. Let us draw civility from his decency, strength from Reagan’s convictions, and steadfastness from Lincoln’s s faith to keep fighting for principles that made this country great. Let us never forget, as the Gipper famously reminded us, that America is not good because she is great, but she is only great because she is good.