The GOP dumps the Gipper | The Week

Ronald Reagan was a prophet of the conservative faith, not its grand inquisitor. That truth is lost on the Palinized Republicans who whacked their own moderate nominee in New York’s 23rd

Congressional District in favor of a hard-shell, third-party conservative. Newt Gingrich is right (a sentence I don’t often write): "If we get into a cycle [like this]," he said of the

fratricide, "we’ll make Pelosi Speaker for life and guarantee Obama’s reelection." Win or lose on Tuesday, Republicans lose.

The true believers claim they’re Reagan conservatives, but their politics are a betrayal of the leader they ritually canonize -- a betrayal not just in strategy, but in spirit. Ronald Reagan

didn’t just tolerate moderates in his party; he valued them. Reagan knew that to be a governing party, rather than an ideological faction, the GOP needed to run and win outside conservative

strongholds. So Reagan’s GOP gave all-out support to pro-choice candidates like Pete Wilson in California.

You didn’t have to agree with the Gipper, and I usually didn’t, to comprehend what made him President -- and a presidential giant. In character and temperament, in flexibility and personal

grace, Reagan was a sharp departure from the dire and dour jeremiads of Herbert Hoover, Robert Taft, and even his progenitor Barry Goldwater. Reagan was above all a hopeful figure,

channeling his one-time hero Franklin Roosevelt, "the happy warrior of the political battlefield."

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