Republicans Were Different Then

I was going to call the article, "We Were Different Then." It was going to be my response to this Froma Harrop column. In using "we," I intended to mean the people of the U.S. She chides current Republicans for not being the way President Ford was, (of course Democrats and the press ridiculed Ford as stupid and uncoordinated back then) and targets Newt for being "radical" and a "street fighter" as opposed to the "sensible" Ford...

A street fighter like Gingrich didn't get Ford at all. The man from Grand Rapids, Mich., wasn't plotting for the next election. He wasn't into demonizing Democrats. He was only thinking about what was good for the country. Not running up debt was good for the country.
As Gingrich saw him, Ford was just too middle class. He was not slithering around all day, planning some sneak attack on reputations across the aisle, or peddling the free lunch of tax cuts to be balanced by unspecified spending reductions.
"One of the great weaknesses of the Republican Party is we recruit middle-class people," Gingrich lamented in his speech. "Middle-class people, as a group, are told you should not shout at the table, you should be nice, you should have respect for other people, which usually means giving way to them.

We are all painfully aware of words being politicized. "Middle class" meant something entirely different back then, from what it means today. In '74, it was possible to call a war a "police action." You could even declare "war" on poverty or drugs, and the middle class thought that meant that politicians actually would fight those real concerns with sincerity. All these "wars" ever "won" was a bitterly divided class structure, a country of "two Americas," as John Edwards would call it. Heck, you could promise a "Middle Class Tax Cut Plan" and lie your way to the White House with no reason to believe that the Middle Class might actually EXPECT the tax cut - right up to 1992!!!
But it (my first choice title)just isn't true. The "we" is not right. Republicans were different, Democrats and academia and the Big Journalism (BJ)Industry haven't changed a bit.
During Mr Ford's presidency, republicans were supposed to be 80%'ers. They wanted everything the Democrats wanted, from the "New Deal" to the "Great Society" - they just didn't want to spend so much money getting there. (yup - republicans ARE the party of fiscal responsibility...wait till the democrats get their hands on our tax receipts!) They never expected to win either house of congress, and had no defining agenda for a majority if they ever won it. Newt of course, was different. Ms Harrop doesn't even start with Reagan, another "good" Republican, now deceased - coincidence?
Big Journalism still refuses to get Republicans, and doesn't even want to know who they are. Just read the first line from this AP story from the WISH-TV website.

WASHINGTON - The nation honored Gerald R. Ford on Tuesday in a high-powered fanfare for the common man who was summoned to the presidency in the Watergate crisis. He was remembered for what he didn't have - pretensions, a scheming agenda,a great golf game - as much as for the small-town authenticity he brought to high office.

Maybe AP was thinking of Chevy Chase.
I liked President Ford. Everybody knew his "WIN" campaign was an admission that nobody knew what to do about inflation. I can argue either way on the pardon of Nixon, but am certain he thought it right, with or without extra political pressures. I can't remember who I voted for in '76, but it was the Carter administration that convinced me that no matter how "sensible" the democrat candidate seems during the campaign, the other democrats in their administrations will still be socialists.
And that's why I vote republican.