Jeffrey Lord: The Original Mr. Anti-Establishment: Ronald Reagan
They didn't like him.
To be more precise, they thought him an extremist, un-electable, an ultra-right wing nut, dumb, ignorant and, more to the point, not one of their crowd.
One out of six was absolutely correct.
Ronald Reagan was not one of their crowd. Ever.
The "crowd"" was The Establishment. The Establishment as it appeared in all of its various incarnations during Ronald Reagan's political life. First it was the California Republican Party Establishment. Then the Liberal Establishment. Followed by the national Republican Party Establishment. Next up was The Eastern Establishment. Last but not least was the Washington Establishment....
In the wake of the Nevada Senate primary victory of Republican Sharron Angle (and the emergence of South Carolina's Nikki Haley and the continuing popularity of Alaska's Sarah Palin -- not to mention other conservatives around the country), yet again The Establishment resurrects exactly the same now very old and tired alarms once raised about Ronald Reagan himself.
Who are these people?...
The Establishment narrative about Ronald Reagan -- and the growing conservative movement -- had...been laid foundationally with Goldwater, but with Reagan's arrival it was set in concrete. It would follow Reagan for the rest of his life. And conservatives like Sharron Angle until this day. A life for Reagan which included two landslide elections as governor of California (he would beat Jerry Brown's incumbent governor-father Pat by almost a million votes) and two more as president. Beating the Establishment every single time except with his fight against President Gerald Ford for the 1976 GOP nomination -- which he lost by a whisker. Over the years the Establishment was represented by both Democrats and Republicans, a list that included Pat Brown, California Democratic Assembly Speaker Jesse Unruh, Ford, George H.W. Bush, Howard Baker, Bob Dole, John Connally, Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale.
The anti-Reagan Establishment narrative, always illustrated by personal or policy anecdotes that were said to show Reagan and his followers were some combination of dumb, ignorant, stupid, racist, bigoted, anti-woman war mongers, is by now a standard. So too is the use of a boogeyman, a supposedly scary group designed to scare the pants off prospective voters. This tactic is to the Establishment what marching onto the battlefield in formation was to the British when they fought the colonists at Concord and Lexington in 1775. Which is to say: it is a narrative designed as a weapon of psychological intimidation. (Famously, the un-awed colonists had their own tactic. They fought back from behind the trees and rocks of their home turf and sent the dumbfounded British scurrying back to Boston in a humiliating defeat for the ruling Establishment of the day. It would not be the last time, either.)...
Let's stick withthe case of Nevada's Sharron Angle, who won a fiercely contested three-way fight to face Senate Majority Leader and uber-Establishment leader Harry Reid.
Angle, with the predictability of heat in a Nevada desert, is being assailed by the Establishment as "essentially, crazy" (Huffington Post). Why? She has a "rigid ideology" and supports "phasing out Social Security and dismantling the Education Department." All three accusations were used against Reagan to portray him as a crazed, heartless, well-out-of-the-mainstream ultra-conservative far-right-wing ideologue, who, don't you know, was also a nut. Angle's position on getting rid of the Department of Education was, by the way, part of the 1980 Reagan platform, a vow that failed but did nothing to deter his landslide victory over Carter. The idea has certainly been in the mainstream debate over education for 30 -- say again 30 --years. Yet like clockwork, Reid's Nevada Democratic Party gushed out a press release in the style of Reagan opponents from Pat Brown to Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale calling Angle "wacky."...
The problem?
The American people, their nation born out of rebellion against The Establishment of the day, has never been fond of those who believe they are born to rule. And they don't get scared of the boogeyman of the moment. Rebelling against the Establishment that was the authority of the Church of England was illegal in 1620. Boo! And so the Pilgrims simply rebelled -- by leaving England altogether and coming to America, the boogeyman be damned. Time after time after time ever since, the American spirit of rebellion against the Establishment of the day has eventually always carried the day. The Pilgrims birthed dissident colonies, and the rebellion against the Establishment that was symbolized by King George III birthed a nation. (If you rebel, we will hang you, threatened the King. Boo!) The rebellion went on, the boogeyman answered with a document called the Declaration of Independence. Within that nation, ever since, rebellion against whatever and whomever became the symbol of the Establishment became in itself a treasured American tradition....
What would Reagan say about Sharron Angle's Establishment critics? You can just see the smile.
"Well, there they go again."