Word: reaganism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Though C-SPAN does not use a rating service, and never knows for sure how many people are watching, Lamb receives hundreds of letters a week (Ronald Reagan and Frank Zappa are fans), and viewers jam the phone lines on the call- in shows. "This election, people want to ask their own questions and not have a bunch of talking heads making decisions for them," says Lamb. Those who disagree with Lamb know where to reach him -- as long as they don't mind talking...
Judging by the doctrinaire platform going before the Republican Convention this week, the conservative coalition that Ronald Reagan constructed 12 years ago seems as robust as ever. Just below the surface, however, the right wing suffers a mid-life crisis that threatens its future -- as well as the party's. The movement lacks an inspirational leader, a unifying cause and an external enemy big enough to outweigh its internal divisions...
...cold war during his watch is a larger sign of rot on the right. "There's an amazing disconnect," says one of Bush's top campaign advisers, "between the President and conservative leaders. They can't forget that he didn't come out of their movement the way Reagan did." Nor does Bush get much respect for his vigorous pandering to right-wing concerns...
...Reagan's great trick in 1980 was to unite the three main sects of "wingers": the better-dead-than-Red faction, whose main concern was fighting communism; the religious right, interested in moral issues such as abortion; and fiscal rebels for whom the great demons were high taxes and government regulation. Bush's cold-warrior credentials served as a visa when he crossed from the Establishment faction into Reagan country in 1980, but the fall of the Soviet Union has shattered the right's consensus on foreign policy. Bush admires pragmatic power-balance diplomacy of the Kissinger school. Others favor...
Abortion is too narrow a cause to rally the old Reagan coalition. "It stands out now," says conservative analyst Burton Pines, "because there is so little else to galvanize the right. But it's really marginal." Pines is one of many ideologues who are cool to Bush -- "We'll vote for him holding our noses," he says -- and wonder where the next Reagan will come from. One subject of covert conversation in Houston is whether the conservative cause would be better served by a Bush victory or defeat this year. Another is which personality has the best chance of uniting...