Taegan Goddard's Political Wire

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November 24, 2009

Why Are Republicans So Fixated on Reagan?

First Read: "The Cold War ended some 20 years ago... Income-tax rates are at historically low levels... And does anyone remember what a "Contra" is? It's a lot like how it took Democrats generations to kick their Kennedy and FDR habits. Can the GOP keep playing the Reagan card in a world that's changed so much since his presidency? Did you know that the youngest person to have cast a ballot for Reagan in 1984 is now 43 years old? And that, by 2012, that person will be 46?"

"It's amazing what everyone in the conservative movement now applies to Reagan. As we and others have pointed out, Reagan himself might not have passed this purity test when he was governor of California or even president (remember his tax increases, the deficits he racked up, and his amnesty for illegal immigrants?). A Bush has run for president FOUR of the last SIX presidential elections, and yet that name apparently is now a four-letter word with GOP activists. They need someone else to rally around. So in the absence of someone currently, the gravitation is Reagan. We get it on one level. But the nostalgia doomed the Democrats for years because the hardest thing to do in politics is look favorable against a ghost. It can't be done."

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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