The Reagan-Bush Era Is Over

Last Sunday Newt Gingrich went on George Stefanopoulos’ ABC Sunday show and said that the Reagan era was over.  Said Newt:

We are at the end of the George W. Bush era.  We are at the end of the Reagan era. We’re at a point in time when we’re about to start redefining — as a number of people started talking about, starting to redefine — the nature of the Republican Party, in response to what the country needs.

Rush Limbaugh was not amused.  To him the Reagan era is not just an era. Said he: “I don’t think the Reagan era is anything other than conservatism.  And I don’t think conservatism is over.”

Yesterday Newt came on Rush’s show to ’splain himself.  And really, it turned out that Newt and Rush were saying the same thing, only on different pages.  Said Newt:

Reagan gave a speech on the creative society.  He said, "Public officials are elected primarily for one purpose, to solve public problems."  Now, that’s what I was trying to get at.  We need a 2008 agenda that is as bold for us as Reagan was in 1975[.]

My view, opposed to both Rush and Newt is that there’s a problem with the Reagan vision.  It is excessively masculine. 

It misses the point to say, as Newt says:

I think the challenge is for our generation to come up with a platform that is as bold, a set of solutions that are as bold, as Reagan was in 1979-1980.

That’s how you speak to men and rally them for battle.  But what about women?  Republicans already have nearly all the men who don’t live on Social Security or who work for the government.  But what about women?

Women are risk averse.  They don’t want bold solutions.  They just want things to work.  They want schools that meet the special needs of their children and they want health care that meets the health needs of their family. They just want the resources to care for the people they love.

In the last century it has been Democrats that have communicated best with women by promising to deliver resources.  Yes, said Democrats, we care about the kids.  We care about health care.  We care about senior citizens.

But what Democrats delivered were cruel bureaucracies.  They delivered school bureaucracies that delivered paychecks and pensions to teachers, but didn’t deliver much education to children.  They delivered an incredibly expensive government-dominated system of health care.  And they encouraged people to warehouse their parents in “assisted living.”

And that is to say nothing about the destruction of the family by big government programs.

In my view there is an opening to start communicating with women about a better way to care for children, to provide health care and to care for seniors.  One that puts women at the center of the care network, not bureaucracies and government programs.

But it will not be about anything that Rush or Newt understands.