As the late Yogi Berra would say, it’s déjà vu all over again.
Speaker John Boehner resigns - and the New York Times knew exactly what to headline.
Boehner to Resign, Pressured by the Right
The Times story begins this way:
WASHINGTON — Speaker John A. Boehner, under intense pressure from conservatives in his party, announced on Friday that he would resign one of the most powerful positions in government and give up his House seat at the end of October, as Congress moved to avert a government shutdown.
The story goes on to quote Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Charlie Dent, a moderate, as follows:
Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania, said: “The next speaker is going to have a very tough job. The fundamental dynamics don’t change.”
Mr. Dent said there was “a lot of sadness in the room” when Mr. Boehner made his announcement to colleagues. He blamed the hard-right members, who he said were unwilling to govern. “It’s clear to me that the rejectionist members of our conference clearly had an influence on his decision,” Mr. Dent said. “That’s why I’m not happy about what happened today. We still have important issues to deal with, and this will not be easier for the next guy.”
“The fundamental dynamics don’t change,” Mr. Dent said. “The dynamics are this: There are anywhere from two to four dozen members who don’t have an affirmative sense of governance. They can’t get to yes. They just can’t get to yes, and so they undermine the ability of the speaker to lead. And not only do they undermine the ability of the speaker to lead, but they undermine the entire Republican conference and also help to weaken the institution of Congress itself. That’s the reality.”
“Now, if we have a new speaker, is there going to be an epiphany? They won’t be happy if it’s Paul Ryan or Kevin McCarthy, who will have to make accommodations with a Democratic president and the Senate constituted the way it is.”
Catch that? The Times goes to moderate Dent who claims that conservatives - make that Reagan conservatives - “don’t have an affirmative sense of governance. They can’t get to yes. They just can’t get to yes, and so they undermine the ability of the speaker to lead.”
This is, of course, now a media meme. Conservatives are anti-government and they oppose governing. It was exactly the theme the media used to attack Ronald Reagan. Repeatedly.
Here at NewsBusters, Curtis Houck reports that in the wake of the Boehner resignation the three broadcast networks wasted no time going after conservatives. Curtis writes:
Mere moments into House Speaker John Boehner’s press conference on Friday discussing his resignation on October 30, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC were quick to chastise conservative House members on Boehner’s “far right flank” that compose the “no compromise crowd” and “some grassroots conservatives who happened to be elected members of the House.”
ABC’s Jonathan Karl is quoted as follows:
“30 to 40 Republicans who absolutely have no loyalty to him whatsoever and who want to push the kind of no-compromise crowd and those were the ones that it ultimately forced this decision.”
Again, note the theme Karl is using. Serving Boehner -- or for that matter anybody -- is the most important issue. Not principle -- personality.
ABC’s Cokie Roberts followed this theme.
“This is what gives strength to the people that think it compromises a bad thing. That combined with the Republican presidential candidates who are out talking about fighting the government, fighting the President, 72 percent of Republican primary voters in a recent poll say that they're against the Republican leadership of Congress and now those people have a lot more power.”
Got the drift?
In fact, there is nothing new here. This is the media view of conservatives now - and it was the media view of conservatives decades ago when Ronald Reagan was alive and well. A while back I wrote a column over at The American Spectator in which I ran through some of things being said of Reagan by the media and GOP Establishment types. Reagan’s conservatism - just as the conservatism of these House members who are being targeted today - was used as a signpost of his unreasonableness. Here’s a short list that will give a sense of how the game worked:
The New York Times: Reagan’s candidacy is “patently ridiculous.”
The New Republic: “Reagan is Goldwater revisited…He is a divisive factor in the party.”
Chicago Daily News: “The trouble with Reagan, of course, is that his positions on the major issues are cunningly phrased nonsense — irrationality conceived and hair-raising in their potential mischief… Here comes Barry Goldwater again, only more so, and at this stage another such debacle could sink the GOP so deep it might never recover.”
Time: “Republicans now must decide whether he represents a conservative wave of the future or is just another Barry Goldwater calling on the party to mount a hopeless crusade against the twentieth century.”
And that’s before you get to the Charlie Dents of the day. In Reagan’s time the press similarly sought out GOP moderates to proclaim what a disaster nominating the conservative Reagan would be for the GOP. Here’s a sample, again from that Spectator article:
Vice President Nelson Rockefeller dismissed Reagan as “a minority of a minority” who “has been taking some extreme positions.”
Illinois Republican Senator Charles Percy said Reagan’s candidacy was “foolhardy” and would lead to a “crushing defeat” for the Republican Party. “It could signal the beginning of the end of our party as an effective force in American political life.”
Former President Gerald Ford: “I hear more and more often that we don’t want, can’t afford to have a replay of 1964.” If the Republican Party nominates Ronald Reagan “it would be an impossible situation” because Reagan “is perceived as a most conservative Republican. A very conservative Republican can’t win in a national election.” Asked if that meant Ford thought Reagan can’t win, Ford replied to the New York Times: “That’s right.” The Times story went on to observe that Ford thought “Mr. Reagan would be a sure-loser in November” and that Reagan held “extreme and too-simple views.”
New York’s Republican Senator Jacob Javits: Reagan’s positions are “so extreme that they would alter our country’s very economic and social structure and our place in the world to such a degree as to make our country’s place at home and abroad, as we know it, a thing of the past.”
In other words? Nothing -- nothing! -- has changed with the media except the technology. The same themes -- that conservatism is extreme, a minority, a loser for Republicans -- is what comes forth in the wake of the Boehner resignation. And they were the same themes wielded by the media of the day against Ronald Reagan himself. They used these themes against Reagan directly in editorials and opinion columns and broadcasts, and they sought out those Republicans who would validate those themes. From the Times seeking out Gerald Ford to bash Reagan in 1980 to the Times of today racing to Congressman Charlie Dent to bash conservative House members nothing has changed.
In his time Reagan would have none of this. At least the New YorkTimes sought him out in December of 1976 after Ford’s defeat by Jimmy Carter to see what Reagan would say. It was then that Reagan referred to people like John Boehner and Charlie Dent as the “fraternal order” Republicans. The paper headlined their Reagan scoop this way:
Reagan Urges His Party to Save Itself By Declaring Its Conservative Beliefs
For a time, the eight years of the Reagan Administration, the Gipper made certain his party listened.
Are they now? If what just happened to Speaker Boehner, not to mention the panicked reaction of the media, is any example? It just may mean House Republicans get the Reagan message. Some of them, at least.
But the media? If those reports from the “Big Three” broadcast networks are any clue, nothing has changed with the media mindset about conservatives in all these decades. Shocking.
Not.
