My Fix for What Ails the GOP - By Joe Scarborough - Parade Magazine

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

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(Parade Magazine is certainly not a hard news organization, but that doesn't mean it isn't trying to influence the debate. It routinely lionizes Democrats and gives a platform to moderate Republicans, or offers fluff history lessons.

Last Sunday's piece from Joe Scarborough is no exception.

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With the Republicans’ anemic approval ratings, (Wait! The first misdirection, only 6 words into the introduction! Congressional Democrats have an approval rating of 26%, while the Republicans are 21%. Funny how part of the truth can be a falsehood, isn't it?)

the conservative (No, Mr. Scarborough is clearly a moderate, which anyone who has ever watched his show can attest.) 

cohost of MSNBC’s Morning Joe calls on his party to reject extremism. (Bingo! In the space of one sentence the conservative moniker is applied then self-refuted. It is the oft-repeated meme of the center/Left that we should reject extremism. And naturally, there are only extremists on the Right.)

For the GOP to win big again, it must take William F. Buckley’s ruthlessly pragmatic approach to primary elections. In Buckley’s view “conservatism, except when it is expressed in pure idealism, takes into account reality.” (I was unable to locate this quote. The only google search results for it came from Mr. Scarborough's own article. The closest I could come was this: "Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive." If this is the quote that Mr. Scarborough is referencing, we can see that his point falls flat on its face, for this quote does not mention conservatism.) 

That means we have to stop electing amateurs who serve as little more than ideological indulgences, who exploit resentments that play well enough among the base, but whose positions make them nonviable in general elections. (The Left never gets advice like this. Indeed, they never compromise for the sake of getting elected. They never get criticized for being too extreme. It is always the conservatives who are extreme, who need to moderate and compromise. And, I think we could benefit by a bunch more amateurs in Congress. I'm definitely unimpressed by where the professionals have taken us.) 

Had the party followed Buckley’s advice in 2010 and supported the most electable conservatives instead of the most ideologically extreme, Republicans would now control the United States Senate and Democratic leader Harry Reid would be in retirement in Nevada. (This is speculation. As a matter of fact, conservatives have always won the battle of ideas when those ideas are presented in an articulate manner. The weakness of the Left always manifests in the face of well-presented conservative ideas, because all the Left can do is sputter and name call.)

This is a lesson I learned the hard way: I spoke out against the possibility of Colin Powell’s presidential candidacy in 1996 because his political moderation was so off-putting to me. (Why was it off-putting?) 

The thought that he could be the standard-bearer of my Republican Party was offensive. But watching the retired general on Meet the Press in recent years has made me understand why Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush drafted him to a be a critical player in their administrations. (Um, yeah. He was military, and then Secretary of State. He was not "drafted" for his political opinions. In fact, no one knew about them until he retired.) 

In retrospect I realize how much better the GOP would have fared against Bill Clinton in 1996 if I had not let my hopes for a conservative stalwart get in the way of our best hope to beat Clinton. (Whaa? Bob Dole, a flaming moderate, was the Republican candidate! The Republicans have been taking Mr. Scarborough's advice all along and losing every time!) 

“If it’s just going to represent the far right wing of the political spectrum, I think the party is in difficulty,” said Powell this year. “I’m a moderate, but I’m still a Republican.” (He voted for Obama twice!)

This war hero, who has made history of his own by becoming the first African-American chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary of state, should still be one of the leading voices in the party because of, not in spite of, his centrist political philosophy. (Hmm. Like John McCain and Mitt Romney? These are the voices that should predominate? So we can lose yet again? By the way, I wonder if Mr. Scarborough can tell us how well the moderates in the Democratic party fare?) 

Republicans can kick moderates like General Powell out of the party’s mainstream (By definition Powell is not the party's mainstream. He is a moderate, which is to the left of the Republican mainstream.) 

and drive them into the arms of the Democratic Party every four years, or they can leave their ideological comfort zone, work aggressively to expand their political coalitions, and start stealing swing voters away from Democrats like Hillary Clinton. (Hillary wouldn't have a chance in hell against a principled, articulate, fearless conservative.)

Unfortunately, the Republican Party of the moment bears little resemblance to the party of Ronald Reagan, (These appeals to Reagan by leftists and moderates are just about worn out. I am always amazed at how the most hated president can alternately be a hero and a cad. Reagan's unapologetic, articulate conservatism bears no resemblance to the anchorless moderates with no convictions whatsoever. Reagan would have called Powell back to fold, and it would be Powell who would compromise, not Reagan.)

who would have responded to Powell’s critiques of the Republican Party with an all-hands-on-deck effort to win the war hero back. That’s because President Reagan lived by the belief that “just because I’m your friend 80 percent of the time doesn’t make me your enemy 20 percent of the time.”

If the Republican party is big enough to reach out to disaffected moderates like Colin Powell, then it will be big enough to win the White House in 2016, even if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee. The question is whether the GOP will go the way of Buckley or Glenn Beck. (As we have already seen, this is a false choice based on false assumptions.)

Republicans can win again and we will. And we can do it by following the right paths of Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower. We can do it by fighting for the core principles of conservatism and emphasizing values that most Americans agree with. (Wait. He has just spent his entire piece criticizing those core principles of conservatism. How do we fight for something, but we must willingly give it up for the sake of winning elections? I wonder if Mr. Scarborough has spent too much time with the D.C. elites.)

There will also be times when we will follow the lead of Reagan and Eisenhower by putting principled pragmatism before ideological battles that undermine our ability to win elections, elect majorities, and take back control of the White House. But time is wasting. Hillary Clinton’s supporters are already preparing for political battle. Next time, we’d better be prepared to win. There is no substitute for victory, and I for one am damn tired of my party losing presidential elections. (We've been losing elections by offering moderates. Does this guy even think before he writes?)