Romney Should Follow Reagan Lead

From Bob Lonsberry:

"Maybe it's like 1976.

Maybe the Republican Party needs to go through a cleansing. Maybe it needs to be torn down so someday it can be built up again.

In 1976 the Republican bosses rejected Ronald Reagan. They mocked his conservatism and went with the liberal, Gerald Ford. We were coming out of the Nixon era, a time when about all anyone agreed on was that the Republican president had been a disappointment.

The party went with a liberal and a dynamic young guy out of Georgia – who campaigned on a platform of change – got the Democratic nod. It was a centrist establishment Republican against a Democrat outsider and the Republican candidacy went down in flames.

And America got Jimmy Carter, the most pointless president of the Twentieth Century.

Maybe this year is like 1976.

George W. Bush is Richard M. Nixon. Republicans can't wait for him to go and Democrats absolutely loathe him. He is what people want to change, they just want to turn the page and move on to something better.

Either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton play the part of Jimmy Carter. Both have exciting candidacies that are very short on specifics. Both have the potential to be absolute failures as presidents. Like Carter, they have the potential to be one-term wonders. They have the potential to follow liberal priorities right into the swamp Jimmy Carter mired the nation in.

Somehow, Barack Obama chants things about hope in a way that gets more votes than when Jesse Jackson chanted things about hope. Somehow, people have decided to read into the Obama candidacy every unresolved political fantasy of their lives. Somehow, the media and the Democrats have decided – with a straight face – that Barack Obama is the second coming of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

Hillary Clinton has likewise taken on mythic proportions in the enthusiasm of her supporters.

But both Obama and Clinton will do well not to fall flat on their faces once in office.

And it's quite likely one of them will be the next president of the United States.

Because of this year's Gerald Ford – Senator John McCain.

He is the sort of soulless candidate who can inspire only through fear. He is a man without abiding political principle, a war hero whose war ended two generations ago. A man who in no way represents the philosophy or values of his party.

A man grassroots Republicans are going to turn their backs on.

This year is like 1976.

And Mitt Romney is Ronald Reagan.

This year, the Republican bosses are going to deny Mitt Romney the nomination. They are going to cynically play politics, they are going to go with the liberal they think can win, and they are going to value victory over principle. They are going to forget the fact that Republicans who abandon principle for success invariably end up with neither.

So it will be Jimmy Carter Take Two and Mitt Romney will go into the wilderness.

But if he is smart, he will follow the example of Ronald Reagan. Reagan used the years from 1976 to 1980 to continue his daily radio commentaries and to travel the country speaking to whomever would listen to him. He perfected his understanding of the Constitution. He spoke to group after group, preaching the simple straight-foward gospel of freedom, self-reliance, respect for life and the glory of being an American.

And at the end of four years he had not only his party's nomination, he had one of the biggest general election margins in history.

He persisted and he prevailed and he became president of the United States.

That needs to be Mitt's plan.

He got robbed this go 'round. His party abandoned not just him, but its own bedrock. Mitt needs to spend four years internalizing the gospel of conservatism and constitutionalism. He needs to get this stuff in his bones. And he needs to preach it across the country.

This year is like 1976.

We've nominated a liberal and we've rejected a potentially great leader.

The one will be gone soon, and – if he's wise – the other will start preparing now for 2012.

This year is like 1976. And that one didn't go very well for us."

Bob Lonsberry