Unlike the current Republican Party, which does not “know what it stands for,” former President Ronald Reagan’s ideals encompassed the Republican party, claimed Craig Shirley, author of Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America. This transformed the Republican Party into a conservative party and made the conservativism of Reagan’s day into the vehicle of change, claimed Shirley Unfortunately, America has no such “father figure today” Shirley said when he introduced his book at The Heritage Foundation’s conservative Blogger’s Briefing on November 10th.
In response to critics suggesting conservatives should move on, and forget Reagan, Shirley pointed out that Reagan’s ideals, like those of the Constitution, are always applicable. “Reagan’s philosophies did not change.”
“In some ways, it is a lot worse than it was 30 years ago,” Shirley said. The media is dominated by a liberal bias and journalism schools teach students how to sway readers, not how to report the facts. However, he identified the waning “influence of the mainstream media,” because now Americas have alternative sources of information. The current “void on the right” is being filled by TEA party protestors and town hall protestors in a “growing intellectual movement.”
“Starting in the 1960’s, the government starts to not work,” argued Craig Shirley. Pick up the newspaper, he urged; there is some news of the failure of government.
The next speaker at the Blogger’s Briefing, Tim Mooney, introduced DeficitFree.com, “to push for a balanced budget amendment” in light of the impending 12 trillion dollars in national debt. The debt is a problem not just for the children and grandchildren of America, he argued, but also “it is a big problem for us.” He said that the government “will balance this budget either by [its] own doing, or because the financial community will do it for [them].”
Sarah Carlsruh is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
