Republikkon Party throws out Bush, Reagan -- not pure enough
Kickin' Ass and Takin' Names
moderates -- witness New York Republicans' successful effort to oust
their own candidate in an upstate House race, in preference for an
independent conservative.
But a new GOP "purity test" named for Ronald Reagan moves the line
even farther to the right, and a liberal website has found that the
test -- if used in the past -- would have screened out President
Ronald Reagan and President George W. Bush as viable conservatives.
The test was conceived by conservative attorney Jim Bopp, Jr., who
recently pushed a resolution to the Republican National Committee
which proposed referring to the Democratic Party as the "Democrat
Socialist Party." (The proposal was rejected.)
Bopp's litmus test, titled the "Resolution on Reagan's Unity Principle
for Support of Candidates," includes the following guidelines:
(1) Smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and
lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama's "stimulus" bill
(2) Market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government
run healthcare;
(3) Market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;
(4) Workers' right to secret ballot by opposing card check
(5) Legal immigration and assimilation into American society by
opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;
(6) Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended
troop surges;
(7) Containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action
to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat
(8) Retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
(9) Protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care
rationing and denial of health care and government funding of
abortion; and
(10) The right to keep and bear arms by opposing government
restrictions on gun ownership.
Trouble is, the measure would likely have screened out President
Ronald Reagan, under whose watch the US deficit ballooned. The federal
deficit mushroomed from 2.7 percent of gross domestic product in 1980,
to 6 percent in 1983.
Reagan also agreed to a $165 billion bailout of Social Security, in
contradiction of conservative orthodoxy (though he did drastically
reduce the top income tax brackets for Americans).
The Gipper also raised the gasoline tax in 1983.
George W. Bush would have had trouble too, Washington Monthly notes.
Bush, too, dramatically increased the size of the federal deficit,
which was turning surpluses under his predecessor, President Bill
Clinton. He also broke with conservatives on the issue of opposing
blanket amnesty for undocumented immigrants.
Who else would fail the test?
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Republicans' 2008 presidential nominee, who
voted against the Defense of Marriage Act in the Senate, which would
have enshrined in federal law a prohibition against same sex marriage
benefits. McCain, however, hasn't been in far-right conservatives'
good graces for some time.