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10.01.2008 0

The Eleventh Commandments Eleventh Hour

  • On: 10/08/2008 11:50:09
  • In: Fiscal Responsibility
  • By HOWARD RICH

    There are many ironies associated with “Ronald Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment,” but perhaps the greatest irony of all is that this outdated Republican Party maxim didn’t originate with the Gipper.

    Those famous words “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican” were actually conceived by former California GOP Chairman Gaylord Parkinson, largely to spare Reagan’s 1966 gubernatorial campaign from the same liberal Republican attacks that sank the 1964 presidential bid of Barry Goldwater.

    Yet nearly a half century later, with an increasing number of Republicans wandering further than ever off of the “Reagan reservation,” the Eleventh Commandment has not only outlived its usefulness, its script has been flipped on the conservatives principles which Reagan used to build the modern GOP.

    Originally intended to protect ideologically pure Republican candidates like Reagan from a barrage of left-leaning, Rockefeller-style attacks within the GOP, the Eleventh Commandment in recent years has morphed into bulletproof shield for big-spending Republican politicians whose fiscal policies would make the former President roll over in his grave.

    In fact, the national GOP’s blind allegiance to party label – not party ideology – is directly responsible for the fiscal abuses which led to the current Democratic majority.

    Former Rep. Pat Toomey of the conservative Club for Growth summed up the predicament neatly in a recent column in The Wall Street Journal:

    “A Republican majority is only as useful as the policies that majority produces,” Toomey wrote. “When those policies look a lot like Democratic ones, the base rightly questions why it should keep Republicans in power. As the party gears up for elections in the fall, it ought to look closely at the losses suffered under a political strategy devoid of principle. Otherwise it can look forward to a bad case of déj

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