Time magazine has a cover story this week on “How the Right went wrong.” I’m still amazed at how the left has even come to idealize some of the Republican heroes like Goldwater and Reagan. David Kennerly writes:

The Gipper would probably have had little patience for all the fretting his party is doing over its brand. But he also understood, because he embodied the idea, that progress comes from going up against the status quo. To become “creators of the future,” as he called his compatriots, he might have suggested that they look back to their past.

Indeed, the point he’s making is valid, a big part of the conservative appeal in the 80s and 90s was its “insurgency” mindset. Liberals were the status quo and conservatives were running against it. And in fact, winning is a curse to the insurgent campaign.

But to portray this as the primary defect in the Republican party is to oversimplify. After all, the Right still has plenty of ideas in the hopper: school choice, social security reform, flat tax, etc.

I think the big concern is that once they became the status quo they behaved like the status quo. Meaning, their appetite for reform and restraint disappeared and their appetite for indulgence took over.

Iraq didn’t help. Bush dragged the Republican party away from its realist roots and convinced many that “nation-building,” history not withstanding, was actually a good idea. This jujitzu robbed the Right of its credibility on one of its two winning issues: national security.

The other issue, fiscal responsibility, was sacrificed in due course. What was left were the social issues that are great for stirring up the base, but not so great for building long term governing coalitions.

Reagan’s legacy was strong national defense and a great economy. The farther the GOP strays from this message the more it will fail.