E.J. Dionne: A Reagan Democrat

[marmar]

From EJ Dionne:


A Reagan Democrat


Posted on Jan 25, 2007

By E.J. Dionne

WASHINGTON—Like him or not, Ronald ("Tear Down This Wall") Reagan spoke in a clean, clear prose that almost always left listeners with a sense that he stood for something.

It may thus be no accident that Jim Webb, Virginia’s new Democratic senator, was once a Reaganite.

In his reply to President Bush’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, Webb defined the two central moral issues that animate most of the Democratic Party’s rank and file: the mess in Iraq and the fact that the fruits of a growing economy are not being shared by all Americans.

Then Webb did something rather astonishing: He didn’t fudge on his language or try to take the hard edge off his impatience with the status quo.

Giving the speech in response to a president’s State of the Union address may be the hardest assignment in politics. Even the best of the genre reek of focus-grouped and poll-tested sentences. You have the feeling the words are dictated by some party pooh-bah who believes the speech will fail if it does not touch all the issues on every strategist’s list.

Gee, say the consultants to the poor politician who has to carry the party’s torch, you just have to mention healthcare and child care and the environment and union rights and stem cell research—and every other issue that energizes some base voter in some corner of the party.

And, oh yes, Mr. Politician, you can’t forget that your real targets are those critical moderate independent swing voters in the Midwestern and Rocky Mountain states, and here’s a list of key phrases we’ve polled to death that they respond to. You have to throw them in somewhere. ....(more)

The rest of the article is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070125_ej_dionne_a_reagan_democrat/