The Extreme Party

In a piece that was screaming to be written, Steven Hayward turns the tables on the arguments about the supposed extreme views of the Republican Party (this argument has been around at least since Barry Goldwater's run for president in 1964).  As Hayward sees it, the more important questions is this: would FDR, Truman, JFK, or LBJ be able to be nominated by today's Democrats?  Here is Hayward's evidence, starting with what would most definitely be apostasties for the modern-day party:

Start with Franklin Roosevelt. Despite his New Deal programs, he piled up a considerable record of statements that would be anathema to contemporary liberal orthodoxy. “The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me,” he told Congress in 1935, “show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief .  .  . is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.” A liberal can’t talk about our welfare state that way today.

FDR opposed public employee unions. In a 1937 letter to a public employees’ association, FDR wrote: “All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. .  .  . Militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees.”

On JFK, who

proposed significant reductions in income tax rates. In a 1961 speech, Kennedy argued that “it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now. .  .  . The purpose of cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.” (Emphasis added.) John Kenneth Galbraith mocked JFK’s speech, calling it “the most Republican speech since McKinley.” Galbraith also warned, “Once we start encouraging the economy with tax cuts, it would sooner or later become an uncontrollable popular measure with conservatives.” He was right; 20 years later, Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp, and other “supply-siders” pointed to Kennedy’s example, much to the dismay and outrage of liberals.

And Hayward rightly notes that if the Republican Party is extreme and out of the mainstream, why then are they "enjoying their highest watermark in 80 years in terms of the number of elected officials on all levels?"  Odd.  But maybe not considering the implicit argument in these charges of Republican extremism.  Maybe the thing left unsaid is similar to what the Daily Mirror reported about the American People shortly after President Bush won in 2004 -- that is, how can all of these people who support the Republicans be so dumb?