Thomas Sowell: Whoever Won by Seizing the Center?

At Real Clear Politics:

Talk show host Michael Medved, for example, apparently thinks the Republicans need a centrist presidential candidate in 2012. He said, "Most political battles are won by seizing the center." Moreover, he added: "Anyone who believes otherwise ignores the electoral experience of the last 50 years."

But just when did Ronald Reagan, with his two landslide election victories, "seize the center"? For that matter, when did Franklin D. Roosevelt, with a record four consecutive presidential election victories, "seize the center"?

There have been a long string of Republican presidential candidates who seized the center -- and lost elections. Thomas E. Dewey, for example, seized the center against Harry Truman in 1948. Even though Truman was so unpopular at the outset that the "New Republic" magazine urged him not to run, and polls consistently had Dewey ahead, Truman clearly stood for something -- and for months he battled for what he stood for.

That turned out to be enough to beat Dewey, who simply stood in the center.

I've been arguing for a while that Reagan won over the Reagan Democrats without pandering to them at all. He was a great leader and a man with real conservative convictions. People knew what he stood for, and they loved him for it. I think the Bushes fostered the modern false idea that one has to be kinder and gentler to appeal to the center to win. And now we have a huge crop of former Bush employees constantly on the airwaves trying to thwart Reagan's conservative message just as Bush 41 did beginning in '89.

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posted by rdbrewer at 01:51 PM

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