October 30, 2014
October 30, 2014 EPPC Briefly: If Reagan Were Alive Today…
Featured Publications:
If Ronald Reagan Were Alive Today…
In a cover essay for Commentary, EPPC Senior Fellow Henry Olsen and EPPC Senior Fellow Peter Wehner observe that as the field for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination takes shape, “anyone seeking to lead today’s Republican Party feels compelled to invoke a posthumous seal of approval” from Ronald Reagan.
Mr. Olsen and Mr. Wehner examine the record and legacy of the 40th president, a man of “unusual courage” whose commitment to human dignity “permeated his political career” and who “always operated within the four corners of reality.” They urge both establishment Republicans and Tea Party conservatives to “see Reagan in the totality of his acts, and not as a one-dimensional figure who merely reinforces our own views.”
In National Review, EPPC Senior Fellow Henry Olsen disputes Senator Ted Cruz’s “retelling of Republican presidential history” as “an all-too-simple formulation that overlooks the way politically successful conservatives”—like Ronald Reagan—“have always tempered parts of the conservative agenda precisely to gain a principled majority.”
A Winning GOP Coalition
EPPC Senior Fellow Mona Charen argues in a cover story for the Washington Examiner that “Republicans who think they can avoid women’s issues…are rewarding the Democrats’ tactics.” Rather than fearing women voters, the GOP should offer principled reforms that will appeal to those who “are interested in whether a candidate can improve daily life.”
And EPPC Senior Fellow Henry Olsen warns that, regardless of how the GOP fares in next week’s elections, “the party’s core economic message may not be as popular as many Republicans think.”
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New Publications
An Extraordinary Synod, Indeed
EPPC Distinguished Senior Fellow George Weigel recaps the recently completed Synod of Bishops, which was “extraordinary” in every sense of the word. (See also Mr. Weigel’s conversation with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez about the synod, Pope Francis, and the future of the Church’s witness.)
A Hard Left for High-School History
EPPC Senior Fellow Stanley Kurtz explains how a new AP U.S. History framework could “result in a high-school curriculum every bit as biased and politicized as the curriculum now dominant in America’s colleges.”
Reviewing Paul Johnson’s new Eisenhower biography, EPPC Senior Fellow Bruce Cole finds it “filled with flashes of imaginative insight that illuminate Ike’s life, sometimes in just a sentence or two.”
Are liberty and the environment simply opposed? Or can liberty and a flourishing natural environment reinforce one another, the good of one encouraging the good of the other? In this essay from EPPC The New Atlantis journal, Ronald Bailey explores whether economic activity under a system of liberty can be environmentally sustainable in the long run.
Writing for First Things, EPPC Hertog Fellow Yuval Levin observes that “the biggest problem with our politics of nostalgia is its disconnection from the present and therefore its blindness to the future.”
Why Paul Krugman is Mistaken About the Dollar
EPPC Lehrman Institute Fellow in Economics John Mueller writes in Forbes that Paul Krugman’s view on the dollar’s reserve-currency role is a case of “magical thinking.”
4 Rules for Replacing Obamacare
A Congress under full Republican control “would bring new opportunities to roll back Obamacare, but there would be risks too,” EPPC Senior Fellow James C. Capretta cautions in Politico.
A new study shows evidence of widespread illegal voting by non-citizens, which is, writes EPPC Senior Fellow Mona Charen, an affront to “a semi-sacred act of civic religion.”
EPPC Distinguished Senior Fellow George Weigel commends the retiring representative from Virginia’s Tenth Congressional district, “a man of integrity who bent every effort to defend human rights, especially for the defenseless.”
