Why The Republicans Can't Find A Candidate

by Spengler (David P. Goldman) - April 5th, 2011 - The Asia Times

Former president Ronald Reagan defined his part [in our destiny] for a quarter a century, and it is worth remembering how he did so. During the 1979 primaries when Reagan trounced his establishment competitors - Texas governor John Connally and the elder George Bush - he was told during a strategy session that not one Fortune 500 chief executive officer had endorsed him. America's big corporations, the pillars of the party during the Dwight D Eisenhower and Richard Nixon administrations, backed Connally or Bush.

"Then I will be the candidate of the small businessman, the farmer, and the entrepreneur," Reagan told his staff. The late Jude Wanniski, who preached what became Reaganonomics from the Wall Street Journal editorial page through the 1970s, told me this story 10 years later, when I became his partner in an economic consulting firm.

Reagan unleashed a wave of entrepreneurship such as post-depression America had never seen, and transformed the Republicans from a party of country-club conservatism to the party of boot-strapping creative destruction.

Where are the entrepreneurs?

Good question. Even better question. How do we ever get the youth of today, brainwashed in the socialist dominions of deluded professorships, to see their future as one of creating wealth as entrepreneurs. The youth of today start with an absolute belief that wealth just is. Redistribution of this wealth is the only thing they understand. Entrepreneurs are perceived as evil people who hoard wealth. Not creators of wealth. No one wants to be evil. Unless entrepreneurs are seen as creators of destiny they will never be the role models that youth aspires to join.

It is not clear that the Tea Party movement has yet accepted the need to abandon the country club wing of the Republican Party. During the intervening years since Reagan, this wing of the party has slowly retaken control and they set the agenda. The exciting business warriors of the Reagan era have become complacent. The youth have been told only to despise them... and they do so enthusiastically. How do we ignite the passion for a greater destiny that Reagan ignited among those opportunists of his time? It appears we cannot even talk with the youth. We better learn how.

Even worse, it is not clear that talking about the exciting future even matters to the Tea Party movement. Having joined the country club wing in complacency, it is not clear they want to talk about the destiny of creating wealth as entrepreneurs either.