A BROKERED NATIONAL CONVENTION

“Many Republicans shudder at the thought of a brokered National Convention, but one of the GOP’s most accomplished political strategists believes it could improve the party’s chances of ousting President Obama.” So said Lou Cannon, former White House correspondent for The Washington Post and the author of the famous book, “President Reagan – The Role of a Lifetime”, described by many as the definitive account of the Reagan presidency. In his March 2, 2012, article in Real Clear Politics, Cannon quotes the now-retired Stuart K. Spencer as saying “We need a donnybrook of a convention.”

In his prime, Stu Spencer was a highly-sought-after political strategist who ran congressional and legislative campaigns for the California Republican Party. He gained national attention when he and his partner, Bill Roberts, managed the campaign of Nelson Rockefeller against Barry Goldwater in the closely contested but decisive California Presidential Primary; and he later managed Ronald Reagan’s successful campaign for Governor of California. In 1976, Spencer advised the sitting President, Gerald Ford, and (according to Lou Cannon) played a “key role” in “derailing Reagan’s challenge” for the Republican nomination for president in that year.

In the Presidential Campaign of 1980, (after Ford lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976) Spencer was “back with Reagan” at the request of Nancy Reagan. This time, Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States, and thwarted President Jimmy Carter’s bid for a second term. “The rest, as they say, is history”.

As most Republicans know, 1976 was the last time Republicans had “a donnybrook of a convention.” Many of the same issues and fault lines within the party that faced Republicans in 1976 also face Republicans today in the bitter primary races between Romney, Santorum and Gingrich. Whereas Gerald Ford was characterized as a “Rockefeller Republican” by the Reagan forces in 1976, Mitt Romney is today characterized as a “Massachusetts moderate” who is the darling of the Republican eastern establishment that can deliver large amounts of cash to a candidate but few, if any, electoral votes from the northeastern states. On the other hand, Rick Santorum, like Reagan before him, has been characterized as “too extreme” in his views to be electable in November.

Indeed, Romney supporters are fond of saying that President Obama and his advisers are salivating at the prospect facing the conservative Rick Santorum in the general election presidential race. It is noteworthy that President Jimmy Carter likewise was salivating at the thought of having Reagan as his opponent because Carter and his advisers believed that the conservative Reagan would turn off moderate independents voters in the general election. However, Santorum has yet to demonstrate that he has the broad public appeal that Reagan had in 1976. Reagan was essentially a “happy warrior”, whereas Santorum often appears angry and frustrated.

As we watch the news – talk shows night after night, we almost universally hear respected commentators tell us a contested or brokered Republican National Convention would split the GOP and is extremely unlikely to occur in any event. Spencer’s answer is that the party is already badly divided and that the current crop of GOP candidates has already alienated independent voters. Indeed, a PEW survey taken in February found that only 32 per cent of the voters have a favorable opinion of Governor Romney, the established front runner.

Spencer’s conclusion that a “donnybrook” of tumultuous Republican convention would be best for the Republican Party in 2012 is not based on his fear that disagreements within the party will keep many Republicans from supporting Romney or whoever is the eventual Republican nominee. According to Lou Cannon, “Spencer does not buy that. He says Republicans of all stripes share a negative view of Obama and will back the nominee, while Democrats will vote for Obama although Democrats could have a turnout problem. Spencer’s concern is independents, who he said will decide the election. He finds their declining support for the current Republican candidates ominous for the GOP.”

Stuart K. Spencer therefore thinks we should select and unite behind a new untarnished face to lead the charge against President Obama in the fall of 2012. He believes that the bitter primaries, the relentless negative advertisements of the Super PACS, and the overall inability of the candidates to generate broad public appeal have contributed to the decline of broad support for any of current Republican candidates.

Stu Spencer is now retired. Although still sought out for political advice by many, perhaps he is now truly past his prime and out of touch with today’s political realities. Perhaps.

A John Grisham Novel

The former Reagan speech writer, Peggy Noonan, had it about right in her January 21, 2012, column in the Wall Street Journal, when she said:

“We have entered a new phase, the John Grisham novel, secret off-shore bank account, broken love, the testimony of anguished ex-wives; ‘He wanted an open marriage. A battered old veteran emerges from the background and, in his electoral death throes, provides secret information – ‘I’m for Newt’ – that he hopes will upend a dirty, rotten establishment. A vest-wearing choir boy turns out to be the unknown winner of that case back in Iowa. And all this against the backdrop of a mysterious firm that moves in and destroys communities – ‘when Mitt Romney came to town…’ – while its CEO pays nothing in taxes.”

I agree with Peggy’s analysis when she said: “What’s happening out there on the trail is a great story. But it’s not a good story. And the past few days it didn’t feel like a story that was going to end well.” The Republican free-for-all of 2012 has confirmed once again what many have been saying for months, if not years - that there are two major wings of the national Republican Party: the “economic issue Republicans” and the “social issue Republicans”. This schism was first clearly demonstrated on the national level in the epic Republican primary battle of 1976 between the conservative forces of the challenger, Ronald Reagan, against the more moderate forces of the sitting Republican President, Gerald Ford. In that year, Gerald Ford had served as Vice-President by virtue of an appointment by Richard Nixon, who later resigned as a result of the Watergate scandals and allowed Ford to take his place. Once he became President, Ford promptly appointed Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York as his Vice-President and kept his friend, Henry Kissinger, on as his Secretary of State.

Rockefeller and Kissinger were despised by the Reaganites and the followers of Barry Goldwater, who often said they would like to saw-off the northeastern portion of the United States and let it drift out into the Atlantic. They had particular disdain for the “Rockefeller Republicans”, and Vice-President Rockefeller ultimately agreed to step down and let Senator Bob Dole of Kansas become Ford’s running mate (after Ford barely defeated Reagan for the Republican nomination in 1976) in his campaign to be elected President on his own against Democrat Jimmy Carter.

As stated by Gerald Seib in his Wall Street Journal article dated January 17, 2012, the economic establishment faction of the Republican Party says economic growth and job creation are far and away the most important issues in the 2012 election; and all other concerns are secondary. This is essentially the Romney message in this year’s Republican Primary and the message of his supporters based in Massachusetts and the northeast. As Seib points out, Romney pushes his spectacular success in the business world, which explains why Gingrich attacks Romney’s experience running Baine Capital and charges that the private-equity firm, while making money for investors, was actually dismantling companies and “shedding jobs”.

The social-issue Republicans (often referred to in the news media as “evangelicals” or “born-again Republicans”), believe that traditional family values are of much greater importance than do most of their more secular fellow Republicans of the northeast. Gingrich and Rick Santorum criticize Romney’s record and position on guns, abortion, and other social issues. This explains why Romney emphasizes Gingrich’s ethics problems which he encountered while Speaker of the House and why Romney charges that Gingrich resigned as Speaker of the House “in disgrace”.

There are two other smaller factions in the Republican Party which Mr. Seib refers to as “the deficit faction” and “the national security faction”, which emphasizes a strong military and national security. The patron saint of the deficit faction is Ron Paul, who is basically an isolationist and in favor of massive cuts in federal spending, while at the same time promoting economic growth.

So there we have it: an authentic, northeastern establishment, Rockefeller Republican pitted against the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, who has heavy baggage on family values and ethics issues. Waiting in the wings, yet to be fully assaulted by the Super PACS, is former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who lost by almost 20 points the last time he ran for the U.S. Senate in his home state.

I note that Michael Reagan is supporting Gingrich while most establishment Republicans, like Bob Dole and George H. W. Bush, are all supporting Romney. How will the ultimate Republican winner look to the voters by the fall? What are independents going to think of our nominee? Peggy Noonan gave the following opinion:

“We all know politics ain’t beanbag, but it’s not supposed to be clown-car Indy 500 with cars hitting the wall and guys in wigs littering the track.

There’s been a lot of damage. We lose sense of it day to day, but in the aggregate it’s going to prove considerable.”

THE CIRCULAR FIRING SQUAD

The frenetic Iowa Republican Presidential Primary is now over, and my sense is that Republicans in general have already lost the first round of the 2012 presidential sweepstakes. The spectacle in Iowa, with the full participation of the northeastern Republican “establishment” at the highest levels; as well as their campaign consultants, “Super-PACs” and the candidates themselves, has given immeasurable aid and comfort to President Obama and those who wish to transform the United States into a European-style socialist nation where American ingenuity and our capitalistic free-enterprise system is permanently put in moth balls for future study by historians.

As Karl Rove noted in a recent Wall Street Journal article (Dec. 22, 2011): “Obama will frame this election as a fight for the middle class. He told his Kansas audience that America was once a place where ‘hard work paid off, and responsibility was rewarded, and anyone could make it if they tried.’ Now, as he informed ’60 Minutes’ correspondent Steve Kroft, ‘the rules are rigged’ against ‘middle class families’”.

If Rove is correct (and I believe he is) the realization that the 2012 Obama re-election strategy will be a frontal assault on the American way of life and the free market society, should send cold chills up the spine of every Republican and every person who loves and considers America to be the last real beacon of hope for freedom in this world. Accordingly, one would think that responsible Republican candidates for President (and their advisors and supporters) would have recognized the stakes we are playing for in this election, and would have conducted themselves in a civil manner when debating each other so as not to do permanent damage to the Republican cause once the primary season is completed. Unfortunately, this was not the case in Iowa.

Instead, each of the candidates at one time or another were subjected to brutal attacks if they showed any sign of gaining traction with their message, and breaking out of the pack. These attacks took many forms. Some became deeply personal (my favorites: “If you cheat on your spouse, you could cheat on your business partner”; and “my opponents are anti-muslim”). Other attacks described their victims as being of such low character as to be basically unfit to be in the presence of decent, god-fearing men and women, much less to be President of the United States.

The northeastern Republican “establishment”, the national conservative media, as well as the “Super-PACs” (those anonymous organizations created for special purposes or to support a certain candidate) and their consultants also fully participated in the negative onslaught through paid direct-mail and television advertising designed to bring down certain candidates without their opponents having to dirty their hands in the process.

Undeniably, negative advertising works in political campaigns but negative advertising is also divisive and drives down voter-turnout, because the voters are often disgusted with the tactics employed to attack a victim. They are also often repelled by those making the attacks. In my opinion, the negative attacks by candidates on fellow Republicans in Iowa became so widespread, so divisive and so deeply personal, that I fear the Republican Party and its ultimate nominee for President have been permanently and unnecessarily damaged, all to the benefit of President Obama.

It has been said by some that politics is a “contact sport” and while Republicans may fight hard against each other in the 2012 primaries, they will come together in the fall to oppose President Obama in the general election. Undoubtedly, many (if not most) Republicans will come together in the general election. However, if the Republican base is divided, disheartened and unenthusiastic in November, 2012 (as it was in 2008 when John McCain was the nominee), President Obama will snatch victory from the jaws of defeat once again.

BILL WALLER

In the preface to his book of memoirs – “Straight Ahead” – Bill Waller, Mississippi’s fifty-sixth governor, stated that when he first ran for Governor in 1967, Mississippi’s “political system had been virtually unchanged since the horse and buggy days of the late nineteenth century.” He was right. Waller went on to say that “Mississippi was standing still”, and the “political power was vested in the legislature, whose members were not term-limited….” He said that “a small group of powerful legislators…in combination with the social and business leadership of the state, formed a ruling elite that determined public policy and perpetuated the racial traditions that had been in place since Reconstruction.” He also noted that Mississippi’s Constitution of 1890 “did not allow the Governor to succeed himself and strictly limited the authority of the executive branch….” He might have added that in 1967, Mississippi was still virtually a “one party state” although Republican Rubel Phillips (the first Republican to run for Governor since Reconstruction) ran unsuccessfully for Governor in the general election that year.

As we know, John Bell Williams was elected Governor of Mississippi in 1967, and Bill Waller finished fifth in the Democratic Primary, behind William Winter, Jimmy Swan, and former Governor Ross Barnett. But Waller ran again in 1971 and this time was elected Governor in an upset victory over Lieutenant Governor Charles Sullivan in the Democratic Primary and a victory over independent Charles Evers in the general election. In his 1971 campaign, Waller again attacked the “old guard” and called them “the Capitol Street Gang”.

I agree with those who say that Bill Waller was a transitional figure in Mississippi politics who, as a candidate, began the movement away from the oppressive, and racist politics of the past, and introduced modern campaign techniques into Mississippi statewide politics. He also was unquestionably a courageous public servant with great vision and leadership skills who, although clearly a conservative, bucked the tide of public opinion at the time and showed his respect for the rule of law by prosecuting Byron De La Beckwith on two occasions for the murder of Medgar Evers. As we know, both prosecutions ended in a mistrial.

Before he ran for Governor in 1967, Bill Waller served with distinction as the District Attorney for Hinds, Madison and Yazoo Counties. Joe Fancher, Jr., of Canton, Waller’s longtime friend, was Bill’s statewide campaign manager when he made his 1967 race. I returned to Canton from the Army in 1966 and was elected Madison County Attorney in a special election. Therefore, I had the good fortune to assist and serve under District Attorney Bill Waller for about one year while he was gearing up to run for Governor. In those days, the District Attorney’s job was part-time, and Waller was being paid approximately $8,500.00 per year. He did have assistants, however, and the county attorneys also assisted him in Madison and Yazoo Counties. As a twenty-seven year-old boy, I had great fun and learned a lot while working for a hard-charging district attorney who was about to run for Governor. Five years later, I was elected the district attorney for Rankin and Madison Counties and fondly remember the thrill of introducing Waller at a big rally at the Canton Courthouse when he was running for Governor in 1971.

I attended Bill Waller’s funeral last Saturday, December 3, 2011, at the First Baptist Church in Jackson. It was an upbeat, dignified and truly grand affair that was attended by past governors and many, many present and past state officials, friends and former Waller staff members. The Chief Justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court, Bill Waller, Jr., spoke eloquently of his father and his mother and gave, perhaps, the finest speech of his life. His words rang true in capturing the essence of his father’s life. Also, the distinguished historian, David Sansing, gave a moving account of Governor Waller’s accomplishments, while also paying tribute to the First Lady, Carroll Waller, and rightly credited her with saving and restoring the historic Governor’s Mansion for future generations.

While I was never an insider in the Waller Administration or a close personal confidant or friend, I always admired Bill Waller, his intellect, and his work ethic. He was a great Governor, a great lawyer, and, in the end, was recognized as a great statesman. R.I.P.

DOES THE GOP WIN BY BRUISING?

The 2011 statewide elections come to an end here in Mississippi on November 8. On that date, political pundits predict that Mississippians will elect Republican Phil Bryant to succeed Haley Barbour as Governor of Mississippi and will elect Republicans to most of the eight statewide elective offices in state government. The jury is still out on whether Republicans will dominate the State Legislature and elect a Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives. Still, there is no doubt that the two-party system in the State Legislature is alive and well, which bodes well for the success of the programs of the new Bryant Administration, unless Republican elected officials become divided and fall into bickering among themselves. That possibility is real but would be unwise for all concerned. I predict that the principals involved will ignore the advice of some of their consultants and campaign workers (who, for personal gain, would like to see such divisions occur) and will work together on most issues. I believe they will heed the warning of Benjamin Franklin, who famously warned his fellow revolutionaries over 200 years ago that “either we hang together or we will hang separately.” Most Republicans realize that the Democrats are not dead in Mississippi. They are just, for the most part, currently in hibernation or hopelessly divided among themselves.

On the national level, however, the Democrats are not in hibernation, and the Republicans are definitely not hanging together. Some pundits, such as Peggy Noonan, celebrate the brutal debates that have recently taken place between the Republican candidates for President. In her recent article in the October 22, 2011, edition of the Wall Street Journal (“The GOP Wins by Bruising”), Ms. Noonan reports that all of the Republican debates have been “a real plus for the GOP”, because “they’ve made the Republican Party look like the alive party. There’s been jousting and predictable disagreement, but there has also been substance.” She may be right, but I do not think so.

I tend to agree with the thesis of an editorial first written in the September 23, 2011, online edition of Investors Business Daily: “Memo to GOP: The Foe Is Obama, not Perry.” At that time, Texas Governor Rick Perry was riding high in the polls, which prompted his Republican opponents to vehemently attack him in the ensuing debates. After one of them, IBD simply stated: “Republicans need to keep their eye on the prize. The target for 2012 is not Santorum, Cain, Bachman, Romney or Perry. It’s the current White House occupant…. Lost in the brouhaha over tuition for illegal aliens and mandated vaccines is the fact that we simply can’t afford four more years of President Obama.”

All Republicans agree that the debates may be necessary to determine which candidates do not have the “stamina” necessary to be President and thus should be “weeded out.” Still, IBD counsels that instead of focusing on whether one of the candidates was wise to mandate through an executive order the use of a vaccine to combat cervical cancer, we should “focus on the damage ObamaCare has done and will do to the creation of vaccines, to medical innovation and to what still remains the best health care system in the world. It’s Obama who’s destroying the country, not the candidates in Orlando. It is he who taxes too much, regulates too much, spends too much and imposes job-killing mandates through his EPA….”

I say we have had enough of the GOP “circular firing squad.” While I recognize that most of our very fine field of Presidential candidates will not take this advice, I believe that if it were taken by one of the major candidates, that candidate would be well received.

ARE OUR YOUNG PEOPLE HISTORICALLY ILLITERATE?

Americans are now engaging in the opening stages of a great national debate as to who we want to elect as the next President of the United States in 2012. As we go through this process, the recent words of a renowned historian resonate in my mind: “We are raising young people who are, by and large, historically illiterate.” So said the twice-Pulitzer Prize winning author, David McCullough, as quoted in the June 18, 2011, edition of the Wall Street Journal. “History is a source of strength” he said. “It sets higher standards for all of us.”

McCullough, who wrote the highly acclaimed biographies of John Adams and Harry Truman, is correct. In June, 2011, the U. S. Department of Education released its 2010 National Assessment of Economic Progress. The report found that only 12% of high school seniors have a firm grasp of our nation’s history, and only 2% understand the significance of Brown v. Board of Education.

As we go through the process of electing our next President, it is obvious that a firm grasp of American History, and the principles upon which our nation was founded, are essential to voters who want to pick the candidate for President who is best suited to preserve the principles of government that made our country great. Furthermore, a basic understanding of the differing forms and philosophies of government that have evolved throughout history in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere, based upon the teachings of those who advocated non-democratic, communist, and socialist forms of government, would be very helpful to voters trying to make the right presidential choice. Armed with such knowledge, we could compare the arguments of the candidates and judge how their positions, hopes and dreams for America stack up with the ideals of those political thinkers of yesteryear.

McCullough tells us part of the problem is that too often teachers with a degree in education are assigned to teach history, about which they know little or nothing. The great teachers, according to McCullough, love what they are teaching. “[Y]ou can’t love something you don’t know, anymore than you can love someone you don’t know.”

McCullough is critical of teaching history in categories – “women’s history, African American history, environmental history. . .”, because “. . . many of the students have no sense of chronology. They have no idea what followed what.” He also says that many history textbooks “are so politically correct as to be comical. Very minor characters that are currently fashionable are given considerable space whereas people of major consequence farther back (such as, say, Thomas Edison) are given very little space or none at all.”

Still, McCullough believes teachers “are the most important people in society. . .” and need more pay and more appreciation from all of us. “It’s not their fault”, he says that our children are ignorant. “It’s our fault. . . . I mean the parents and grandparents of the oncoming generation. We have to talk about history, talk about the books we love, the biographies and histories. . . . We should take our children to historic places. Go to Gettysburg. Go to the Capitol. . . . If you play the part of Abigail Adams or Johnny Appleseed in a fourth-grade play, you are never going to forget it as long as you live.”

Hopefully, we will take McCullough’s comments to heart if we want to preserve America, as we know it, for future generations. And as we think about and study the candidates from which we must choose new leaders in upcoming national elections, we should be trying to determine which one of them has the ability and temperament to preserve the principles of government that made America the light of the world and a beacon of hope for people everywhere. Which candidate can inspire us to self-sacrifice in hard times and unite us as Americans, rather than trying to separate us into special interest groups who have tribal loyalties first and foremost? That candidate, at the end of the day and when the dust settles, will get my vote.

REAGAN’S ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT

“For Ronald Reagan, the easy waiting game that had lasted through most of 1975, the luxury of sitting back and letting Jerry Ford take all the heat, was over. On the morning of Thursday, November 20, he strode before a battery of microphones and television cameras at the National Press Club and staked out his position as the Gentleman Caller of Republican politics, the outsider with clean hands, the savior come to Washington to purify the waters.

‘Our nation’s capital’, he said, ‘has become the seat of a buddy system that functions for its own benefit – increasingly insensitive to the needs of the American worker who supports it with his taxes. Today it is difficult to find leaders who are independent of the forces that have brought us our problems – the Congress, the bureaucracy, the lobbyists, big business and big labor.’

Reagan did not list [President] Gerald Ford as a member of the buddy system. Nor would he single out his opponent for any other criticism. Instead, as he had done in his two gubernatorial campaigns, Reagan pledged to honor California’s ‘Eleventh Commandment’ that said ‘Thou shall not speak ill of any fellow Republican’.”

So wrote the journalist, Jules Witcover, in his lengthy book, MARATHON, THE PURSUIT OF THE PRESIDENCY 1972-1976. Much has been written about the election contest in which Democrat Jimmy Carter ultimately defeated incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford (who had been appointed Vice-President by his predecessor, Richard Nixon, and ascended to the Presidency when Nixon resigned). However, Witcover’s MARATHON remains the standard.

The great sub-plot of Witcover’s historical account of the events of 1972-1976, of course, centered around the epic struggle between President Ford and Governor Ronald Reagan of California, in which the conservative Reagan sought to unseat a more moderate Gerald Ford by denying a sitting President the nomination of his own party at the Republican National Convention of 1976. As most Mississippi Republicans know, the Mississippi delegation at Kansas City, although badly split, played an important role at the 1976 convention in which Ford was ultimately nominated with 1187 delegates to Reagan’s 1070. Ronald Reagan, as we also know, went on to capture the Republican nomination four years later, defeat President Jimmy Carter, and he is now an icon of the Republican Party faithful. However, the scars remain from that monumental struggle in 1976 within the ranks of the Republican Party even today.

On the national stage today, we see those seeking the Republican nomination for President regularly taking shots at each other in violation of the Eleventh Commandment, although almost all of them speak of Ronald Reagan with reverence. Likewise, Republicans in Mississippi have recently gone through several bitter primary elections (particularly in the Lieutenant Governor’s race), hopefully on our way to victory in the general election in November, 2011. During those primary elections, Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment was also cast aside with abandon, with our candidates boldly attacking the integrity of their Republican opponents and questioning their fitness to hold public office.

As a very vocal proponent of the view that bitter and deeply personal primary fights weaken the Republican Party and cause permanent divisions that ultimately lead to Democratic victories, I decided to go back and review how President Ford and Governor Reagan conducted themselves in their marathon contest in 1976, in which the charismatic California Governor almost unseated his fellow Republican, a sitting President. My review shows that Reagan, who had for years been attacking Washington in support of his arguments that we should throw the Democratic rascals out, first attempted to reshape his anti-Washington theme as an attack on the status quo, without attacking President Ford personally, in order to avoid violating the Eleventh Commandment. Ford countered, upon the advice of his aides, by attacking Reagan with local press releases and surrogates leading up to the New Hampshire primary, thus keeping Ford “out of the cross fire” and looking Presidential.

As the campaign progressed, the Ford camp increasingly attempted to portray Reagan as “the new Barry Goldwater on Social Security”. The President also exercised the power of his incumbency on the campaign trail by promising numerous pork barrell plums such as new hospitals, missile contracts or mass transit programs in key states. He also “invited local [Florida] television anchormen to Washington for Oval Office interviews – the weekend before the Florida primary”.

Finding himself on the defensive, and initially insisting that he was merely challenging the President’s policies and not breaking with his Eleventh Commandment pledge, Reagan began to attack Ford’s foreign policy initiatives, charging that neither the President nor Secretary of State Henry Kissenger had shown “the vision nor the leadership necessary to halt and reverse the diplomatic and military decline of the United States.” He attacked Ford’s efforts for détente with the Soviet Union and the President’s apparent desire to turn over ownership of the Panama Canal to the Panamanians – under the leadership of “Panama’s military dictator, Fidel Castro’s good friend, General Omar Torrijos [Herrera]”. From the political stump, Reagan delivered these memorable lines: “when it comes to the canal, we built it, we paid for it, it’s ours, and we should tell Torrijos and company that we are going to keep it.” He added: “Under Messrs. Kissenger and Ford this nation has become number two in military power in a world where it is dangerous – if not fatal – to be second best.” Finally, paying his respects to Ford’s excessive political use of his incumbency, Reagan stated off the cuff at a rally in North Carolina: “If he comes here with the same list of goodies as he did in Florida . . . the band won’t know whether to play ‘Hail to the Chief’ or ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town.”

In the course of the heated Republican Presidential primary elections of 1976, both Reagan and Ford ultimately abandoned the Eleventh Commandment in their pursuit of victory. Their justification was that they had to defend themselves against unfair attacks from their opponent. Still, the scars within the party remain. Similar scars will remain for a while among Mississippi Republicans in the aftermath of our August, 2011 Republican primaries here in the Magnolia State. Hopefully, we will be wise enough to realize that a divided party whose members are more interested in fighting among themselves than in fighting Democrats, is a sure recipé for defeat – sooner or later. Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment remains the standard in Republican politics but will be followed only if all candidates in a Republican primary agree to abide by it. They will agree to abide by it only if Republican voters demand it.