Reagan Vs. Ford II (Huckabee Vs Republican Pudits)

I wanted to thank Illinois4Huckabee for publishing my research on the Nashsau Article calling Ronald Reagan a tax raiser. I did not only find that article I found two others that correlate to today's attacks on Gov Huckabee. Here's one that William F. Buckley wrote on the attacks on Reagan from the Republican leadership. Good read. I especially like the phrases in Red. Speaks volumes on how non-establishment candidates are treated. Remember we had a Brokered Convention and Reagan missed the nomination by 92 delegates

Reagan vs. Ford
william f. buckley
'. . . Ford now
worries about
Ronald Reagan . , .'
From 12/21/1975 - Sunday Messenger, The

Up until the electrifying Gallup Poll, the resistance to Ronald Reagan was slouchy, disorganized, mostly mute. Not many months ago James Reston was advising Ford to "stop worrying about Ronald Reagan." Clearly Ford now worries about Ronald Reagan more than he worries about the
Russians, which is melancholy commentary on the passion people invest in clutching on to power.

It had been a formalistic opposition, reduced to clichéd objections. Reagan is extremist, unqualified by background, that kind of thing. Time Magazine published a letter by a doctor in Cincinnati who actually presumed to put his name under the single sentence, "Ronald Reagan is the prototype American politician of the 70s: mindless, witless, positionless and worthless." No wonder malpractice insurance is going up. if grown doctors are capable of such imbecilities. But 1,000 of these taunts are deflected every day by Reagan, with a good humor totally free of spleen. Thus, when the Democratic candidates, who include everybody except Shelly Winters, issued their demand that every time an old Ronald Reagan movie was shown on television they should be given equal time, Reagan replied that every time an old Ronald Reagan move was shown, he should be given equal time.

But now of course the great assault has begun. Led by Howard Galloway, a former secretary of the Army, A Reagan supporter summed up Calloway's remarks. "All he said was that Reagan is incompetent, unpopular and insincere."

If Galloway had been Nixon's, or LBJ's campaign manager, one might safely assume that the remarks were authorized by the boss. In the present circumstances, one cannot be certain. Last summer, Galloway was sprinkling little jets of disparagement of Nelson Rockefeller, which one day firehosed into the declaration that it was by no means to be taken for granted that President Ford had decided he wanted Vice President Rockefeller on his ticket in 1976. On that occasion, a) Ford went to extravagant lengths to dissociate himself from his talkative campaign manager — I think he even shared a helicopter with Rockefeller, which suggests the desperation; b) Reagan, at a press conference, proffered his sympathy to Rockefeller over the coarse handling he was receiving at Callaway's hands; and c) Rockefeller telephoned Reagan to express his gratitude. (by the way, shortly after this article Ronald Reagan movies were banded for the rest of the Election cycle.)

Perhaps before these words are printed, we will know from Ford whether he disowns the animadversions of Galloway. It will be less interesting to see whether Rockefeller returns to
Reagan, Reagan's courtesy of last summer.

Ford will have to ask himself — sooner than we thought, thanks to the Gallup Poll —whether he would prefer to see a Democrat elected President, than Ronald Reagan. There is little doubt that, following the lead of Rockefeller, whose disavowal of Goldwater in 1964 split the Republican Party, Ford could probably guarantee the loss of the election by Reagan. If he were to do so — by advertising Reagan's alleged insincerity, unpopularity and incompetence — he would be acting out of personal petulance far more clearly than Rockefeller in 1964. At that time there were genuine divisions between Goldwater and Rockefeller, respectively the conservative and the liberal leaders of their party.

But Ford is, by and large, a conservative; so that any attempt by him to ruin Reagan's chances, in punishment for Reagan's challenge to Ford's re-nomination, could not be understood as less than masochistic spite. Out of character, one would think, in a man renowned for his fairness and geniality.

Meanwhile, Reagan's progress at the polls is a political phenomenon of the first magnitude. Not only did he suddenly zoom ahead of Ford with the Republicans, but also with the independents. So much for the alleged narrowness of his appeal. The professionals in both parties are waking up to Reagan's singular qualities as a politician. Gradually, for instance, they concede that his sense of timing proved superior to theirs. And that his rule against criticizing fellow Republicans makes his detractors look childish and boorish. It is now left only for someone in a red wig to pay Charles Mathias to enter the race. Perhaps that has already been arranged.