Y KANT DAVID FRUM'S CO-BLOGGERS READ?

I appreciate the effort David Frum and his Frum Forum colleagues are making to de-lunify conservatism, but this well-intentioned Fred Bauer post doesn't exactly jibe with the facts:

Real Reaganites Don't Demonize Their Opponents

Ronald Reagan's speech at the 1980 Republican National Convention provides a welcome jolt amidst the atmosphere of the current Republican nominating contest. Instead of hypocritical invective and mindless tribalism, Reagan offers a fundamentally optimistic and cooperative narrative of America.

Though this speech has moments of anger, it is not, at heart, an angry speech. Consider some of these lines near the opening:

I know we have had a quarrel or two, but only as to the method of attaining a goal. There was no argument about the goal. As president, I will establish a liaison with the 50 governors to encourage them to eliminate, where it exists, discrimination against women. I will monitor federal laws to insure their implementation and to add statutes if they are needed.

More than anything else, I want my candidacy to unify our country; to renew the American spirit and sense of purpose. I want to carry our message to every American, regardless of party affiliation, who is a member of this community of shared values.

Not a single word about destroying those rotten, freedom-hating "progressives" or "liberals." Not even an invocation of "union thugs"! ...

Though Reagan criticizes Carter throughout this speech, his criticism seems to emphasize Carter's incompetence and unfitness for the task of government. He does not claim that Carter hates freedom or despises capitalism or has bad intentions for the country....

Um, no, Fred -- he just says that Jimmy Carter and the Democrats have brought America to the verge of destruction. To me it's a distinction without a difference.

Here are some excerpts Bauer doesn't quote:

... Never before in our history have Americans been called upon to face three grave threats to our very existence, any one of which could destroy us. We face a disintegrating economy, a weakened defense and an energy policy based on the sharing of scarcity.

The major issue of this campaign is the direct political, personal and moral responsibility of Democratic Party leadership --in the White House and in Congress -- for this unprecedented calamity which has befallen us....

I will not stand by and watch this great country destroy itself under mediocre leadership that drifts from one crisis to the next, eroding our national will and purpose....

As your nominee, I pledge to restore to the federal government the capacity to do the people's work without dominating their lives....

The first Republican president once said, "While the people retain their virtue and their vigilance, no administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can seriously injure the government in the short space of four years."

If Mr. Lincoln could see what's happened in these last three-and-a-half years, he might hedge a little on that statement....

... Four times in my lifetime America has gone to war, bleeding the lives of its young men into the sands of beachheads, the fields of Europe and the jungles and rice paddies of Asia. We know only too well that war comes not when the forces of freedom are strong, but when they are weak. It is then that tyrants are tempted.

We simply cannot learn these lessons the hard way again without risking our destruction....

"Destroy, "destroy," "destruction" -- that word in one form or another comes up eight times in the speech.

"Real Reaganites" wouldn't talk like this? Reagan talked precisely like this. His successors have refined his technique and upped the potency, turning his partisan cocaine into instant-high rhetorical crack rocks, but don't kid yourself, Fred: they're modeling themselves on the Master.