To everything, there is a season. A time to criticize your party and do soul searching. And a time to bite your tongue. Amid the scandals, it seems like now might be a good time for Republicans to do the latter.
Enter Bob Dole.
“I think they ought to put a sign on the national committee doors that says ‘Closed for repairs,'” Dole said on Fox News Sunday. And when asked by host Chris Wallace if he or Ronald Reagan could have made it in today’s Republican Party, Dole responded: “I doubt it. And I — Reagan wouldn’t have made it.”
But Dole is selling himself short. You don’t climb the greasy pole all the way to Senate Majority Leader — and the Republican nomination for president — if you don’t know how to play politics.
Am I to believe that Bob Dole couldn’t or wouldn’t have played to the base in order to get ahead if he ran for office today?
Consider this 1996 profile from the New York Times,
Mr. Woelk, the Russell lawyer who first approached Mr. Dole about running for office, recalled that in their first discussions not even Mr. Dole’s party affiliation was clear. Mr. Woelk says he urged Mr. Dole to register as a Republican, using the argument: “If you want to get anywhere in politics in Kansas, you better be a Republican.” Mr. Dole, he said, appeared convinced.
But whatever its origins, Mr. Dole’s political thinking eventually developed very much in line with his constituents’.
So Bob Dole, having survived horrific injuries during World War II, didn’t even know what party he belonged to, yet somehow managed to make it to the pinnacle of Republican politics? Say what you will about his moderate politics, but the man was both tough and calculating.
I think he would make it today, don’t you?
What is more, I don’t buy the notion that moderates can’t survive in today’s GOP. Am I to believe that Mitt Romney and John McCain are more conservative than Ronald Reagan?–after all, they managed to win the GOP nomination in recent years.
This strikes me as an example of someone who no longer has to play the game who is now criticizing the players on the field. And his timing couldn’t be worse.