By: T. Robinson Ahlstrom

T. Robinson Ahlstrom — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 19:45:49 +0000

After Limbaugh: The Republican Moment
The Republican Party is not the Party of Limbaugh. It is the party of Lincoln, and now is the time to say so.
The men who gathered in Jackson, Michigan on the 6th July of 1854 were not right-wingers protesting progress. They were progress. They were not indolent squatters “occupying” Mr. Morgan’s grove. They were farmers and frontiersmen who traveled great distances on horseback to gather “under the oaks” with a specific agenda—to to free the slaves, give millions of acres of government lands back to the people and create an economy in which laborers cold own property, build wealth and thrive.
In a word, they were serious.
Ironically, the latest vulgarity in Rush Limbaugh’s long-running burlesque has created a unique moment for the Republican Party, and for its presumptive nominee. Rush is passé. He is not the problem. He is the symptom.
The problem is our public discourse itself. As the United States has devolved from an education-based society to an entertainment-based society, politicians and pundits have co-starred in a never ending vaudevillian sideshow in which words have no meaning. The actors are well paid, but the audience is bored.
Of course, ambitious politicians who spew populist hokum and jingo-journalists who care more about headlines than stories are nothing new. They have always been the comic face of our rakish public life. But serious times call for serious people.
It is time for the one candidate most ill suited to the stage to play himself. It is time for Mitt to be Mitt.
Governor Romney’s candidacy will transcend the cash driven circus we call politics on the day he trades in his stone washed jeans for his business suit, straightens his silk tie, and speaks, not from his head, but from his heart. Instead of genuflecting to the incendiary fringe, Romney needs now to come out of the closet for civility, moderation and common sense.
His path to the White House is clear. It is the sixteen lane thoroughfare between Reverend Rick and Professor Obama. Now is the time for Romney to tell us what we already know. He is not a man of the right. In fact, he is not an ideologue at all. Like those first Republicans, he is a common sense conservative who actually believes in hard work, thrift, justice, fairness, free enterprise and social mobility. These values have defined his life.
Right now, the Republican Party needs a leader who calls the nation back to the sane center. Mitt Romney can be that man, and he can start by reminding us all that Abraham Lincoln was not a man of the Right. He was a moderate on all things—except human dignity.
Romney, who grew up watching his father run American Motors, can help us remember that Teddy Roosevelt was not a man of the Right. He was the son of a successful businessman who understood free enterprise. When companies were “too big to fail,” he didn’t bail them out. He broke them up.
As a penny-pinching Yankee, Mitt Romney can bring us back to Calvin Coolidge, not a man of the Right, but a taciturn New Englander who believed that, “The business of America is Business.”
As a gifted senior manager, Romney can call to remembrance Dwight David Eisenhower, the competent centrist accused by Taft’s supporters of trying to import “European socialism.” (Sound familiar?) The Ike we liked was anything but a man of the Right! He was a soldier with great discipline and superb organizational skill. He was a fixer who knew how to reform and run a complex bureaucracy. That’s what he did at D-Day and that’s what he did for eight years as he led America to the peak of its power, prosperity and prestige.
The former Massachusetts Governor might even dare to mention the inconvenient truth that Ronald Reagan was not a man of the Right. He was a highly evolved Democrat who cut deals with a Bay State liberal named Tip O’Neil. Reagan was a man of the middle whose love of country, basic decency, irrepressible optimism and flinty courage, lifted the nation, inspired the world and toppled the tyrant.
The real Romney is a real Republican. Now he needs to own it, and sell it, pitching a big tent for all who believe in limited constitutional government, strong national defense, and fiscal sanity.
T. Robinson Ahlstrom is the Chairman of Cambridge Advisory, LLC.
tr@cambridgeadvisory.com

By: The Christian Science Monitor Opinion Editor Josh Burek talks to … — Debt Free Forever!

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 07:22:48 +0000

[...] Ashby Jones posted about this interesting story. Here is a small section of the postJust a few months ago, The Wall Street Journal ran a front-page profile of Ashrita Furman, so it was gratifying to see the Journal run the same story I wrote when I was 22 – and to see that Ashrita’s still going at i t , even in his 50s … [...]

Comments on: The Christian Science Monitor Opinion Editor Josh Burek talks to the OpEd Project about the changing world of journalism, his career, and how to get your op-ed piece published

By: T. Robinson Ahlstrom

By: The Christian Science Monitor Opinion Editor Josh Burek talks to … — Debt Free Forever!