They didn’t like him. To be more precise, they thought him an extremist, un-electable, an ultra-right wing nut, dumb, ignorant and, more to the point, not one of their crowd.

By Jeffrey Lord at American Spectator

One out of six was absolutely correct.

Ronald Reagan was not one of their crowd. Ever.

The “crowd”” was The Establishment. The Establishment as it appeared in all of its various incarnations during Ronald Reagan’s political life. First it was the California Republican Party Establishment. Then the Liberal Establishment. Followed by the national Republican Party Establishment. Next up was The Eastern Establishment. Last but not least was the Washington Establishment.

And in each and every case save one (1976), Reagan — and more to the point today — the people who came to be known as “conservatives” or “Reaganites” beat those Establishments like a drum.

In the wake of the Nevada Senate primary victory of Republican Sharron Angle (and the emergence of South Carolina’s Nikki Haley and the continuing popularity of Alaska’s Sarah Palin — not to mention other conservatives around the country), yet again The Establishment resurrects exactly the same now very old and tired alarms once raised about Ronald Reagan himself.

Who are these people?

Believe it or not, Webster’s Dictionary actually provides a definition for “the Establishment” (although they don’t capitalize that initial “T”). Definition: “The people and institutions constituting the existing power structure in society…the dominant or controlling group in a field of endeavor or organization.”

It’s hard now, impossible even, for many to understand the scorn and derision Reagan first faced when he emerged on the national political scene. Let’s go back and take a look at what was once said of the man now revered by the American people as the greatest president in American history, according to a Gallup Poll taken a month after Barack Obama took office.

FULL STORY

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