Liberals Latch Onto Ford, Conservatives Put Off

Liberals in the media, quite predictably, have latched onto Gerald Ford and used him to bash more recent Republican leaders, and especially President Bush.

In addition to his criticisms of the Iraq War, the media liberals are puffing Ford for being “bipartisan.”

Translation: Ford was the sort of Establishment Republican would would not fight hard for conservative principles. Or at least not fight hard if it was going to make the Democrats mad.

GOP3.COM takes note of this. Blogger Brandon Henak says “I am sick and tired of the media referring to the Republicans’ newfound activism as ‘divisive partisianship’.”

Of course, liberals only dislike “divisive partisanship” when it comes from Republicans. It’s just fine coming from the likes of Howard Dean.

Along similar lines, DAD29 notes the mainstream liberal media claim that the Republican party “lurched to the right” after Ford. He responds:

Did Jerry Ford think that he had a Divine Right to the office of President? Look—his most celebrated act was pardoning a crook. After that, it pretty much went downhill; Kissinger was another Metternich, Ford caved in on social spending (see NYC), and he was a Proud Moderate—not to mention his utterly disgraceful treatment of Solzhenitsyn. It’s clear that Reagan offered a much better alternative (see the results of 1980 and 1984, e.g.)

We think Ford’s pardon of Nixon was an honorable act.

But the fact remains that if people like Ford (rather than Reagan and Gingrich) had continued to dominate the Republican party, it would have remained an impotent minority party, instead of being (as it now is) an equal competitor to the Democrats.