Former President Ronald Reagan is hands down the most electorally successful American politician of the post-World War II era. As the outsider nominee of the nation’s then-decidedly minority party, nobody has ever come close to matching his back-to-back 44-state and 49-state landslide White House victories. Acknowledged as a conviction conservative, Reagan succeeded in forging alliances, as governor and as president, by practicing what he preached: “Remember, the fellow who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is your friend and ally, not 20 percent traitor.”
The Gipper understood completely: A wining political party is not an exclusive private club with its own admission and litmus tests that a person must first pass to join. CONT.
Mark Shields