To Reagan, or Not to Reagan: GOP Split on Party Icon

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports:

As Republican leaders look for a path forward in the era of Obama, they’re having a bit of trouble deciding on the role of one figure from the not-to-distant past.

Ronald Reagan has long been a GOP icon. But does he have a role in a party that’s looking for a way to re-brand?

That depends on whom you ask.

The debate was touched off in part by former Gov. Jeb Bush, R-Fla., who suggested at the kick-off event for a new Republican messaging venture over the weekend that it’s time to move past the “nostalgia” of the Reagan years.

“Our ideas need to be forward looking and relevant,” said Bush, whose father was Reagan’s vice president. “I felt like there was a lot of nostalgia and the good old days in the [Republican] messaging. I mean, it’s great, but it doesn’t draw people toward your cause.”

But one of the men who sat next to Gov. Bush on Saturday has a much different take.

“We need to be talking about conservative principles. We need to take a page out of Ronald Reagan’s book,” House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., said on ABCNews.com’s “Top Line” Wednesday.

“He was the one that went out and said, you know what, we’ve gotta convince the American people that the conservative way is a much better way for our country. And we will see it return to prosperity if we follow the common sense conservative principles that he was about and that we know this country was founded upon.”

This is all part of a broader debate about whether the party needs to be broadening its base or rediscovering its roots to adjust to new realities.

It’s also, in a way, generational. Cantor, 45, is often called a Republican rising star. Yet he has direct memories of the Reagan era that a younger generation — a generation that’s been more likely to join the Democratic Party than the one before it — doesn’t.

Rep. Patrick McHenry, 33, tells Time’s Michael Grunwald that it’s time to move on. Grunwald writes that McHenry, “a conservative who keeps a bust of Reagan on his desk, surprised me by declaring that the Reagan era is over.”

“Marginal tax rates are the lowest they’ve been in generations, and all we can talk about is tax cuts,” said McHenry, R-N.C. “The people’s desires have changed, but we’re still stuck in our old issue set.”

Even sharper are the comments of Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill. — at 27, the youngest member of Congress, and the first and so far only member born during the Reagan presidency.

“For someone in their 20s and even in their 30s, [Reagan] was not a relevant figure as we were growing up, because he’s in the history,” Schock said on Fox News this week. “And we have to be a party about the future. Our message has to be about the future and how our policies are best for the future of our country.”

Split Between RNC, Party Committees?

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports:

As Republicans vent over the departure of Sen. Arlen Specter from their party, and as GOP leaders plot a new messaging strategy, an intriguing series of fissures is appearing inside the GOP.

As I explore HERE, there’s a debate raging now about whether the Republican Party should be emphasizing breadth or depth — in terms of ideology, messaging, and geography.

And it looks like there’s something of a split inside party leadership over what kind of candidates the GOP is hoping to run in 2010 and beyond.

Sen. John Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is suggesting that the party pursue moderates in blue and battleground states. He told The New York Times’ Adam Nagourney that he was impressed by the recruiting efforts in the past two election cycles of Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who picked up seats in red states with relatively conservative candidates.

Cornyn, a conservative Republican from Texas, shoots this across the bow of party activists who are clamoring for purity: “Some conservatives would rather lose than be seen as compromising on what they regard as inviolable principles.”

In that same vein, Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, another conservative Republican, told us on ABCNews.com’s “Top Line” yesterday: “This is not a time to purify; it’s a time to multiply.”

Then there’s Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. Steele is leaving significantly less party wiggle room.

“I’m not going to stand at the door with a little checklist and say, well, you can be a Republican and you can’t,” Steele told NPR Wednesday. “But understand, it’s like — you know, when I come to your house for dinner, all right, and I sit down at your table, what do you think of me when I look at your wife or look at you and go, you know, ‘This is a nice meal but I would have preferred chicken. And if you could take this plate off, I think I’d like a different type of china.’ It is what you serve.”

Steele is speaking to an important segment of the party base. Cornyn and company, meanwhile, are coming from the perspective of actual lawmakers, where numbers trump ideology.

This debate hits at a time where Steele’s leadership is being challenged from inside and outside the party.

What do you think? What’s the best way forward for the GOP?