In Search of a Reagan Renaissance

Remaining GOP candidates all seek to lay claim to legacy of towering figure.

ByABC News
February 6, 2008, 3:34 PM

Feb. 6, 2008— -- Three faces: John McCain, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney. That's what the Republicans have left in the 2008 election, as evidenced on every channel and Web site that touched on politics on Super Tuesday.

Of course, the point of the primaries is to select one from those three faces.

While Sen. McCain, R-Ariz., came out of Super Tuesday as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, former Gov. Huckabee picked up wins in the south including Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and his home state of Arkansas. And former Gov. Romney, who won Massachusetts, Colorado, Minnesota and the small prizes of Montana, Utah and the North Dakota and Alaska caucuses, has also vowed to continue his campaign.

Though each candidate claims to know what the American people want, what the Republican party really seems to want is to bring Ronald Reagan back.

Reagan was No. 40 in chronological order among presidents, but No. 1 among Republican heroes of modern memory.

By invoking Reagan's name as often as they do, all three seem to want to say they're the full package.

In a Jan. 30 CNN debate held at the Reagan Library, the candidates were asked why Reagan would endorse them. Huckabee said it would be presumptuous to assume that endorsement, but offered his own endorsement of the former president.

"[Reagan] was a man who loved this country, and he inspired this country to believe in itself again," Huckabee said. "What made Ronald Reagan a great president was not just the intricacies of his policies, though they were good policies. It was that he loved America and saw it as a good nation and a great nation because of the greatness of its people. And if we can recapture that, that's when we recapture the Reagan spirit. It's that spirit that has a 'can do' attitude about America's futures and that makes us love our country whether we're Democrats or Republicans. And that's what I believe Ronald Reagan did he brought this country back together and made us believe in ourselves."

As recently as yesterday, Romney aligned his policies with Reagan's.

"You're going to have a choice as to whether you're going to select a conservative, myself, to lead the party, somebody who will stay in the house that Ronald Reagan built, or whether we're going to take a left turn as a party," Romney said Tuesday while addressing the West Virginia convention.

McCain also referenced Reagan in his speech Tuesday night.

"I am as confident tonight as I have ever been that we can succeed in November by uniting our party in our determination to keep our country safe, proud, prosperous and free, and by again making a persuasive case to independents, and to those enlightened members of the other party that the great Ronald Reagan claimed for our party," he said.

While Reagan wasn't every American's cup of tea, the old cowboy had a knack for roping in different groups of conservative voters who weren't all necessarily conservative in the same way. Business people liked his call for smaller government and tax cuts. Religious conservatives were drawn to the way he spoke up for traditional family values. Blue collar workers known as the Reagan democrats liked his faith in a strong defense.