Campaign exposes deep rifts in GOP coalition

[Lone_Star_Dem]

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — The house that Ronald Reagan built is in danger of collapsing.

The coalition of fiscal conservatives, national security conservatives, anti-tax activists and social conservatives that rallied behind Reagan in 1980 and has defined the Republican Party ever since is coming apart at the seams heading into the 2008 election.

All the men running for the party's presidential nomination invoke Reagan's name repeatedly. But all of them offend at least one wing of the party enough that they'd find it difficult, and perhaps impossible, to pull the disparate elements of the old coalition together.

"It's gone," said Ed Rollins, who worked on Reagan's 1984 re-election campaign and now chairs the campaign of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

"The Reagan coalition is pretty much gone," added Karen Spencer, a Republican strategist in California who watched the Reagan phenomenon firsthand when her father served as Reagan's chief political strategist. "It's been 28 years. Maybe it is time for a change."

What happened?

Times changed, of course.

Fighting terrorism has created divisions where confronting the Soviet Union and rebuilding the U.S. military unified the party.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/24624.html

One more accomplishment for Bush to add to his legacy.