Gotta Play to Win

As Ronald Reagan might ask, whose world would you prefer to live in four years from now, the liberals' or the conservatives'? For my money, I'll take the messy and mistake-prone but good-hearted Republicans over the brooding, power-hungry, and uncommonly good-looking Democrats. So should all conservatives.

Organizing a political movement around the principle of freedom combined with moral rigor has never been easy. But the fact that conservatism is hard is what makes it great.

Craig Shirley is the president of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs and the author of a history of the 1976 campaign, Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started it All. He is now writing a book about the 1980 campaign, Rendezvous with Destiny.