Ira Stoll on What the GOP Can Learn from the Party of Roosevelt and Kennedy

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Credit: Library of Congress

Republicans thinking about an agenda for the future may want to borrow some ideas from an unlikely source—the Democrats of the past.

Bill Clinton's welfare reform and North American Free Trade Agreement. John F. Kennedy's tax cuts. President Carter's deregulation. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's World War II resolve. Put them together and update them for the current moment, writes Ira Stoll, and they are the beginnings of an effective policy program for Republicans in Congress or seeking the White House in 2016. What's more, talking about them as Democratic ideas could help Republicans capture crossover voters while also reminding them how far today's Democrats have shifted left.