Husband David remembers at least one source for the term. (Not that Jim Baker was any more popular on the hard core side of the GOP fence by then, and not that grassroots conservatives and conservative movement groups weren’t frustrated as heck about 99 percent of the time - sound familiar?.)Īndrew Roth of Club for Growth wonders about squish’s etymology. “We’re all conservatives now,” so to speak, at least within much of the GOP in the sense that moderate Republicans had mostly stopped calling the Gipper derogatory names. When distributing the button, we did not have to explain to people what it meant.īy ’84 the term “squish” was, to the best of my recollection, somewhat less in use, as many a moderate who thought Reagan an extremist in ’80 and earlier was quite fond of him by then. When the National Center manufactured and distributed “Let Reagan Be Reagan” buttons in 1982, it was an meant as an admonition to Reagan Administration squishes to stop undermining the President’s conservative philosophy and initiatives.
I recall Baker being seen as the invisible hand behind many, many a squishie plot. A “member of the hard core” would also be fighting “the squishes” behind closed doors in intra-party policy debates.Įxamples of prominent (perceived) “squishes,” circa 1981: Vice President George H.W. Therefore, when working in alliance with them, a good conservative (one of the “hard core”) would need to watch one’s back. Ford GOP primary, ’76.)Īfter Reagan’s ’80 election, a good working definition of “squish” would be someone who could not be counted on to back a conservative initiative for philosophical reasons. There was a much firmer line of demarcation back then within the GOP between conservatives and moderates. “Squish” was in frequent use in the College Republican National Committee office when I worked there in 1981 and elsewhere in conservative circles during the era. a Republican of less-than-conservative pedigree sometime after 2004. In the category of “making me feel old,” I note this post on the Club for Growth blog, speculating that the word “squish” was first used to I.D.
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