Ronald Reagan ?

[dipso]

Hs anybody noticed that every candidate mentions Reagans name.
Is that because he is dead and you are not supposed to talk bad about the dead.
Is it because he is not around to be questioned about his obvious dementia while still in office.
Is it because his amnesty of mexican criminals was a good
thing.
Is it because Iran-Contra was a good thing,
Is it because the flow of cocaine into this country was very good during his presidency was a good thing.

Or is it just that that the mention of a Bush is like kryptonite.

I guess with all his foolishness, at least he didn't choke on a pretzel.

[Tobra]

It is because he is a Republican icon. Sort of like Kennedy is for the Democrats. We can talk bad about JFK all day long, plenty to talk about, and he is dead, I don't think that is it. None of those other things you mention is both true and a good thing at the same time. Seems to me not everyone who worked for him is dead, haven't some of them written books about his diminished capacity while serving as president, be a good lad and go look that up for me.










Troll much?

[Hugh R]

Uh, all of the above.

Reagan did a few good things, the fall of the Berlin Wall is one, but he did it by drastically raising the national debt, albeit not to the heights that GWB has taken us. He tried to gut the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which I saw as a bad thing, but I look at what GWB and Clinton and Bush 1 did to it, and its now just a paper pushing do nothing agency and a tool of the administration since they can't quit kill it. Hey, I voted, IIRC, McGovern, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, so who am I to talk smack.

[WI wide body]

Originally Posted by Tobra

It is because he is a Republican icon. Sort of like Kennedy is for the Democrats. We can talk bad about JFK all day long, plenty to talk about, and he is dead, I don't think that is it. None of those other things you mention is both true and a good thing at the same time. Seems to me not everyone who worked for him is dead, haven't some of them written books about his diminished capacity while serving as president, be a good lad and go look that up for me.

The facts should never bother an "icon" I would think.

Actually Dipso forgot the Savings & Loan scandal and Reagan's immigration mess and what Reagan did per the 241 Marines who were killed in Lebanon. Reagan also initiated the huge deficit spending that now threatens to sink our nation. He also began the stupid "War on Drugs" that endures today.

As for "everyone" being dead...that is not true. Of the reported 144 members of Reagan's admin who where either indicted, charged, confessed, or were convicted of crimes (an all time record) one of them was actually in the current president's administration. So not all of them can be protected by the "dead" card.

Lot's of stuff to "look up" if you and the GOP candidates want to take a shot a at it.

[cmccuist]

The candidates all want to get with Reagan because he won two terms by unprecedented landslides and the American people love him.

Oh, and in addition to all that other stuff, you forgot the he invented AIDS and then spread it amongst the homosexual community. They made a bunch of movies about it.

[Rot 911]

Reagan gave people optimism in the early eighties when there was not much to be optomistic about. Yes he make some mistakes and blunders, but he made you feel good to be an American. He always made you feel like things were going to get better. All you hear from politicians today is nothing but gloom and doom. Which makes us all feel that way.

[MRM]

Reagan is the Republican Kennedy. You have to have been a Republican in the dark 70s to fully understand. Watergate followed by Carter and 15% inflation, 20% interest rates and 12% unemployment. The Soviet Union looked imnipotent and the Western powers seemed impotent. Those were bad days. I was a kid then, but I remember.

Reagan promised and delivered a new morning in America. Like him or not, much of the good stuff we take for granted today came because of or as a result of his policies.

But it goes deeper than that. Reagan is a symbol to Republicans that means different things to different people. Conservative icon Bill Bennett recently pointed out that Reagan wasn't always Reagan - his views and policies evolvedover time. He was very pragmatic. He mostly had Democratic controlled Senates and Houses to deal with and he figured out a way to work with Tip O'Neil when he could and appeal to the American people when he needed to.

He cut taxes but he signed into law the biggest single tax hike to that time. He cut spending but he oversaw ballooning budget deficits. He was a law and order hawk but he sponsored amnesty to illegal aliens. He was a military hawk but he pulled us out of Lebanon.

Invoking Reagan also harkens back to a more innocent time for Republicans when we were used to being out of power and therefore had few scandals. It used to be an article of faith to Republicans that they were not corruptable because they believed in smaller government and lower government spending, so it was hard to be corrupted by spending the government's money to receive some personal benefit. Lyndon Johnson and Jim Wright grew rich on the government payroll and were held in contempt by us. Iran Contra was a rude awakening, but even then Republicans believed it was an error in judgment of too much patriotism rather than some petty corruption for personal gain.

By the standards of the 70s Reagan was a radical, revolutionary conservative. By today's standards he would be a middle of the road Republican. So when someone says he is a Reagan Republican, it says more about the speaker than it does Reagan.

[sammyg2]

Reagan was the great communicator and he is credited with forcing the collapse of the soviet union and making this country stronger. He was respected by our allies and feared by our enemies.
He was true hero to many of us.
Some people can be negative and try and pick apart things from his administration (iran-contra for example) but that is foolishness. Look at his administration as a whole and what it meant for this country and the picture will become clear. He was very good for the US. i can't think of another modern day leader who I hold in higher regard.

if a politician speaks negatively about Ronald Reagan it makes the politician look bad, uninformed, and petty IMO.

[techweenie]

Even Reagan was no Reagan.

"A conservative's case for McCain

By Jeff Jacoby | February 3, 2008
IT IS NOT news that much of the conservative base bitterly opposes John McCain and is appalled that the man they consider a Republican apostate could soon be the GOP's presidential nominee. From talk radio to the blogosphere to the conservative press, many on the right are outraged that what Mitt Romney last week called "the House that Reagan Built" - the modern Republican Party - might anoint as its standard-bearer the candidate who by their lights is the least likely to follow in the Gipper's footsteps.
Conservatives bristle at the thought of a Republican president who might raise income and payroll taxes. Or enlarge the federal government instead of shrinking it. Or appoint Supreme Court justices who are anything but strict constructionists. Or grant a blanket amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.
Now, I don't believe that a President McCain would do any of those things. But President Reagan did all of them. Reagan also provided arms to the Khomeini theocracy in Iran, presided over skyrocketing budget deficits, and ordered US troops to cut and run in the face of Islamist terror in the Middle East. McCain would be unlikely to commit any of those sins, either.
Does this mean that Reagan was not, in fact, a great conservative? Of course not. Nor does it mean that McCain has not given his critics on the right legitimate reasons to be disconcerted. My point is simply that the immaculate conservative leader for whom so many on the right yearn to vote is a fantasy. Conservatives who say that McCain is no Ronald Reagan are right, but Mitt Romney is no Ronald Reagan either. Neither is Mike Huckabee. And neither was the real - as opposed to the mythic - Ronald Reagan.
The conservative case against McCain is clear enough; I made it myself in some of these columns when he first ran for president eight years ago. The issues that have earned McCain the label of "maverick" - campaign-finance restrictions, global warming, the Bush tax cuts, immigration, judicial filibusters - are precisely what stick in the craw of the GOP conservative base.
But this year, the conservative case for McCain is vastly more compelling.
On the surpassing national-security issues of the day - confronting the threat from radical Islam and winning the war in Iraq - no one is more stalwart. Even McCain's fiercest critics, such as conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, will say so. "The world's bad guys," Hewitt writes, "would never for a moment think he would blink in any showdown, or hesitate to strike back at any enemy with the audacity to try again to cripple the US through terror."
McCain was never an agenda-driven movement conservative, but he "entered public life as a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution," as he puts it, and on the whole his record has been that of a robust and committed conservative. He is a spending hawk and an enemy of pork and earmarks. He has never voted to increase taxes, and wants the Bush tax cuts made permanent for the best of reasons: "They worked." He is a staunch free-trader and a champion of school choice. He is unabashedly prolife and pro-Second Amendment. He opposes same-sex marriage. He wants entitlements reined in and personal retirement accounts expanded.
McCain's conservatism has usually been more a matter of gut instinct than of a rigorous intellectual worldview, and he has certainly deviated from Republican orthodoxy on some serious issues. For all that, his ratings from conservative watchdog groups have always been high. "Even with all the blemishes," notes National Review, a leading journal on the right (and a backer of Romney), "McCain has a more consistent conservative record than Giuliani or Romney. . . . This is an abiding strength of his candidacy."
As a lifelong conservative, I wish McCain evinced a greater understanding that limited government is indispensable to individual liberty. Yet there is no candidate in either party who so thoroughly embodies the conservatism of American honor and tradition as McCain, nor any with greater moral authority to invoke it. For all his transgressions and backsliding, McCain radiates integrity and steadfastness, and if his heterodox stands have at times been infuriating, they also attest to his resolve. Time and again he has taken an unpopular stand and stuck with it, putting his career on the line when it would have been easier to go along with the crowd.
A perfect conservative he isn't. But he is courageous and steady, a man of character and high standards, a genuine hero. If "the House that Reagan Built" is to be true to its best and highest ideals, it will unite behind John McCain.
Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by MRM

He cut taxes but he signed into law the biggest single tax hike to that time. He cut spending but he oversaw ballooning budget deficits. He was a law and order hawk but he sponsored amnesty to illegal aliens. He was a military hawk but he pulled us out of Lebanon.

.................................................. .................

Originally Posted by techweenie

Even Reagan was no Reagan.
"A conservative's case for McCain
By Jeff Jacoby | February 3, 2008
..........My point is simply that the immaculate conservative leader for whom so many on the right yearn to vote is a fantasy.

.................................................. ...................

Reagan was a f-ucking bastard, people who use his name to clothe themselves just want to screw us like he did.

I remember Reagan, he gave great speaches.

[WI wide body]

It cracks me up when people say that Reagan was a "great communicator" and that he almost single handedly "broke up" the Soviet Union. Both are almost total nonsense. If anyone thinks that the USSR would not have crumbled unless Reagan was president then the one thing they will never have to worry about is teaching world history.

As for the "great communicator" that is mostly just humorous. I submit this Ronald Reagan quote when someone asked him if nuclear war could be limited to tactical weapons. His handlers were not able to take control and this is what the "great communicator" said:

"Well, I would---if they realized that we---again if---if we led them back to that stalemate only because that our retaliatory power, our seconds, or strike at them after our first strike, would be so destructive that they couldn't afford it, that would hold them off."

Maybe that's what really brought down the USSR.

[Seahawk]

I love the partisan(s) view of Reagan, both left and right: he was many things, none of which is represented by either sainthood or vilification.

Do some due diligence on Reagan and you'll find...

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

Do some due diligence on Reagan and you'll find...

Will find...............my student grant and loan money still hanging in limbo while he F-cks with Congress?

[WI wide body]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

I love the partisan(s) view of Reagan, both left and right: he was many things, none of which is represented by either sainthood or vilification.

Do some due diligence on Reagan and you'll find...

Sorry but "due diligence" will never change the direct quotes of Ronald Reagan.
Or will they?

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by WI wide body

Sorry but "due diligence" will never change the direct quotes of Ronald Reagan.
Or will they?

Up to you,

The direct quote things is like a tracer, works both ways.

[lendaddy]

Originally Posted by WI wide body

Sorry but "due diligence" will never change the direct quotes of Ronald Reagan.
Or will they?

"Direct quotes"

[WI wide body]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

Up to you,

The direct quote things is like a tracer, works both ways.

How so? Give an example?

[Tim Hancock]

Originally Posted by kach22i

Will find...............my student grant and loan money still hanging in limbo while he F-cks with Congress?

Ah...now I understand, poor George didn't get all of his "free money" .... I wasn't eligible for free money and had to work part-time to pay my way thru school. Maybe I should also be mad at Reagan, didn't I deserve a free ride from the tax payers too?

I guess this reminds me of a good flying buddy who hates Reagan also....he was a union air traffic controller....Reagan wouldn't play footsie with them and showed them the door

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by WI wide body

How so? Give an example?

Nah, you're invested in your dislike of him, I'm not...nor am I an apologist so whle I think your view of Reagan is narrow, I'm not inclined to play your tit for tat..
Sorry.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Originally Posted by Tim Hancock

Ah...now I understand, poor George didn't get all of his "free money" .... I wasn't eligible for free money and had to work part-time to pay my way thru school. Maybe I should also be mad at Reagan, didn't I deserve a free ride from the tax payers too?

I guess this reminds me of a good flying buddy who hates Reagan also....he was a union air traffic controller....Reagan wouldn't play footsie with them and showed them the door

You worked part time? Hah, what a pansy. I worked 40+ hours a week to pay for a bio/biochem degree I'll never use.

on Reagan, I have a poorly formed and I'm sure easily knocked down thesis that he is responsible for the beginning of the end of US Manufacturing and destruction of our economy.

By giving illegal aliens amnesty, he gave Business a taste for cheap labor and lower quality standards. A taste that became a hunger in which Business has since been on the hunt for cheaper and cheaper labor no matter the consequences in terms of product quality and quality of jobs in the U.S. And it's this replacement of good paying, high quality manufacturing jobs with lower paying, lower skilled service jobs that has eroded our economy, decreasing tax revenues along the way.

From my perspective, people are living as if they had good, solid lifetime jobs of yesterday and compensating for any delta by going deeper and deeper in debt. and government is following suit.

I would love to see a comparison of per capita tax revenues from the 50s to the present adjusted for everything.