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GDANSK, Poland -- When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989. Poles fought for their freedom for so many years that they hold in special esteem those who backed them in their struggle. Support was the test of friendship. President Reagan was such a friend. His policy of aiding democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe in the dark days of the Cold...

Jerry S. Parr, the Secret Service agent credited with saving President Ronald Reagan’s life during an assassination attempt in 1981, died Friday at a hospice near his home in Washington. He was 85. The death was confirmed by Mr. Parr’s wife, Carolyn, who said he died of congestive heart failure. Mr. Parr was just feet away from Mr. Reagan when John W. Hinckley Jr. opened fire on the president outside the Washington Hilton hotel on March 30, 1981. “When he was about probably six or seven feet from the car, I heard these shots,” Mr. Parr said in a 2013...

From Sweden in the Baltic to Tartus in the Mediterranean, Russian forces are on the offensive. The consensus among U.S. officials not beholden to the White House is that Mitt Romney was right. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is the most dangerous threat to America. And not only to America: Russia’s attempts to reclaim its empire spread conflict and misery, prolong war, destabilize the postwar alliance system that has brought security and prosperity to the world, and erode Western values such as freedom, equality, and individualism. Though Russia may no longer espouse global communist revolution, the consequences of its militarism and aggression...

Someone finally listened. I’ve been searching for the new Ronald Reagan to make America great again. I’ve argued in my past four books and hundreds of commentaries that taxes are too damn high on America’s risk-takers, job creators and business owners. I’ve pleaded for a dramatic, Reaganesque tax cut to supercharge the economy and create millions of new jobs. I’ve been searching for a president who would reward the economic engine of America (small business) and reward the people who value work ethic, personal responsibility and rugged individualism over cradle-to-grave government dependency. That was how Reagan created the greatest economic...

Should Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina win the Oval Office, she wouldn’t be making any calls to her counterpart in Russia. “I wouldn’t speak to Vladmir Putin,” Fiorina said. She would, however, rebuild a missile defense program in Poland and conduct military exercises in the Baltic States. “I would guarantee you that after four or five or six months of that kind of behavior, Vladmir Putin will speak differently with the United States of America,” she said. “It’s how people behave. He’s a bully.” Fiorina, the only woman seeking the GOP nomination, is the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard. She ran...

President Ronald Reagan is invoked incessantly by conservative commentators and politicians, but never more so than when the subject is taxes. And so it was when Donald Trump released his plan for tax reform. Several conservative commentators have done Trump a favor (and the public a disservice) by vouching for the legitimacy of the plan and saying it is very much in the Reagan tradition. That gives Trump far too much credit. His tax plan bears a superficial resemblance to Reagan’s agenda, but Reagan would never have proposed something so transparently infeasible. Reagan is invoked too casually on taxes both...

The Best of Ronald Reagan

They were friends. I heard stories. Like Labor Secretary Ray Donovan on one knee fixing a shoelace when his boss ambled in. Grinned the chief of state: “Not necessary. When you see me, a mere curtsy will do.”SNIP 1980. He’d just been elected and we were in communist Poland. Because Joey had his unlisted home number, he grabbed our hotel phone to call congratulations. No operator. He tried again. No response. No voice. No nothing. The line was dead. Eventually uprooting the manager, he complained the telephone’s broken and it’s imperative he call America. California. Manager: “No. Cannot.” Joey: “Whaddaya...

Jeffrey Lord is saying the Reagan-Bush divide, that goes back to the hatred between the families in the Reagan White House, is the subtext even now for Trump's attack on Jeb in the debate... Interesting. If Jeb's "experienced" military advisors were so great, how come they didn't mitigate what they had to have known Obama was going to do? Phony crap. We don't need ClintonBushClintonBush warmovers in office again.

Donald Trump is a lot more like Ronald Reagan than most Republicans think. Many in the GOP establishment are upset that Trump compares himself to fellow Democrat-turned-Republican Reagan, and they often try to discredit him by arguing that Reagan was a happy warrior who spoke only of a "shining city on a hill" and "morning in America" but never ominously about the country he loved. "As political presences, Trump and Reagan are light years apart," Bill Whalen, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, wrote recently. "Reagan was an optimist. Trump is a scowling nativist." There's a problem with this...

As much as the Republican Party may idolize former President Ronald Reagan, a new ad from Hillary Clinton super PAC Priorities USA Action contends that the GOP of 2016 has little in common with its 1984 incarnation. The 90-second ad splices segments of Reagan's iconic "Morning in America" ad highlighting America's economic progress with videos of GOP contenders making pessimistic claims (former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush saying people need to work longer hours, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio decrying the minimum wage law, and Donald Trump declaring the American dream to be dead, among others).

Native Son, Donald Trump Wins New York!!! NYC and elsewhere will vote for Donald Trump.

Days before a Republican presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan Library, an immigration advocacy group invoked the former president to attack the tough immigration rhetoric of certain candidates, including front-runner Donald Trump. A television ad launched on Sunday by the National Immigration Forum Action Fund contrasts Reagan's call for the United States to welcome all people with the stances of Trump, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who have proposed an end to birthright citizenship and urged other crackdowns. The ad highlights Trump's demand for a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border and comments that Mexican immigrants were...

From Andrew O’Hehir writing at Salon: At some point during the Iran hostage crisis of 1980 – an event that, lest we forget, decisively scuttled the presidency of Jimmy Carter and got Ronald Reagan elected – I remember seeing a hand-painted banner outside a working-class tavern in South Baltimore. Its centerpiece was a caricature of the Ayatollah Khomeini, done in political-cartoon style with an oversized head and undersized body.

There they go again. If there were a recent editorial that could help account for the rise of Donald Trump, this one from our friends on the Wall Street Journal editorial board would be it: Government Shutdown Redux Obama and Clinton want a showdown over Planned Parenthood. Going after Senator Ted Cruz, the article reads: “Congress is back in Washington, which means more intra-GOP drama when funding for the government expires at the end of the month. Some conservatives are trying to force a showdown over Planned Parenthood, but we wish they’d explain how this would benefit the antiabortion movement...

Michael Reagan: My Father Would Be Appalled at Trump By Greg Richter | 10 Sep 2015 GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has compared himself to Ronald Reagan, but the Republican icon would be "appalled" at the way Trump acts, Michael Reagan told Newsmax TV. Trump's personal attacks on fellow candidates, including the recent Rolling Stone report of him talking about Carly Fiorina's appearance, go too far, said Reagan, a radio talk show host and son of the former president. Reagan said he hopes Trump's actions hurt him not only with women voters, but with all voters. "What he's done is...

The Washington Examiner is reporting that a left-wing 'activist' group (CREDO) is lobbying embattled House Speaker John Boehner to strip Ronald Reagan's name from our official RR Washington National Airport -and presumably tear-down his statue- all in the name of their hatred for everything -and everybody- that ever made this country great... The CREDOaction group -which is financed by their mobile phone company- 'funds progressive nonprofits' and is currently circulating an online petition named 'Tell John Boehner: Rename Ronald Reagan Airport'. They claim to have 60K signatures already. But this appears to be a sort of shot-across-the-bow to put...

can conservatives prevent Trumpism from eclipsing and dismantling the Reagan coalition? This is going to be a very important question going forward. Democrats are experiencing turmoil in their own primary at the moment — as we have been predicting here, Bernie Sanders is catching fire and Hillary Clinton is drowning in her own sins. The Republicans’ nominee could well be the next president. Will they nominate a movement conservative, or will they nominate Trump? Read more at http://conservativeintel.com/2015/09/07/the-briefing-vol-iii-issue-28/

2016 Republican frontrunner Donald Trump tells Breitbart News former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush should be speaking English—not the Spanish he spoke in to attack Trump in Miami this week—on the campaign trail. Trump had harsh words for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in this interview, as well, and lit into the donor class, all while saying that the “silent majority” in America is waking up and fighting to take back the country from the political class. Trump also predicted that he will not only win the White House in 2016, but that he will be re-elected in 2020–predicting he will be...

It’s presidential campaign season again, which means the name Reagan is going to be bandied about, embraced—and taken in vain.From Rick Santorum (who was a back-bench congressman during the Reagan years) practically claiming credit for the Reagan Revolution, to Mike Huckabee repeating “As Ronald Reagan said, ‘Trust but verify’” at the drop of every hat, to 437,986,989 misuses of “Reagan’s 11th Commandment” (it wasn’t Reagan’s but he brought it up when it benefitted him), the legacy of the man biographer H.W. Brands calls “one of the two most consequential presidents of the 20th century” pervades the Republican nomination process.But Reagan’s...