Free Republic

In 2016, there are 14 Republican presidential candidates for whom Ronald Reagan is both the benchmark for conservative values and the lodestar of conservative ideas. There’s also one who wrote, in the second to last year of Reagan’s presidency, that he had been “so smooth, so effective a performer” that “only now, seven years later, are people beginning to question whether there’s anything beneath that smile.” The gadfly was Donald Trump, writing in his book The Art of the Deal. But it wasn’t just a glancing blow; to promote the book, Trump launched a political campaign that tore into Reagan’s...

Mother Jones does love found footage, doesn't it? The progressive mag's airing of Mitt Romney's "47 percent" comments at a fundraiser definitely hurt the former Massachusetts governor in his attempt to boot President Obama in 2012. Now Mojo is back with the vid above, which the mag must hope will discombobulate Republicans and help put the brakes on a libertarian-leaning senator whose anti-war and anti-NSA stances draw long looks from disaffected liberals and lefties."Rand Paul: Jimmy Carter was better on the budget than Ronald Reagan" is how the vid begins. It shows the Kentucky senator in a variety of settings...

The band was introduced by Stipe, who delivered an eloquent speech that addressed the power and historical importance of the band as part of a counterculture that somehow became mainstream. "Nirvana tapped into a voice that was yearning to be heard," he said. "In the '80s and early '90s, the idea of a hopeful, democratic country had practically been dismantled by Iran Contra, by AIDS, by the Reagan, Bush Sr. administrations. With their music and their attitudes, Nirvana blasted through all that with crystalline, nuclear rage and fury. Nirvana were kicking against the system to show a sweet and beautiful,...

Nostalgia, The Good Old Days – Who Needs Them? America needs a visionary for the future! During the past, and recent presidential election we hear the all too familiar suggestion of “returning to the good old days.” Every candidate talk about returning America to a sense of values. I don’t know about you but each time I hear, or heard that suggestion I get a little queasy in the stomach accompanied by a little bewilderment, confusion, and absolute disgust! Whenever I hear the suggestion I often wonder exactly what period in time they want to take us back to! Could...

WARNING!: The link will take you a partial cashed version of the story. It is headlined on Drudge, but has apparently been pulled by Philly Mag. These are the sorts of individuals the dems praise and who donate generously to their plantation. I was able to save a more complete version of the cashed page to my archives before it was scrubbed completely. I have the offending as well, photo, however, it is a very small thumbnail. Homosexual activist giving the finger to a portrait of Reagan. Really a classy bunch, no?

I was watching a debate this morning on CNN while at a doctor's appointment and it got me to thinking...which U.S. President really can take credit for ending the cold war? The panel was originally discussing the Reagan Revolution in comparison to the Obama Revolution with everything Obama has "accomplished" in 1 year versus what it took Reagan 8 years to do and that Obama has a more "impressive" list of accomplishments in his first year in comparison. Then one person said "Reagan won the cold war, Obama will never win the war on terror," to which the debate shifted...

I was just reading one of my daughters "history" books called, "Call to Freedom". (credit is given to "CNNfyi.com" so I knew this was going to spell trouble.) In a chapter called "The Great Society", the book brags about LBJ's accomplishments in poverty. Here's a quote..."Partly because of Johnson's Great Society, poverty in the US decreased. Overall unemployment levels stayed low and the percentage of Americans living below the poverty level dropped to about 12% by 1969. Americans' income levels rose more during the 1960's than they had during the prosperous years of the 1950's". There are chapters devoted to...

In a recent poll, more than 250 college and university history professors placed former President Bill Clinton as the best president of the last quarter entury, Ronald Reagan as the second best, followed by Jimmy Carter and then the first President Bush. (The current president was excluded since his term of office had not yet ended.) The survey also asked the historians to rank the recent Secretaries of State and Supreme Court justices as well as the relative threat to constitutional liberties posed by presidential actions. Dr. Tim H. Blessing, Professor of History and Political Science at Alvernia College, Reading,...

There is no denying Christopher Hitchens’s skill as a public figure: he is seldom at a loss for words, sometimes entertaining, and occasionally even right. But he keeps getting important things wrong because, throughout his political wanderings, there persists a strange loyalty to an obscure bloodthirsty revolutionary and to the ideals of the Bolshevik Revolution. For Hitchens—now honored throughout the neoconservative Right—remains what he has been throughout his public life, a disciple of Leon Trotsky and a talented writer and polemicist—perhaps the most talented polemicist the Bolshevik tradition has produced in the West. Given Hitchens’s current role as a neocon...

Minnesota Republicans finally won one for the Gipper on Thursday, passing resolutions in the House and Senate declaring this Sunday (his birthday) as Ronald Reagan Day, and then upping the ante with a proposal to designate the Twin Cities Interstate 494/694 loop the "Ronald Reagan Beltway." Minnesota is the only state never to have voted for Reagan, and recent proposals in the aftermath of his death last June to rename the State Office Building and the Olson Memorial Highway (Hwy. 55) for Reagan have been panned by DFLers. (Floyd B. Olson was a radically liberal Farmer-Labor governor in the 1930s.)...

Even in death, Ronald Reagan can't catch a break in Minnesota. A resolution honoring the former Republican president's birthday caused partisan friction in the state Senate Thursday and passed only after it was retooled to mention the fact he never won Minnesota and tax increases that occurred under his watch. The Democratic-controlled Senate spent more than 30 minutes debating the Republican-offered resolution, which recognizes Reagan's Feb. 6 birthday. Reagan died in June of complications from Alzheimer's disease at age 93. Minnesota was the lone state not in Reagan's column in the 1984 election. It went for Democrat Walter Mondale, a...

Meat Increases the Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease “Extensive evidence points to the rich Western diet as the fundamental cause of Alzheimer’s disease: … Worldwide, the incidence of AD [Alzheimer’s disease] is more common among people who follow meat- and dairy-centered diets, than among those people who eat a more plant-based diet.” —Dr. John McDougall, McDougall Wellness Center Indeed, a flood of research shows that the toxins in meat, including chicken and fish, increase your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, while the antioxidants in vegetables help prevent this deadly disease. Click here to learn more. In the wake of former President...

"If Walter Cronkite was around today," USA Today founder Al Neuharth proclaimed in a speech in South Dakota last week, "I think John Kerry would be President" because of "the trust the people in Middle America had in Cronkite, when he returned from Vietnam opposed to the war, public opposition soon followed." As recounted by the Daily Republic in Mitchell, South Dakota, in addition to boasting of the influence of Cronkite's bias, Neuharth "said he thought if McGovern had won the presidency in 1972, U.S. troops would have pulled out from Vietnam a lot sooner with a lot fewer casualties,...

This week, the behavior of many people on the left has been not just boorish, but despicable and beneath contempt. Even though I'm very familiar with the "everything is politics" mentality of the left, I was surprised at how so many liberals just couldn't contain their hatred until the body was in the ground. And I'm not talking so much about the left's petty complaints that the coverage of Reagan's death was "excessive" (although it was particularly crass & crude of Wonkette to describe it as "Gipperporn"), the neverending stream of attacks on Reagan & his policies, the Gipper being...

MANCHESTER music legend Morrissey sparked controversy when he announced Ronald Reagan's death live on stage during a concert - and then declared he wished it was George Bush who had died instead. Thousands of fans at Dublin Castle, in Ireland, cheered when the ex-Smiths frontman made the announcement that the former American president, who had battled with Alzheimer's Disease, had passed away. And an even bigger cheer followed when Morrissey - who is no stranger to controversy - then said he wished it had been the current President, George W Bush, who had died. Fan Tony Murray said: "He commented...

Reagan’s image improved substantially in the years after he left office Princeton, NJ – Ronald Reagan, the nation's 40th president, became one of the nation's most revered public figures in recent years, a distinct turnabout from the more routinely average ratings he received while he served in office between 1981 and 1989. Reagan's job approval ratings in his first years in office were hurt by the bad economy, and the last years of his administration were marred by the negative fallout from what came to be known as the Iran-Contra affair. Nevertheless, Americans have more recently upgraded their retrospective approval...

While some long-time critics of President Ronald Reagan stifled their inclination to criticize the dead, others launched the kind of venomous attacks that marked his long career in politics. Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy said yesterday he regretted Reagan died without ever standing trial for 1986 air strikes he ordered that killed the Libyan president's adopted daughter and 36 other people. Ronald Reagan ordered the April 15, 1986, air raid in response to a discotheque bombing in Berlin allegedly ordered by Khadafy that killed two U.S. soldiers and a Turkish woman and injured 229 people. "I express my deep regret because...

You’d think that after the phony bubble of the late 1990s, built on exaggerated earnings and revenue claims by some greedy corporate executives, that referring to the Reagan era of the 1980s as “the Decade of Greed” would be passe. But it’s a slap at the decade some in the media can’t shake. Case in point: On Tuesday’s Today, Matt Lauer marked the 20th anniversary of the film The Big Chill -- yes, NBC considered this milestone newsworthy -- by recalling how it was released in 1983, a period he described as “a time of Reaganomics, burgeoning yuppies, and the...

New HBO Series Presents Not-So-Angelic AgendaCal ThomasSyndicated Columnist HBO's latest film, Angels in America, is a two-part, multi-hour production that aired Sunday and Monday nights and will continue being broadcast all week. Angels is based on the Tony Kushner play about the American homosexual experience. I didn't want to watch it, but I did, and must admit it is one of the most effective pieces of propaganda I have encountered. Gays and lesbians are portrayed as victims -- not of their own choices but of Republicans and specifically the Reagan administration during whose second term the drama is set. British...

Tapes: Nixon Called Reagan 'Strange' 1 hour, 7 minutes ago By JONATHAN D. SALANT, Associated Press Writer COLLEGE PARK, Md. - President Nixon didn't think much of fellow Californian and Republican icon Ronald Reagan (news - web sites), calling him "strange" and not "pleasant to be around," newly released White House tapes show. Talking politics with White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman at Camp David in August 1972, Nixon switched the conversation to two Republican governors, Reagan of California and Nelson Rockefeller of New York. Both men unsuccessfully sought the 1968 Republican presidential nomination that Nixon received. "Reagan is...