Free Republic

October 27, 1964. Fifty years ago. It was a Tuesday night, one week from election day. As the Johnson-Goldwater campaign wound to its end, with Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society liberalism he was championing poised to win in a landslide over GOP nominee Senator Barry Goldwater, Americans turned on their television sets to see one last political commercial. They quickly discovered a very familiar face in a very unfamiliar setting.Actor Ronald Reagan, longtime movie and TV star, newly the host and occasional star of Death Valley Days, a weekly TV series based on the old West, was introduced by...

I thought this was a good play on the phrase, but of all the new pieces I've created this has been one of the most misunderstood ones. The original photo was of him giving the salute to soldiers. What do you guys think?

Source:Evidence Jimmy Carter Abandoned the ShahA recent article has provided some provocative information regarding former President Jimmy Carter and the Shah. While I had heard or read short articles regarding what is revealed here, the new piece by Alan Peters was an eye opener, and explained so much that I had suspected. I must admit, I used to be a Jimmy Carter supporter. I voted for him to be re-elected. I cringe when people always refer to the Hostage Rescue Attempt as "Ill Fated", "Catastrophic", "Jimmy Carter's Diaster", when Carter is to be commended for at least actually going through...

They don't hand out master's degrees in revisionist history, but if they did, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman might deserve one. Obama is mired in a geopolitical mess of his own making, from the Ukraine to the ISIS menace, yet Friedman's decided to argue that Obama shouldn't be harshly judged. His era is much more complicated than Reagan's, you see. "I'll leave it to historians to figure out years from now who was the better president," he claimed. Reagan's era was defined by a capitalist-communist competition between "two organized superpowers," while Obama's era centers on a puzzling conflict "between...

An obituary in the Washington Post for Robert Poli provides a chance to look back at a decisive moment in Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Poli was the head of the militant Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), which launched an illegal strike in 1981. The Post describes the significance of the action: The strike by PATCO, Reagan’s subsequent breaking of the union and the hiring of replacement workers were among the most significant job actions of their time, said Joseph A. McCartin, a professor at Georgetown University and a specialist on labor and social history. They “helped to define labor relations...

Ronald Reagan showed why he was legendary on the campaign trail with a humdinger he told before the Republican Governors Club Dinner on October 4, 1988. “Former Congressman Prentiss Walker dropped in on a farm and introduced himself as a Republican candidate,” Reagan began his joke...

The United States had a cold war to win against the Soviet Union. For several decades, students were taught to dive under their desks should a nuclear bomb go off. People built bomb shelters. Americans got so tired of the containment strategy, they took a gamble on a guy from California whose strategy was simple: "We win. They lose." President Reagan did win the Cold War. His Vice President, George H. W. Bush, swept into office promising to finish what Reagan started. The Berlin Wall fell. Then a threat sparked in the Middle East. Bush stormed into Iraq, freed Kuwait...

If Ronald Reagan were president today, he would handle the Islamic State (ISIS) threat very differently, and he certainly wouldn’t be looking for “cover” from the “international community,” Michael Reagan tells Newsmax TV. In 1986, Reagan ordered airstrikes against terrorist and military targets in Libya after two American servicemen were killed in the bombing of a nightclub in Berlin that was linked to the North African country. Libya had also killed five Americans when it attacked airports in Rome and Vienna. “For us to ignore by inaction, the slaughter of American civilians and American soldiers, whether in nightclubs or airline...

Shhh! Don't tell this to the Mainstream Media but Joan Rivers was a big Ronald Reagan supporter.         In the Joan Rivers obituaries you will sometimes see mention about her being friends with Nancy Reagan. However what you haven't seen yet is the fact that Rivers was a supporter of Ronald Reagan to the extent that she helped him out in his 1984 re-election campaign. It was noted at the time and many liberals were displeased as you can see from the very title of this snarky Washington Post article reprinted in the Eugene Register-Guard published early in the 1984 campaign...

Okay. I'm not sure how I missed the updates/reports other than the fact that they appear not to have been posted here at FR. Principal source link is the PDF report to Congress in regards to a prior post here:("Final Report to the Congressional Defense Committees in Response to the Joint Explanatory Statement Accompanying the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2014, page 90, “Radiation Exposure” "). (link will open/download the PDF) An update on the USS Ronald Reagan crew lawsuit re their mysterious illnesses in the wake of Operation Tomodachi is here: ("USS Reagan Sailors’ Lawsuit Found ‘Lacking’ Nuclear Expert...

Today marks the 33rd anniversary of the signing of the Economic Recovery Tax Act by President Reagan at his beloved Rancho del Cielo. The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 was one of the signature pieces of legislation during Reagan’s tenure as President. The bill cut taxes by 25 percent for every American, the largest tax cut in American history. President Reagan made it a point to sign this historic piece of legislation at his humble ranch home nestled away in the mountains outside of Santa Barbara. He recognized that the power rested with the people and not the bureaucrats...

This week I had the honor of speaking to the docents at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. They're the guides and the hosts who bring Ronald Reagan to life for a new generation of Americans. Many who visit weren't alive or paying attention when his administration brought America back from the cultural malaise and economic recession that threatened the future of our country. My presentation, "You're the Only Reagan Some Will Ever Meet," helped remind those attending of the importance of sharing and living the principles Reagan valued. Citizens visiting the Reagan Library aren't just interested in history; they want...

I was watching an episode of Jay Leno's Garage and he mentioned that Ronald Reagan had once owned an Indian motorcycle. Does anyone know more about this?You know, I can't seem to imagine Barack 0bama on a motorcycle - well maybe a Vespa.

Editor's Note: This column was coauthored by Bob Morrison. It may have been the most effective political ad in history. President Reagan ‘s 1984 “Prepared for Peace” ad was a 30-second spot featuring a bear. It put the essential question to the American voters and let them decide who was right. They decided then that Reagan was right: It was best to be “as strong as the bear, if there is a bear. President Reagan carried forty-nine states that year. It’s helpful to remember what was happening in the world at that time. Just the previous September, the USSR...

Friday on MSNBC's "Hardball," the son of former president Ronald Reagan slammed the Republican base as the "the most ignorant 20 percent of America." "Here's the Republican Party once again presenting themselves with all sorts of Catch-22 situations," Reagan said. "I assume John Boehner is trying to appeal, as well as to people in his party there in Congress, the 20 percent of America that's really the most ignorant 20 percent of America. i.e., the Republican base. The problem with that is while you are appealing to the ignorant 20 percent, 80 percent of the country think's you're crazy and...."

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama was named the worst president since World War II, according to a survey of the American people who were asked to rate the nation's chief executives over the past 69 years. The Quinnipiac University Poll released last week found that one third of its respondents picked Obama as the all-time worst, ahead of George W. Bush in its disapproval. Obama's unpopularity will come as no surprise to those who've been closely following his big spending presidency. But the really big news was the man who topped the best presidency list: Ronald Reagan. Reagan championed entrepreneurial...

Shortly before Richard Nixon was going to formally announce that he would be running again for president in 1968, Pat Buchanan and Rose Mary Woods, two of his closest aides, presented him with an idea. "Given the multiple crises confronting the nation -- race conflict, soaring crime, inflation, the war in Vietnam, the mounting Soviet missile threat -- and the difficulty of dealing with them all at once," Buchanan writes in his new book "The Greatest Comeback," "we suggested that Nixon in a single declaration destroy the image of him as a consummate politician and tell the nation 'that the...

Former Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze has died aged 86, media reports say. Mr Shevardnadze became foreign minister of the Soviet Union in 1985. In 1992, he was appointed head of state of the newly independent republic of Georgia. He led the country out of instability and civil war but in November 2003 was toppled in the "Rose Revolution" sparked by opposition allegations of irregularities in parliamentary polls.

Because when President Barack Obama was blaming every problem under the sun on his predecessor President George W. Bush, he just wasn’t go back far enough. Via RCP: WARREN: I grew up in an America that was investing in kids. It was investing in public universities. It had a higher minimum wage. It was an America that said every kid would get a fighting chance. And that’s how we built America’s great middle class. Then starting in about the 1980s, we turned in a different direction. COLBERT: You mean when Reagan came in and it was morning in America. The...

Because when President Barack Obama was blaming every problem under the sun on his predecessor President George W. Bush, he just wasn’t go back far enough. Via RCP:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO WARREN: I grew up in an America that was investing in kids. It was investing in public universities. It had a higher minimum wage. It was an America that said every kid would get a fighting chance. And that’s how we built America’s great middle class. Then starting in about the 1980s, we turned in a different direction.COLBERT: You mean when Reagan came in and it...