Posted on 06/24/2004 1:36:27 AM PDT by kattracks
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ron Reagan, the younger son of the late President Reagan, criticized the Bush administration's foreign policy, saying he believed the president misled Americans to gain support for the Iraq war."We lied our way into the war," he said on CNN's "Larry King Live" on Wednesday, referring to allegations that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and direct connections to al-Qaida. "It's a terrible mistake, a terrible foreign policy error."
Reagan, 44, a vocal opponent of his father's conservative politics, said he would vote for anyone who could beat the current president.
Reagan also said he was angered over the administration's opposition to human embryonic stem cell research.
"It's shameful," he said. "We're not talking about fetuses, human beings being killed. We're talking about collections of cells in a petri dish that are never ever going to be a human being."
Reagan said he expected his mother to continue to speak out in favor of stem cell research. Nancy Reagan has long argued that such work could lead to cures for a number of diseases like the Alzheimer's that afflicted her husband.
He said Nancy Reagan was doing "pretty well."
"I've got to hand it to her. She's 83 years old. She doesn't get around as well as she used to, a little glaucoma," he said. But, "She's a professional."
Calling the President a liar. A class act, huh?
Now Letterman is calling W a liar. Sickening.
Who cares what that idiot says? So very dumb. Anyone with an ounce of brains knows that Bush did not lie, knows that Saddam had WMD and now knows that they have been smuggled out during our begging the U.N. season.
Ron and just sit there and complain and hate Bush all he wants - nobody cares.
Now he can go back to his real job doing commentary for dog shows.
Ron protested what his dad did as president well.
Ron was wrong then and he's wrong now.
Nothing new really.
Ron Reagan
Ron Reagan never really cared for his father's politics. When in office and after out of office, Ron made it very clear that he was a liberal, he thought his father's policies were bad for Americans, and didn't really think his dad had as much to do with the fall of the USSR as people gave him credit.
So, it was no surprise when he took a subtle potshot at George Bush last night. Ron said his father was a deeply religious man who believed he was here to serve God's purpose. Then he said his father didn't wear his religion on his shirt sleeve and did not believe there was a God given mandate.
The obvious contrast was with Bush.
I think that those lines will only be given appreciation and credence by liberals. And that's just it. Ron Reagan never understood his father. He did what he could to embarass his dad and did what he could to distinguish himself. Ron is not comfortable with religion. During the prayers at every service his head was never bowed and his eyes were never closed.
Liberals do not get the open display of religion. So, Ron's words will comfort liberals and might boost his career as a Ronald Reagan for the left (which he previously failed at). Conservatives will ignore it. Independents, who trend toward the conservative view of "shirt sleeve religion" probably will have no problem either.
In a week when politics was put on hold, Ron Reagan tried his best to break out of the pack by making himself standout. All of his life he has tried to escape the inescapable shadow of his father. A telling sign that, unlike his father and the current President, he has never been comfortable in his own skin.
Oh, and one more thing, Ron was wrong. His father did view it as a mandate as Margaret Thatcher herself alluded to.
Ronnie himself certainly believed that he had been given back his life for a purpose. As he told a priest after his recovery `Whatever time I've got left now belongs to the Big Fella Upstairs'.
And surely it is hard to deny that Ronald Reagan's life was providential, when we look at what he achieved in the eight years that followed.
Others prophesied the decline of the West; he inspired America and its allies with renewed faith in their mission of freedom.
Others saw only limits to growth; he transformed a stagnant economy into an engine of opportunity.
Others hoped, at best, for an uneasy cohabitation with the Soviet Union; he won the Cold War - not only without firing a shot, but also by inviting enemies out of their fortress and turning them into friends.
Reagan saw his mandate from God to fight an evil that denied God's own existence. He dedicated his Presidency to it.
The fact is, Ron Reagan does not get either his father's or the President's conviction of spirit. And he cannot see evil in what he sees as just another silly religion.
Maybe one day he will see the light his father so very much wanted him to see. Contrast Ron's discomfort with the joyous sadness of his older brother who understood and believed.
http://www.erickerickson.org/archives/002008.html
What did Letterman say?
I', afraid that what's left of the Reagans besides his adopted son isn't worth the time of day.
This twerp emerges from his well-earned obscurity just long enough to pipe up about his I'm-not-my-father opinions riding on the name his father gave him. Now, he's added another trick -- hiding behind his mother. Any factual rebukes to Ron the Lesser will be viewed as insensitive to the widow of Ronald the Great.
I for one would have no way of knowing, having stopped watching him in disgust and abhorrence years ago.
As for ALL the Bush haters;I will get huge satisfaction from all of them cringing and whining when W is elected for another 4 years free from the concern of re-election, and with the near certainty of four Supreme Court nominations to hit his desk in that time.
Now only if the Republicans in the Senate could grow some manly parts.....
Give me Michael Reagan over this moron any day of the week.
Former President Ronald Regan’s affliction with Alzheimer’s has left him unable to comment on George W. Bush’s. However, his son Ron Reagan, Jr., sure is shooting his mouth off:
“My father crapped bigger ones than George Bush,” says the former president’s son, in a flame-throwing conversation about the war and the Bush administration’s efforts to lay claim to the Reagan legacy. […]
“The Bush people have no right to speak for my father, particularly because of the position he’s in now,” he said during a recent interview with Salon.
Source:
I’m not going to debate the merits of President Reagan’s various bodily excretions. Suffice it to say, I have a hard time believing that Junior is an authority on parallels between Reagan’s and George W.’s policies.
Ronald Reagan Jr., or Ron as he prefers, hasn’t done anything memorable since his Saturday Night Live appearance in 1986 when he revealed that he was only interested in his father’s career to the extent it permitted him to have “fun” being on shows like SNL. He couldn’t be bothered to attend the Republican Convention’s tribute to his father, but instead listened to it on NPR on his way to the store.
Frankly, he appears far more interested in establishing organizations like The Creative Coalition with fellow “political” actors like Susan Sarandon. After all, it can’t hurt to have a failed talk-show host and former ballerina using his father’s name recognition and clout to lobby for free speech for artists (along with government handouts grants in support of the arts).
Of course, Reagan’s father was also known for his military buildup and aggressive foreign policy. “Yes,” he concedes, “there are some holdovers from my dad’s years, like Elliott Abrams and, my God, Admiral Poindexter, who’s now keeping watch over us all. But that observation doesn’t hold up. My father gave a speech a couple years after he left the White House calling for ‘an international army of conscience’ to deal with failed states where atrocities are taking place. He had no thought that America should be the world’s policeman.
Source:
No, you stupid twit. Your father’s speech was given in 1982 at Oxford. (You probably don’t remember because you were busy practicing your pirouettes and trying to iron out your sexual orientation.) What your father said was that we needed an international army of conscience created by the U.N. that would use force, if necessary, to right wrongs.
Another great one from your father which you probably didn’t hear:
The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or the next. It was the deep knowledge – and pray God we have not lost it – that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest.
He gave that speech on June 6, 1984. Unfortunately, it’s been forgotten by a country full of satin-slippered cheese munchers like you who’ve forgotten their history and to whom their gratitude is due.
He believed there must be an international force to intervene where great human tragedy was occurring. Rwanda would have been a prime example, where a strike force capable of acting quickly could have gone in to stop the slaughter.
Source:
What do you think we just did, Junior? Or were you too busy doing stretching exercises and looking through the want ads for a new career to pay attention to world events for, say, the past month?
Go back to ballet, your “wife” and your cats. Leave the thinking and policy analysis to the grown-ups (or even your brother, Mike), you stupid ---.
http://www.electricvenom.com/index.php?p=3747
I like it.
BTW, he's not a Jr. His name is Ronald Prescott, not Ronald Wilson.
He jokingly calls it George W. Bush "Lie of the day", shows him saying to an audience that "It's good to be here"
This is what settles for comedy these days.
This man is a shame to his family and his fathers memory.
Now Letterman is calling W a liar. Sickening.
Since when did lieing matter to these 2-faced liberals? Clinton lied and purposely killed people to keep his little sluts testimony off the front pages. Lieing IS Liberalism!
Who cares what a dancer for the Joffrey Ballet has to say.
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