Sarah Palin said,
"So today there are a lot of people looking around, looking for the next Ronald Reagan, but he was one of a kind, and you’re not going to find his kind again. And the Gipper wouldn’t want us to spend out time on that anyway."
Posted on 02/05/2011 11:34:49 PM PST by malkee
on why White House aspirants channel that previous president.
"Great men have two lives," the diplomat Adolf Berle once observed, "one which occurs while they work on this Earth; a second which begins at the day of their death and continues as long as their ideas and conceptions remain powerful."
Berle was speaking in May 1945, the month after Franklin D. Roosevelt died, and his words captured the enduring influence that FDR would exert over Democratic politics and liberal ideology for the half-century to follow. In 2011, they could just as easily apply to the totemic force that Ronald Reagan continues to hold over the right on the 100th anniversary of his birth.
These days, no Republican with national ambitions will miss an opportunity to remind us of his or her Reaganesque bona fides. Reagan's precepts of a smaller government, a bigger military, lower taxes and conservative social policies demand absolute fealty.
The irony is that Reagan would not have become such a transformational figure if he had not challenged the political orthodoxy of his own time. His self-declared legatees invoke his name as a pledge to do the opposite, a reassurance that they will not venture beyond what has become conventional thinking in the GOP. What starts as a touchstone, however, can become a millstone, if history is any indication.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Huh...this needs a barf alert...this is a “reagan wouldnt like any of the current Pols” article....
the WAPO?.....hello?
That isn’t the way I read it. I am so inured to the lefty journalists I ignore anything that isn’t substantive. The only thing that turned me off, as I indicated, was Doris Kearns Goodwin.
No it’s actually a veiled hit piece if you read it carefully....
Both on reagan and the current crop...
And also from the WAPO....a clear hit piece:
Five myths about Ronald Reagan’s legacy
By Will Bunch
Who is also the author of “Tear Down This Myth: The Right-Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy.” He is a senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News and a senior fellow with Media Matters for America.
Sarah Palin said,
"So today there are a lot of people looking around, looking for the next Ronald Reagan, but he was one of a kind, and you’re not going to find his kind again. And the Gipper wouldn’t want us to spend out time on that anyway."
Veiled=unsubstantial in my book. Nothing to back up the bad stuff they’re trying to say. I loved the Palin quote.
Whenever DKG pens an article one can be sure that one will have an alternate to toilet paper.
Wasted ink!!!
What a laugh.
Mitt Romney: "I'm not running as the Republican view or a continuation of Republican values.
That's not what brings me to the race.
(Romney Video, accessed 9/19/07)
"We don't intend to turn the Republican Party
over to the traitors in the battle just ended.
We will have no more of those candidates who are pledged
to the same goals as our opposition and who seek our support.
Turning the Party over to the so-called moderates
wouldn’t make any sense at all.""
-- President Ronald Reagan
Only a Leftist cad would care about "irony" or being transformational. Reagan did not set out to be transformational - that's what Democrats obsess about; their "legacy thing" - Reagan set out to FIX the nation's problems. It was that simple.
"Conventional thinking" of the GOP? Oh, really? How does this writer explain the failures of Bush? Of his unified GOP gov't? They "ventured beyond" and not only exploded spending and the size and scope of gov't too.
A lot of politicians tick off Reagan's "precepts" (even Obama) but they don't believe in the principles. Their understanding is only skin deep. They don't get it, they don't _want_ to get it. Why? Because they believe it means they give up power over others.
I'm listening to Reagan's 1980 nomination acceptance speech and it's like deja vu. He even mentioned government telling the people what to buy! Sounds like Obamacare! He speaks about "an amateurish and confused administration" in foreign policy. Sounds like Obama on Egypt. "The time is now to limit federal spending!" SO very familiar.
He even quotes FDR from 1932, "For three long years I have been going up and down this country preaching that Government--Federal and State and local--costs too much. I shall not stop that preaching. As an immediate program of action we must abolish useless offices. We must eliminate unnecessary functions of Government--functions, in fact, that are not definitely essential to the continuance of Government. We must merge, we must consolidate subdivisions of Government, and, like the private citizen, give up luxuries which we can no longer afford."
There is absolutely nothing “Reagan”-like about Romneycare or Huckabee’s spending binge while governor of Arkansas.
I suppose the reason I posted this is because it reminded me of the greatness of Reagan.
They stay in Reagan’s shadow on Feb. 6, 2001. But what about Feb. 7, 2011 or February 2012? Fat chance
I meant Feb. 6, 2011, not 2001.
My father died on Feb. 6. But it was in 1999.
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