Posted on 05/12/2012 4:45:08 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
The Republican Party has drifted so far to the right and become so partisan in recent years that President Ronald Reagan wouldn't even want to be a part of it, former Nebraska GOP senator Chuck Hagel told The Cable.
"Reagan would be stunned by the party today," Hagel said in a long interview in his office at Georgetown University, where he now teaches. He also serves as co-chair of President Barack Obama's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
Reagan wanted to do away with nuclear weapons, raised taxes, made deals with congressional Democrats, sought compromises and consensus to fix problems, and surrounded himself with moderates as well as Republican hard-liners, Hagel noted.
(Excerpt) Read more at thecable.foreignpolicy.com ...
Just be thankful that Hagel is a former Senator. Obviously real Republicans saw what he really was . A former RINO who should have been a Democrat in the first place.
UpChuck Hagel can go eff himself.
There is a reason why, in another 100 years people will read about and admire our 40th President even more, and when the name ‘Chuck Hagel’ comes up, those same people will say “who?”
UpChuck is nothing but an abnormal yeast cell in America’s annual pap smear.
Reagan’s tax increases(as President (I’m side-stepping his tax increases as Governor of California):
The 1982 tax increases - these were various restrictions on deductions, exemptions, etc., which had the effect of broadening the base. In conjunction with the 1981 tax reductions, these tax increases constituted a combination of cutting the rates and broadening the base. This is very much the Republican plan of today.
The increase in the Social Security tax - this came out of the Greenspan Commission on Social Security. It was to preserve S.S. for another generation. It did that, but we’re now a bit more than a generation later. We now need a plan to fix or actually improve S.S. Romney’s proposal is more of a fix than an improvement. But, it’s something. What does the current President offer? Anything???
Reagan on immigration - the Simpson-Mazzoli bill was another fix. It didn’t address the underlying problem. It too kicked the can down the road. We now have to address the issue again. I’m not sure we have a good plan or that any plan could actually pass Congress.
I could address other specific issues. But, instead, I’ll speak to the broader issue: Ronald Reagan addressed the big issues of his day. Mostly, we remember that he restored America’s confidence in itself in terms of being a world power and in terms of stopping inflation and turning the economy around. This required deftness in working with a Congress that was, on the House side, controlled by the Democrats throughout his eight years, and a Senate that, while controlled by the Republicans for the first six years of his Presidency, always had enough Democrats to block legislation through the filibuster rule. Accordingly, on many issues, Reagan “merely” did what was urgent and did not fix the underlying problem.
The next President will inherit a God awful mess, not only from Obama, but from the preceding administration. I doubt that he will fix everything forever. His goal must be to restore America’s confidence as the leader of the free world, to address the fiscal imbalance that threatens our country’s solvency, and to kick the American economy into high gear. If he can accomplish these three goals, he might join Reagan as a great president. Probably, to accomplish these things, he will need a measure of focus and not get drawn into politically unsolvable problems.
Were Reagan alive today, he might say, yet once again, my party left me.
There are some days I actually miss BJ Clinton. What has this country become?
Chuck Hagel?
That one?
This one?
Reagan made the mistake of believing the Democrats would fulfill their end of the ‘compromise’. He raised taxes on the promise that spending would be cut. The Dems increased the budget exponentially. The Amnesty was the was the incentive for the ‘progressives’ to agree to enforce existing law. They didn’t do that either.
If Ronald Reagan were alive today, he wouldn’t recognize this nation. Ronald Reagan KNEW economics. He understood ‘Debtism’. He just couldn’t stop it. Everyone wants to get rich quick.
Exactly correct. Reagan managed to flip the Senate with his landslide election in 1980 to 53-47. He got it up to 54-46 the following congress mainly by managing to flip Senator Phil Gramm from Democrat to GOP. But the GOP lost the Senate (55-45) in 1986.
The Democrat dominated House (unlike the feckless GOP house majority in our current congress) was not afraid to use the power of the purse to get what they wanted. They correctly calculated that 1986 would be a flipping point in the Senate for two reasons:
Reagan would not identify with Amerika. Hagel is a dumbass of the highest order. Go ahead Liberals, Double-Down on the destruction of Faith, Family and Values. It’s gonna get ugly and you just can’t stop.
I maintain that the right has actually drifted to the Left, but the Left has gone so far radically to the left that gulf between the two is much wider.
Plus, the Left has nuked and purged their moderates to the point there is a large no-man's land between the two parties. The last person on the Left I had any respect for, Zell Miller, is long gone. And seeing how liberal the Republican Party has largely become, that says a LOT about where the Left really is.
Parental rights for turkey basters?
Hagel may be right. Reagan would be screaming “Where is your BACK BONE????” Other than that Hagel is his usually jerky self
Ah I think you are forgetting the promise of the democrat controlled Congress to cut spending three dollars for every dollar of tax increase. Reagan was fooled once not twice.
Go back and take your blinders off
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