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 ...
The GOPe didn't like him, didn't want him and has done everything possible to undo the Reagan revolution's gains.
GOPe to Reagan and his legacy durning three out of every four years: Goodbye and good riddance!
But, they love him during elections, though...keep those campaign donations coming.
Change the underlined word to "left" and it would be accurate.
Should have put a sarc/ tag in my post.
My God, we were infested with RINOS back then. I know guys like Lugar, Brown, Collins, and Snowe sucked, but man go to the ACU ratings site and look at the ratings for House and Senate members during the 80’s. Many of them were truly horrible like Packwood, Weicker, Heinz, Hatfield, etc... Reagan definitely was governing under a burden back then.
Reagan WAS the RINO.
So is Chuck also basically saying we should go back to the Everett Dirksen-Hugh Scott glory days of 35-44 Senate seats and getting our asses kicked regularly by the Dems for the sake of bi-partisanship? Really? Hey, Chuck taking the Bob Michel approach to making nicey-nice and going out to the links with the “friends across the aisle” isn’t going to help our country any.
It's not a matter of ideology. Reagan was a leader. Today, politicians are followers more than anything else. Whatever the differences or similarities, Reagan wouldn't be as slavish as today's politicians are. And we voters wouldn't be as persnickity and censorious as we are today. We'd put up with more setbacks and inconsistencies because we knew the leadership was sound and solid.
But all these historical comparisons are problematic. Thomas Jefferson or Franklin Roosevelt or John Kennedy wouldn't recognize or agree with today's Democratic Party if they came back today. I'm not sure Jefferson would understand anything if he were suddenly brought back from the dead: the world has changed too much since his day for an 18th century person to understand it.
But if you think about a privileged William and Mary or Harvard graduate of Jefferson's or FDR's or JFK's class today, they might just feel at home with the Democrats. If there is some future Reagan or Eisenhower out there for the GOP, by definition he or she would be a Republican, and would be comfortable with views that Eisenhower himself may not have shared.
Ortega's comment "I and I plus my circumstances" applies here. Reagan was Reaganism plus the Cold War plus 30 or 40 or 50 years of liberal control of the the Congress and the country. What Reagan did was shaped by our struggle with the Soviet Union and by the fact that he was bucking the trend of two generations.
What some hypothetical Reagan would do now in different circumstances is hard to say. "Reaganism" without the alliances and compromises Reagan had to make in the actual conditions of his time isn't necessarily "what Reagan would do if he were around now."
Whatcha wanna bet Reagan would feel more comfortable with the Republican party today than he would with the mangy stray that is Chuck Hagel?
You are truly delusional
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