Posted on 12/26/2007 9:44:03 PM PST by traviskicks
On Christmas Day, I glanced at the memorabilia from my years in politics. The photos and notes from Newt Gingrich. Candid shots of me with the likes of Jimmy Carter and of the brilliant mastermind of his presidential victory, Hamilton Jordan. Next were shots of me posing with Bill Clinton and then with both President Bushes.
And oh yes, here was a young U.S. Senate aide Matt Towery with one Ronald Reagan. Everyone knows there are plenty of people with photos of themselves with politicians. And there are loads of people who were close to Reagan. Many of them have both the credentials and the motives -- especially the motives -- to refute what I am about to write. Certainly my friends who still consider themselves respected experts and D.C. insiders would never dare write what follows. They would be cast off into the outer circles of the political establishment.
Personally, I could care less. So here goes. Reagan was once an Iowan. He once broadcast University of Iowa football games, and he later was "discovered" by Hollywood when living in Des Moines.
It is my personal belief that if Reagan were alive and living in Iowa today, and he had to choose among the Republican presidential candidates, that he would likely choose the man the GOP establishment and national media have written off -- Congressman Ron Paul.
To begin with, there is little doubt that for at least foreign policy, Reagan was basically a non-interventionist. He bragged about the fact that the United States did not occupy foreign countries. He stressed in virtually every speech about the "Evil Empire" of the Soviet Union that they must be brought down, but not by use of force or war. When provoked by Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi, the Osama bin Laden of the 1980s, Reagan used strategic bombing next to the quarters in which al-Qaddafi was sleeping to bring the brash "terrorist" to his knees.
Even the vicious murder of more than 200 troops in Lebanon did not provoke invasion or war. Instead, Reagan removed U.S. presence there in order to cool down an ultra-hot situation. Oh yes, we did invade Grenada. More a military exercise than a true battle.
As for domestic policy, again Reagan's philosophy seems closer to that of Paul's than any other Republican candidate today. Reagan constantly railed against big government. In speech after speech, he emphasized the need to adhere to the Constitution, and to respect the powers of the individual states. Sound familiar?
As for some of Dr. Paul's more far-fetched positions, they may be "out there," but it wasn't hard for me to find quotes from Reagan that reflected nearly the same sentiments. For example, Paul's concerns about a monetary system based on something closer and closer to worthless paper was similarly expressed by Reagan as early as 1964 when he stumped for Barry Goldwater for president.
In a speech that year, Reagan expressed concerns about America losing its monetary independence. And, eerily, he alluded to fears about foreign nations owning American currency.
As I try to remind my friends who were around in 1980, Reagan was considered by the mainstream Republican establishment to be as kooky as many label Paul as being.
Gerald Ford in 1980 was quoted in Time Magazine as saying that Reagan was "unelectable." It is no wonder that when Reagan challenged Ford some four years earlier for the GOP nomination, Paul was one of only a handful of sitting congressmen who supported Reagan's effort.
What Paul lacks is Reagan's movie-star looks, and the credibility that comes with having been governor of California. Even without those attributes, Paul has managed to become the first Republican candidate I've seen since 1980 that can draw huge crowds so devoted to their candidate that they seem almost cult-like in their zeal. Believe it or not, that's what we thought of the Reagan crowds that gathered early in his bid for president in 1980.
The fact is that Reagan tamed both his rhetoric and the implementation of his agenda to meet the realities of the presidency. My guess is that were Ron Paul to have such a chance, he would inevitably do the same.
I still believe that between the Republican Party's longing to appear "mainstream" and the national political media's fear of appearing to give in to "fringe elements," that Paul's quest for the nomination will fall far short in the end.
But as I have said before, Lord help both parties if he decides to run as a third-party candidate. They may not like what he might say, but he would darn sure say it.
As Reagan said once said when a debate moderator cut him short, "I paid for this microphone." Paul might just buy one of his own.
I realize that Reagan is highly revered by most conservatives and he was a great man, and a uniter. But I think we should be careful about exalting human beings, to the point of considering it blasphemy if someone doesn't praise them 100%. All human beings are fallible.
The ONLY person worthy of that kind of praise is God Himself.
ping
Nonsense. Paul is basically running against the Republican Party, and Reagan would have had no part of that.
“We would have made the Soviets mad at us.”
RP would never make the Soviets mad at us since there is no ‘explicit mention’ of that in the Constitution.
“Reagan was a limited gov’t conservative, not an anarchist libertarian. Big difference.”
Paul is an anarchist? Please give an example of his positions to back up that charge.
“Paul is basically running against the Republican Party, and Reagan would have had no part of that.”
No, Paul is running against the big government-Rockefeller wing, which has taken control of the Republican party and which Reagan would also be against.
Is that why (as yet unconfirmed) reports have him bolting the GOP for a third-party run?
If you want to vote for a GOP candidate who will take on the big-government folks, vote Thompson. If you want to have fantasies about a "return" to an era that never existed, vote for Paul and his minor party.
This is video of Matt Towery going into more detail about this article.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFg488AkmaE
Joke, right?
The idea that Reagan would vote for a guy who enables the Troofer community is perhaps even more insulting than anything the Left has ever written about him. Towery should be ashamed.
What would Ron Paul have done during the Cuban Missile Crisis? That is the problem. We don’t know. He might say it was none of our business what Cuba did as long as they didn’t attack us. What would Ron Paul do if a country Middle East planned a major attack there that threatened to stop the flow of oil to us? That is the problem. We don’t know. What would Ron Paul do if a US embassy were captured in the Middle East? I think we do know about that one. He would be Jimmy Carter.
First of all, Thompson’s conservative voting record in the Senate isn’t great (86 out of 100).
Secondly, Thompson would never pull in swing voters. That was Bob Dole’s problem. And like Bob Dole, he’d be another uninteresting, losing candidate.
“I strongly support Ron Paul. We very badly need to have more representatives who understand in a principled way the importance of property rights and religious freedom.” --Dr. Milton Friedman
“... the most honest man in Congress.” --John McCain
“If you go up and down the issues literally, as far as no more government no matter what. Just please no more government and all of these issues on closed government, on IDs, on cameras - all the things that are true to my heart, Ron Paul comes out the winner.” --Matt Drudge
“I think an enormous part of the Republican Party believes that Ron Paul was the only man who was right on Iraq. He opposed going in, he opposes a foreign policy or interventionism, he’s the one candidate who goes after the neoconservatives and says their influence has got to be removed. And I think wisely in his judgment, he will bring troops home from Cold War commitments of long ago where they don’t belong. ... I like him personally, I know him personally… I will say that he is also the one candidate that everybody knows who fought against big government. He voted against unsure Medicare, the prescription drugs, and No Child Left Behind. He’s consistent, he’s courageous.” --Pat Buchanan
“Ron Paul is talking about the issues. These other candidates and these parties don’t want to talk about the fact that this superpower is spending hundreds of billions of dollars carrying out a global war–it’s unsustainable. So there’s no discussion….These candidates are not being straightforward.“ --Lou Dobbs
“Ron Paul is actually a true conservative… He is the real thing. These other guys in some sense aren’t” --Paul Krugman
“There are 535 people on Capitol Hill whose job it is to write the laws that govern all of us, and he is one of them. There are 535 people on Capitol Hill whose job it is to preserve the Constitution, and he is one of them. There are 535 people on Capitol Hill whose job it is to preserve our liberties, and he is one of them. But in his heart and in his head, in his character and in his intellect, and in what he has done and in what he will become — the Thomas Jefferson of our day — Ron Paul is one of us!” --Andrew Napolitano
Would Reagan vote for Ron Paul?
Read Reagan’s quote from Reason Magazine, 1976, and that should give you a likely answer:
“If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals?if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.”
Paul’s the only libertarian Republican candidate.
Nice quotes!
My point stands. Are you ready to go on record saying that Ronald Reagan would be enthusiastic about Troofer backing and wasting government funds reinvestigating 9/11 because Troofers thirst for new red meat?
Um... Paul's is worse (82).
I always considered Ron Paul more a kook than a conservative. But even I was stunned when I did some analysis of the American Conservative Union’s lifetime ratings for congresspersons. It was worse for Ron Paul than I thought. He is clearly not among the more conservative of our elected representatives. The results surprised me so much, that I reprint here an edited comment I posted to another thread (the ratings referred to are the ACU’s lifetime rartings through 2006):Secondly, Thompson would never pull in swing voters. That was Bob Dole’s problem. And like Bob Dole, he’d be another uninteresting, losing candidate.Ron Paul has only an 82.3 rating. Ha! Some conservative. Here are some well-known Senators who are (or, in case of those who recently left Congress, were) rated more conservative than Paul:
Kay Bailey Hutchison
John Cornyn
Trent Lott
Lindsey Flim Flam Graham
Bill Frist
Amnesty Mel Martinez
Chuck Hagel
John Sununu (New Hampshire for God’s sake!!)
Libby Dole
Lamar Alexander(Of course there are many other senators, such as Jeff Sessions and Orrin Hatch, who are not listed here because it is a given they are more conservative than Paul.)
Paul has the same rating as John McCain!!!!
While it is anecdotal, there are already lots of stories of disgusted Democrats expressing interest in Thompson. They know a leader when they see one.
This is what Reagan had to say about dogmatic purists demagogues like Paul
By Ronald Reagan in his autobiography An American Life
“When I began entering into the give and take of legislative bargaining in Sacramento, a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election didn’t like it. “Compromise” was a dirty word to them and they wouldn’t face the fact that we couldn’t get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don’t get it all, some said, don’t take anything. I’d learned while negotiating union contracts that you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: ‘I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.’ If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that’s what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it.”
Oh, and Reagan was also a former Democrat, as well.
As was Eisenhower.
So the point at which Ronald Reagan would not have supported Ron Paul is when he was still a democrat, and before he became a Republican?
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