Posted on 09/02/2004 9:00:26 PM PDT by Mich0127
NEW YORK -- The spirit of our late President Ronald Wilson Reagan was evident among the Republicans gathered in this city for the Republican National Convention.
Ronald Reagan's influence lives on amongst the younger GOPers who are here seeking help for their own campaigns to carry the Reagan Revolution well into the 21st Century.
Duane Sand, now running for Congress from North Dakota, rose from dirt poverty to become a successful businessman in real estate and running a restaurant.
"When Ronald Reagan ran, I was 12 years old," he told Newsmax.com. "I was struck by how he gave me a good feeling and confidence in this country and in my own potential."
Sand's first memory of his father was seeing him being handcuffed in his living room after he had beat up on the boy's mother. Both his parents were alchoholics, fought a lot, and were divorced. Later, his mom re-married, "unfortunately to another alchoholic." He remembers eating "government cheese" while his mother was on the government WIC (Women Infants & Children) program.
In 1979, when Jimmy Carter was president, the young lad had to go out and shoot a couple of jackrabbits for the family Thanksgiving dinner. The price of gasoline in the long lines at the pump that year were such that they could not afford to drive to his grandmother's house for the holiday.
"If I felt sorry for myself, I would be a liberal," he told NewsMax.
Reagan had a powerful influence on Sand, who says he went from being poor to to now owning $2 million in real estate, thanks, he says, "to Ronald Reagan becoming president when I was maturing in life. His confidence in the unlimited potential of "the shining city on the hill" convinced Sand that he could succeed.
Sand favors low taxes and small government. He wants to make the Bush tax cuts permanent and ultimately eliminate the income tax altogether, replacing it with a flat tax or consumption tax.
"We've spent 50 years, billions of dollars, and tens of thousands of lives defeating communism, and yet here in America, the second most powerful party in the country [the Democrats] are trying to take us toward that socialist type of govenment. As long as there's a breath in my body, I want to be fighting them back."
Sand's opponent, Democrat Earl Pomeroy is one of the highest tax lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Noth Dakota has a Republican governor and a huge Republican maority in the state legislature. Yet the state sends Democrats to Congress. Duane Sand hopes to break that mold.
Hasn't Mr. Sand already lost a race for the U.S. Senate in ND? ND always sends Democrats to both houses of Congress though it is a cinch for the Bush/Cheney ticket again. People there want federal gravy that they associate with the Democrats, but they don't want liberal Democrats in the White House. Still we can wish Mr. Sand the best, but Pomeroy is heavy favorite.
BUMP!
I see your from Texas. Your own Dick Armey was raised in Cando, North Dakota.
Good! We need some Reagan-like Republicans to challenge the present "compassionate conservative" socialism that now dominates the Republican party.
It's a sad commentary on the state of things in ND that even the state they refer to as "The People's Republic of Minnesota" is now electing Republicans to the Senate, while they are still stuck in the Old Democrat Stone Age.
PING
BTT!!!!!!!
Xer Ping
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I was born in the period between Thatcher's election here in England, and Reagan's election in the U.S. As such, unconsciously, I absorbed the footage of the two of them during my childhood and have taken them as the best political role models ever since.
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