Reagan & Conservatives -- Revisonist History 101

[Procrustes Stretched]

Reagan & Conservatives -- Revisonist History 101

1988: Reagan Abandoned, Mocked by Hardline Conservatives​

This is why the GOP lost in 2008 and 2012: They are living in a past that never existed, just like Reagan did. Reagan raised taxes, grew government, backed socialist programs, and more. When a political party lives on myth, sooner or later it all just collapses into a warm pile of shit

1988: Reagan Abandoned, Mocked by Hardline Conservatives
George Will

As the end of President Reagan’s final term approaches, conservatives and hardliners have radically changed their view of him. They originally saw him as one of their own—a crusader for good against evil, obstinately opposed to communism in general and to any sort of arms reduction agreement with the Soviet Union in specific. But recent events—Reagan’s recent moderation in rhetoric towards the Soviets (see December 1983 and After), the summits with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev (see November 16-19, 1985 and October 11-12, 1986), and the recent arms treaties with the Soviets (see Early 1985 and December 7-8, 1987) have soured them on Reagan.

Hardliners had once held considerable power in the Reagan administration (see January 1981 and After and Early 1981 and After), but their influence has steadily waned, and their attempts to sabotage and undermine arms control negotiations (see April 1981 and After, September 1981 through November 1983, May 1982 and After, and April 1983-December 1983), initially quite successful, have grown less effective and more desperate (see Before November 16, 1985). Attempts by administration hardliners to get “soft” officials such as Secretary of State George Shultz fired do not succeed. Conservative pundits such as George Will and William Safire lambast Reagan, with Will accusing him of “moral disarmament” and Safire mocking Reagan’s rapport with Gorbachev: “He professed to see in Mr. Gorbachev’s eyes an end to the Soviet goal of world domination.” It will not be until after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall (see November 9, 1989 and After) that conservatives will revise their opinion of Reagan, in the process revising much of history in the process. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 143-145]

Entity Tags: George Will, George Shultz, William Safire, Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan

So it was Reagan's becoming more liberal towards the Soviets, that brought about Reagan's deals with the Soviets, that led to a warming of the cold war and the end of the Soviets' hostility distrust of the west and the USA

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

How Republicans created the myth of Ronald Reagan

How Republicans created the myth of Ronald Reagan - Salon.com

Monday, Feb 2, 2009 03:28 AM PST
How Republicans created the myth of Ronald Reagan
With the Gipper's reputation flagging after Clinton, neoconservatives launched a stealthy campaign to remake him as a "great" president.
By Will Bunch

In a sense, some of the credit for triggering this may belong to those supposedly liberal editors at the New York Times, and their decision at the end of 1996 to publish that Arthur Schlesinger Jr. survey of the presidents. The below-average rating by the historians for Reagan, coming right on the heels of Clintons’ easy reelection victory, was a wake-up call for these people who came to Washington in the 1980s as the shock troops of a revolution and now saw everything slipping away. The first Reagan salvos came from the Heritage Foundation, the same conservative think tank that also had feted the 10th anniversary of the Reagan tax cut in 1991. After its initial article slamming the Times, the foundation’s magazine, Policy Review, came back in July 1997 with a second piece for its 20th anniversary issue: “Reagan Betrayed: Are Conservatives Fumbling His Legacy?”

The coming contours of the Reagan myth were neatly laid out in a series of short essays from the leaders of the conservative movement: that the Gipper deserved all or at least most of the credit for winning the Cold War, that the economic boom that Americans were enjoying in 1997 was the result of the Reagan tax cut (and not the march toward balanced budgets, lower interest rates and targeted investment), and that the biggest problem with the GOP was, as the title suggested, not Reagan’s legacy but a new generation of weak-kneed leaders who were getting it all wrong. The tone was established by none other than Reagan’s own son, Michael, now himself a talk-radio host, who wrote: “Although my father is the one afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease, I sometimes think the Republicans are suffering a much greater memory loss. They have forgotten Ronald Reagan’s accomplishments — and that is why we have lost so many of them.”

How Republicans created the myth of Ronald Reagan

The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project was hatched in the spring of 1997 — and perhaps like any successful guerrilla operation, there was an element of surprise. There was no formal announcement, nothing to tip off any alarmists on the left. Rather than incorporate the Reagan project as a separate entity, which carried the potential of greater scrutiny of its operations and its finances, it was simply a unit of the group that Norquist had been overseeing for more than a decade, the Americans for Tax Reform. The Reagan Legacy Project would not even get its first mention in print until October 23, 1997 — by then its first bold proposal had two key backers in Georgia Rep. Bob Barr and that state’s Republican Sen. Paul Coverdell. They had endorsed legislation that would rename the Capitol region’s busy domestic airport, Washington National, as Reagan National. The renaming would not only mean that millions of air travelers would pass through the facility named for the 40th president, but a disproportionate number would be from the nation’s liberal elites, especially in Big Media, who used the airport’s popular shuttle service. Simply put, Reagan National Airport would be a weekly thumb in the eye of the Yankee elites who were still belittling the aging Gipper’s presidency.

How Republicans created the myth of Ronald Reagan

 

[whitehall]

Geez. what a crock of crap.

 

[Trajan]

don't be a dilettante dante, google rangering is not very productive, its just spills ones ignorance to view....

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Geez. what a crock of crap.

try to be specific...what exactly do you dare dispute?

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

don't be a dilettante dante, google rangering is not very productive, its just spills ones ignorance to view....

Taj, information can be power. Information that is powerful often elicits responses like yours and that of whitlesshall

dispute one fact if you dare

someday you will be worthy enough to challenge in the Bull Ring. Until then, learn to earn credibility by disputing facts

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

To those who might stumble into this thread through curiosity, we ask only one thing...

notice when ideologues and tools attack yet offer no refutation or argument.

your most un-humble servant
Dante

dD

 

[Meathead]

Reagan left office about as popular as anyone in history. Why on earth would he worry about his enshrined legacy? I can see the desperation in his detractors a quarter of a century after the man left office. Now that's a legacy!

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Reagan left office about as popular as anyone in history. Why on earth would he worry about his enshrined legacy? I can see the desperation in his detractors a quarter of a century after the man left office. Now that's a legacy!

I see why you were named Meathead (dead from the neck up).

Fact: Reagan was not loved by conservatives when he left office.

Do you know what Reagan's popularity was his last year in office? Mostly between 49% & 53%.

Do you know what it must have been with conservatives? Read the past press he received form conservatives, in their very own words they now try to run away from

revisionism doesn't work where information is available

Fact: When Reagan left office his biggest detractors were conservatives

 

[JakeStarkey]

Trajan won't answer questions, Dante. He ran himself off a thread last night because he wouldn't or couldn't. He just can't stand being laughed at.

Now to the point. RR raised taxes three times, had an unemployment rate almost 1% higher than Obama, raised the deficit 16 times, cozied up to the Soviets, lied about Iran-Contra, and was responsible for hundreds of officers and thousands of NCOs leaving the service because of I-C.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Trajan won't answer questions, Dante. He ran himself off a thread last night because he wouldn't or couldn't. He just can't stand being laughed at.

Now to the point. RR raised taxes three times, had an unemployment rate almost 1% higher than Obama, raised the deficit 16 times, cozied up to the Soviets, lied about Iran-Contra, and was responsible for hundreds of officers and thousands of NCOs leaving the service because of I-C.

What is it so-called conservatives today do not get about Reagan's Presidency at the time he served?

Reagan Legacy PRoject

1988: Reagan Abandoned, Mocked by Hardline Conservatives

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

don't be a dilettante dante, google rangering is not very productive, its just spills ones ignorance to view....

Taj, information can be power. Information that is powerful often elicits responses like yours and that of whitlesshall

dispute one fact if you dare

someday you will be worthy enough to challenge in the Bull Ring. Until then, learn to earn credibility by disputing facts

Poor Traj.

 

[whitehall]

Geez. what a crock of crap.

try to be specific...what exactly do you dare dispute?

Reagan brought the US from the brink of ruin under liberal progressive Jimmy Carter and his alcoholic brother and put pride back in the US. Reagan policies made sure that we became the last super power in the world. If you wanted to examine the eight years of any administration you could find some bills that don't quite measure up to modern scrutiny and you can cherry pick junk and spin it anyway you want to but Reagan had to deal with a radical left wing congress and he did it with style. Reagan had to compromise with the radical left and deal with an obscure amendment to a Military appropriations bill sponsored by a left wing congressman named Boland that all but guaranteed Communist infiltration to Central America and true to form the left wing media blew it up into Iran/Contra. Reagan still triumphed on that issue.

 

[Meathead]

Reagan is the gift that keeps on giving.. His accomplishments annoy lefties to this day, 25 years after leaving office.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

The immature and barely literate defend Reagan? How precious.

 

[Jroc]

Trajan won't answer questions, Dante. He ran himself off a thread last night because he wouldn't or couldn't. He just can't stand being laughed at.

Now to the point. RR raised taxes three times, had an unemployment rate almost 1% higher than Obama, raised the deficit 16 times, cozied up to the Soviets, lied about Iran-Contra, and was responsible for hundreds of officers and thousands of NCOs leaving the service because of I-C.

You're an idiot Reagan closed loopholes and lower overall tax rates that's called tax reform unemployment went from almost 11% to just over 5% under Reagan, Reagan’s policy of "peace through Strength" bankrupted the Soviets while the piece of shit liberals tried to make backroom deals with them. People leaving the military because of Reagan? You're full of it Reagan, restored pride in this country, brought back our economy from the abyss, unleashed our energy production capability, he couldn’t get the spending cuts he wanted because of the liberals in congress

 

[Meathead]

I think it's because of Obama's obvious failures and the contrast of a hugely successful president to a very mediocre current POTUS that leads them to try to revise history. It is obviously a fool's errand in light of facts and the huge popularity of Reagan and his legacy so many years later.

I figure it's a sort of therapeutic venting of outrage over Obama's incompetence and lack of leadership. They just don't have the insight to recognize it.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Trajan won't answer questions, Dante. He ran himself off a thread last night because he wouldn't or couldn't. He just can't stand being laughed at.

Now to the point. RR raised taxes three times, had an unemployment rate almost 1% higher than Obama, raised the deficit 16 times, cozied up to the Soviets, lied about Iran-Contra, and was responsible for hundreds of officers and thousands of NCOs leaving the service because of I-C.

You're an idiot Reagan closed loopholes and lower overall tax rates that's called tax reform unemployment went from almost 11% to just over 5% under Reagan, Reagan’s policy of "peace through Strength" bankrupted the Soviets while the piece of shit liberals tried to make backroom deals with them. People leaving the military because of Reagan? You're full of it Reagan, restored pride in this country, brought back our economy from the abyss, unleashed our energy production capability, he couldn’t get the spending cuts he wanted because of the liberals in congress

Let's look at the record:

Spending

In 1980, Jimmy Caner's last year as president, the federal government spent a whopping 27.9% of "national income" (an obnoxious term for the private wealth produced by the American people). Reagan assaulted the free-spending Carter administration throughout his campaign in 1980. So how did the Reagan administration do? At the end of the first quarter of 1988, federal spending accounted for 28.7% of "national income."

Even Ford and Carter did a better job at cutting government.

Ludwig von Mises Institute | the Free Market

Advancing Austrian Economics, Liberty, and Peace for 30 years

The Sad Legacy of Ronald Reagan

Conservative Opposition - Hardline conservatives protest Gorbachev’s visit to Washington, and the signing of the treaty, in the strongest possible terms. When Reagan suggests that Gorbachev address a joint session of Congress, Congressional Republicans, led by House member Dick Cheney (R-WY—see 1983), rebel. Cheney says: “Addressing a joint meeting of Congress is a high honor, one of the highest honors we can accord anyone. Given the fact of continuing Soviet aggression in Afghanistan, Soviet repression in Eastern Europe, and Soviet actions in Africa and Central America, it is totally inappropriate to confer this honor upon Gorbachev. He is an adversary, not an ally.”

Conservative Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Committee is more blunt in his assessment of the treaty agreement: “Reagan is a weakened president, weakened in spirit as well as in clout, and not in a position to make judgments about Gorbachev at this time.”

Conservative pundit William F. Buckley calls the treaty a “suicide pact.” Fellow conservative pundit George Will calls Reagan “wildly wrong” in his dealings with the Soviets.

Conservatives gather to bemoan what they call “summit fever,” accusing Reagan of “appeasement” both of communists and of Congressional liberals, and protesting Reagan’s “cutting deals with the evil empire” (see March 8, 1983).

They mount a letter-writing campaign, generating some 300,000 letters, and launch a newspaper ad campaign that compares Reagan to former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

Senators Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Steven Symms (R-ID) try to undercut the treaty by attempting to add amendments that would make the treaty untenable; Helms will lead a filibuster against the treaty as well.
...
[Scoblic, 2008, pp. 142-145]

George Will

How Republicans created the myth of Ronald Reagan - Salon.com

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Even the heralded Tax Reform Act of 1986 is more deception than substance. It shifted $120 billion over five years from visible personal income taxes to hidden business taxes. It lowered the rates, but it also repealed or reduced many deductions.

https://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=488

 

[chikenwing]

So the repubs lost in 08 and 12 ,why did the dems get such an ass kicking in 2010??

A myopic view of events perhaps?