Reagan & Conservatives -- Revisonist History 101

[CrusaderFrank]

Libs, you lost your media monopoly, you look like idiots trying to rewrite the Reagan years

 

[bendog]

Estimated IQ's. If I needed any "validation" to the thesis that Reagan was consistently underestimated that's it. LOL. And, there's a flip side. The underemployed, white, former union voters in Ohio and Penn, who Obama referred to as clinging to bibles and guns, didn't buy Mitt and the Teaparty even a little.

The current gop view is 'we can't trust voters cause once they get 'free' healtcare, they'll be like blacks on crack, and unable to govern themselves.' Reagan didn't have a lot of points of ideology, and they conflicted, but he trusted voters would act in not just their own short term interests, but that they were able to grasp a theory of govt that their leaders had not bought into. Yes, he ushered in structural deficits, but since 1980 every potus except Bushii has been on the neoliberal train.

 

[Friends]

Libs, you lost your media monopoly, you look like idiots trying to rewrite the Reagan years

During Jimmy Carter's presidency an average of 2,600,000 jobs were created per year. Under Ronald Reagan that declined to 2,000,000 jobs per year.

Bush On Jobs: The Worst Track Record On Record - Real Time Economics - WSJ

The highest unemployment rate under Carter was 7.8 percent. The highest under Reagan was 10.8 percent.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/UNRATE.txt

Jimmy Carter paid down the national debt as a percentage of gross domestic product. Reagan nearly tripled it.

File:US Federal Debt as Percent of GDP by President.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

National Debt Graph by President

The ugly, sordid reality of the Reagan years is obvious to everyone but an ideological fool.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

First your chart is LOL for not showing the Obama spending hockey stick

Second what's your point anyway

 

[Friends]

First your chart is LOL for not showing the Obama spending hockey stick

Second what's your point anyway

If you did not understand my point the first time, there is no reason for me to repeat it.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

First your chart is LOL for not showing the Obama spending hockey stick

Second what's your point anyway

If you did not understand my point the first time, there is no reason for me to repeat it.

Yeah its beyond me. Use small words like: debt is bad, deficits are bad

OK?

 

[Dante]

Dante, I don't think Reagan became "more liberal" to the soviets at any pt, including when Gorbachav entered the stage. Rather, I think your pts about Safire and Will ridiculing Reagan for going soft are just another incidence of Reagan being underestimated. Reagan was lampooned as a man of few ideas, which was true; he was no Slick in being able to give a synopsis of how govt did something. But, Reagan set out to win the Cold War. They'd lose, we'd win. Safire and Will were so used to political machievellian manuever, Reagan just initially went over their heads too.

I didn't vote for the man, because of his spending. He had two central ideas: the Soviets were evil and needed beating and the govt was too involved in deciding market winners. I agreed with both, but thought his spending, and inclusion of the Relgious Right, inevitably doomed real reform on the latter idea.

You've bought into the Reagan Legacy myth, but it's underdstandable. It has been the current narrative for a few decades.

Reagan was like the psychic who makes so many predictions for so long a time one of them is bound to bear fruit.

Reagan was initially reactionary and tough with the Soviets and while that sped up the decay of the Soviet Empire, it neither initiated it or caused tbe fall of the Berlin Wall.

The Soviet system was resistent to change, but with the coming of the 20th century tgere were lots of sources at play that spelled trouble...internal as well as external.

The Berlin Wall? It fell not because Gorby agreed to tear it down. It fell because of internal forces within East Germany and because of the liberal policies of Gorby and others...liberal policies made more viable by Reagan later softening his stance and policues toward the Eastern Bloc and particularily the Soviets

Like Obama, Reagan disappointed his most ardent and earliest supporters. With Obama, we have yet to see how his terms in office end and how his legacy gets 'invented'

you misunderstood, I think, to read my post as saying Reagan won the Cold War. That was his goal, and one that people like Will and Safire didn't grasp. Reagan didn't want approachment or accord; he wanted it DEAD. Nixon too found this overly simplistic. As did the opponents of arms control. My point is simply that Reagan, the simpleton, was vindicated by history.

I don't think Reagan foresaw the impact of the technical revolution, which was the real Soviet killer.

The space program, govt sponsored research and defense all spurred the tech revolution ... but it was IBM, Apple and Msft, and private industry incorporating communication and tech applications. Unlike the TPM, Reagan had no issue with govt involment in supporting markets.

The central planning of the Soviet economy wasn't amenable to managing markets like that. It did well with building hydroelectric power ... and not so well with nuclear plants ... but they actually had higher gnp increases late in the industrial revolution. "Liberal" economists in the 60s and 70s predicted the soviets' market theory inevitably doomed them, and coincidentally that was my education. Reagan either never bought that or he simply didn't care. He was going to build a conventional force to meet them, and outspend them on nuclear offense/defense.

But, I do think Reagan has to get some credit for buying into neoliberalism, Thatcherism, and the Kemp Roth tax cuts. The problem for me was simply that he didn't PAY FOR THE TAX CUTS. In short, he failed his own vision to make govt smaller. That' s his central ideological inconsistency: his small govt belief inherently conflicted with miltary confrontion with the Godless Bolsheviks.

Every American President wanted the Soviet system dead. The battles were all about how to bring that about.

Reagan had a tough line approach and it hardened the internal forces in the Soviet Union that favored an approach that could have had them look like China pre-Nixon and North Korea today. - isolated, paranoid and dangerously militaristic.

Only when Reagan softened his stance did events allow Gorby and other forces to guide a failing Empire forward.

Your comnents are as simplistic as the Reagan Legacy Project would have it dictated and as simplistic ss the man himself. At one point Reagan was underrated, now people lije you grossly overrate the man's contributions.

In the end, when all alive during the 1980s pass on, a new look will judge Reagan without the stench of a needed myth

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Reagan defeated the USSR so soundly he left them no choice but to complete their takeover of the Democrat Party. Just look at the venom they spew when talking about their conquerer. They never say anything good about the defeat the USSR, how could they? Reagan crushed their hometeam

 

[Dante]

Poor Frank...

 

[JoeB131]

Reagan defeated the USSR so soundly he left them no choice but to complete their takeover of the Democrat Party. Just look at the venom they spew when talking about their conquerer. They never say anything good about the defeat the USSR, how could they? Reagan crushed their hometeam

Wow... and they are doing a great job, aren't they?

So Reagan destroyed the middle class and all those guys who used to vote Republican now vote Democratic!

Awesome. Good job.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Reagan defeated the USSR so soundly he left them no choice but to complete their takeover of the Democrat Party. Just look at the venom they spew when talking about their conquerer. They never say anything good about the defeat the USSR, how could they? Reagan crushed their hometeam

Wow... and they are doing a great job, aren't they?

So Reagan destroyed the middle class and all those guys who used to vote Republican now vote Democratic!

Awesome. Good job.

Joey were you a Reagan voter

 

[Camp]

Reagan defeated the USSR so soundly he left them no choice but to complete their takeover of the Democrat Party. Just look at the venom they spew when talking about their conquerer. They never say anything good about the defeat the USSR, how could they? Reagan crushed their hometeam

You are lost when intellectuals discuss Reagan Frank. Your talking points just seem frivolous and trivial.

 

[LA RAM FAN]

Poor Frank...

I see you decided to come back to your thread and take crusader retard and the other Reaganuts back to school again.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Reagan defeated the USSR so soundly he left them no choice but to complete their takeover of the Democrat Party. Just look at the venom they spew when talking about their conquerer. They never say anything good about the defeat the USSR, how could they? Reagan crushed their hometeam

You are lost when intellectuals discuss Reagan Frank. Your talking points just seem frivolous and trivial.

Yeah I'm a huge fan of the liberal intellectuals who post here, it's downright educational

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Poor Frank...

I see you decided to come back to your thread and take crusader retard and the other Reaganuts back to school again.

Hey where'd the USSR go? It was there at the start of the Reagan presidency but they parked it out back and when we woke up this morning ( in America) -- it was gone!

 

[JoeB131]

Reagan defeated the USSR so soundly he left them no choice but to complete their takeover of the Democrat Party. Just look at the venom they spew when talking about their conquerer. They never say anything good about the defeat the USSR, how could they? Reagan crushed their hometeam

Wow... and they are doing a great job, aren't they?

So Reagan destroyed the middle class and all those guys who used to vote Republican now vote Democratic!

Awesome. Good job.

Joey were you a Reagan voter

Yup. voted for him twice. And frankly, at the time, it was a good call. At that time, I was either in College under a miltiary scholarship OR in the active duty military, so frankly, Reagan was good for what I was trying to do at the time.

But here's the thing. It's laughable to claim Reagan's policies brought down the USSR, which collapsed under its own weight. The government types missed it, but a lot of people familiar with Russian studies saw it coming.

 

[Camp]

Reagan defeated the USSR so soundly he left them no choice but to complete their takeover of the Democrat Party. Just look at the venom they spew when talking about their conquerer. They never say anything good about the defeat the USSR, how could they? Reagan crushed their hometeam

You are lost when intellectuals discuss Reagan Frank. Your talking points just seem frivolous and trivial.

Yeah I'm a huge fan of the liberal intellectuals who post here, it's downright educational

Everything doesn't have to be slanted or spun into liberal or conservative. Scholarly people and intellectuals are actually able to consume data in an objective fashion with the end goal being a truthful and accurate conclusion. They do it because they want to be honest with themselves and are not interested in ignoring facts and data or adding unfounded speculation to fit a predetermined mold or "belief". When they put their conclusions into words it is easy to decipher their opinions from the facts they present and the reader or listener is free to deviate in a direction, challange or analysis of fact of their own.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

REAGAN DENOUNCES IDEOLOGY OF SOVIET AS 'FOCUS OF EVIL' - NYTimes.com

"ORLANDO, Fla., March 8— President Reagan, denouncing Soviet Communism as ''the focus of evil in the modern world,'' today warned Protestant church leaders not to treat the arms race ''as a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil.''

Groundbreaking. Breathtaking in audacity

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Wow... and they are doing a great job, aren't they?

So Reagan destroyed the middle class and all those guys who used to vote Republican now vote Democratic!

Awesome. Good job.

Joey were you a Reagan voter

Yup. voted for him twice. And frankly, at the time, it was a good call. At that time, I was either in College under a miltiary scholarship OR in the active duty military, so frankly, Reagan was good for what I was trying to do at the time.

But here's the thing. It's laughable to claim Reagan's policies brought down the USSR, which collapsed under its own weight. The government types missed it, but a lot of people familiar with Russian studies saw it coming.

Yeah, not even the CIA saw it coming.

List of all the other US Presidents and political leaders besides Reagan who called the USSR an "Evil Empire":

End of List

 

[CrusaderFrank]

USSR
USSR
USSR
USSR
USSR
Reagan
No more USSR

See how that works?

Except that Putin is no different from any other Communist Russian aggressive dictator. Russia had 20 years of capitalist democracy and it was a complete failure, just as have the last 30 years of American capitalist democracy.

Complete failure? Do you know anyone from the USSR?