Tag: Ronald Reagan

In Screed against Weiner and Spitzer, Pat Buchanan Whitewashes Reagan’s Adultery and Nancy’s Pre-Marital Pregnancy

Jon Ponder
The Reagans’ wedding photo: From left matron-of-honor Brenda Marshall, Ronald and Nancy Reagan and best man William Holden — Nancy was about two months pregnant when this photo was taken

In a post titled “Pat Buchanan’s caliphate,” P.M. Carpenter has some fun with Buchanan’s lambasting the decadent immorality of liberal pols like Anthony Wiener and Elliot Spitzer compared with what he views as the minor moral failures of good Christian Republicans like Ronald Reagan:

Just strike up the paleoconservative, theocratic band and for heaven’s sake “Consider how far we are along the path that liberalism,” [Buchanan writes in a post at a wingnut site], “equates with social and moral progress”:

Ronald Reagan was the first and is the only divorced and remarried man elected president. But the front-runner in the New York mayor’s race today quit Congress as a serial texter of lewd photos to anonymous women. The front-runner in the city comptroller’s race was “Client No. 9” in the prostitution ring of the convicted madam who is running against him

Leaving aside the fact that the office of mayor of New York cannot aptly be compared with the U.S. presidency, Buchanan left out the worst of Dear Leader Reagan’s personal moral failings, which were far worse by Buchanan’s standards than consorting with prostitutes and sending naughty text messages.

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Ronald Reagan: ‘Let’s Lay It to Rest Once and for All … Social Security Has Nothing to Do with the Deficit’

Jon Ponder

PRES. RONALD REAGAN: Social Security, let’s lay it to rest once and for all. I told you, never would I do such a thing, but I tell you also now. Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit. Social Security is totally funded by the payroll tax levied on employer and employee. If you reduce the outgo of Social Security, that money would not go into the general fund to reduce the deficit. It would go into the Social Security trust fund. So Social Security has nothing to do with balancing the budget or erasing or lowering the deficit.

Reagan tripled the national debt and George W. Bush doubled it again. But that was okay, Dick Cheney said in 2002, because Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.

Ronald Reagan Supported What His Party Now Calls Class Warfare on the Rich

Jon Ponder

Pres. Ronald Reagan, June 6, 1985:

We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. In theory, some of those loopholes were understandable, but in practice they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying ten percent of his salary, and that’s crazy. […] Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver or less?

Think Progress, Oct. 3, 2011:

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Flashback 1987: Ron Paul Trashes Ronald Reagan

Jon Ponder

Ron Paul in 1988
Ron Paul in 1988
Big Government libertarian Rep. Ron Paul of Texas released an attack ad this week against his intra-state rival, Gov. Rick Perry.

Paul has been running for president off and on for a quarter of century, but, according one-time Paulestinian Dave Weigel at Slate.com, this is the first attack ad ever released by a Ron Paul campaign.

The Paul campaign’s attack ad pointed up Perry’s support in 1988 for Al Gore, who ran as a conserva-Dem in the primaries that year. The Perry campaign fired back by releasing the text of Paul’s letter from the same presidential cycle explaining that he was leaving the Republican Party to run for president on the libertarian ticket. Included in his rationale was his disappointment in the policies and performance of Pres. Ronald Reagan:

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Big Government? Let’s Talk Reagan

Trish

35,000

Number less of non-military federal employees under Pres. Obama, compared to Pres. Reagan. Obama, like every Democratic president starting with Jimmy Carter, has cut federal employees, while every Republican, starting with Reagan, has increased them. When Reagan employed 2,875,000 non-military employees in 1980, the American population was 226.5 million. Obama employs 2,840,000 serving a national population of 330 million.

Reagan Claimed Default ‘Threatens Those Who Rely on Social Security, Veterans Benefits’ – Was He Lying, Too?

Jon Ponder

Right: Reagan claiming in 1987 that debt-ceiling default would threaten recipients of Social Security and veterans benefits; left: leading freshman House tea bagger accuses Pres. Obama of lying when he said the same payments were at risk

The House Democratic Caucus found this audio from Pres. Ronald Reagan in 1987:

REAGAN: Congress consistently brings the Government to the edge of default before facing its responsibility. This brinkmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits. Interest rates would skyrocket, instability would occur in financial markets, and the Federal deficit would soar. The United States has a special responsibility to itself and the world to meet its obligations. It means we have a well-earned reputation for reliability and credibility – two things that set us apart from much of the world.

Reagan’s claim that defaulting on the debt ceiling “threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits” is noteworthy because after Pres. Obama made a similar assertion, tea party Republicans in Congress accused him of lying.

Rep. Joe Walsh, a hyped-up freshman tea bagger from Illinois, rushed out a amateurishly produced video in which he said, “Pres. Obama, quit lying. You know darn well that if Aug. 2 comes and goes, there is plenty of money to pay off our debt and cover all of our Social Security obligations.”

So, just to connect the dots, Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill., has inadvertently also accused Reagan, the patron saint of tea baggery, of lying, too.

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The More Like Reagan Republicans Try to Be, the Less Like Reagan They Are

Trish

The question is, if Ronald Reagan could compromise, why wouldn’t folks who idolize Ronald Reagan be willing to engage in those same kinds of compromises?

— Pres. Barack Obama, trying to understand why today’s Republicans allow themselves to be bullied by Ronald Reagan protege Grover Norquist, putting their pledge to him above Ronald Reagan himself.

Reagan to Senate Leader on Debt Ceiling in 1983: Default Would Lead to ‘Incalculable Damage’

Jon Ponder

art-letter-reagan-debt-ceilingToday’s Republicans give lip service to Ronald Reagan as if he were the paragon of tea party conservatism, but they conveniently ignore his actual record, particularly the fact that, as president, he raised taxes at least seven times, including the largest corporate tax in history, and, as governor of California, one of his first acts was to raise state taxes by $1 billion, which is roughly $6.5 billion today.

No doubt these same Republicans will also ignore the fact that, in 1983, Pres. Reagan strongly advocated raising the debt ceiling when the United States was undergoing an economic crisis similar to the one facing the country today. Back then, in a letter [PDF]to Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker, R-Tenn., Reagan wrote:

Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United States would have substantial effects on the domestic financial markets and on the value of the dollar in exchange markets. The Nation can ill afford to allow such a result. The risks, the costs, the disruptions and the incalculable damage lead me to but one conclusion: the Senate must pass this legislation before the Congress adjourns.

The reason that Republicans, particularly the tea baggers, ignore Reagan’s actual record is because facts don’t matter, especially if the facts get in the way of their prime objective: doing whatever it takes, including blowing up the world’s financial markets, in order to ensure that Mitt Romney is the next president of the United States.

The text of Reagan’s letter to Baker, urging him to support the vote in Congress is transcribed in full below.

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Democrats Opted Not to Impeach Reagan After He Failed to Consult Congress before Invading Grenada in 1983

Jon Ponder

There they go again. The drumbeat on the right for impeaching Pres. Obama is reaching a feverish pitch.

The GOP put impeaching the president on the table last summer, even before it was a cinch they would retake the House in November. Over at the birtherist site, World Nut Daily, they even published a book listing putative impeachable offenses against the president titled, “The Case for Impeachment: Why Barack Hussein Obama Should be Impeached to Save America.” One notable offense in the book: The president, or someone at the White House, reportedly allowed pop stars Beyonce and Jay-Z to have their photographs taken in the White House Situation Room.

Then, as the midterms drew near, Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who would chair the House Oversight Committee, where impeachment investigations usually originate, described the president to Rush Limbaugh as “one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times” and announced that he would increase the size of the committee’s staff. (Issa, who should know from corruption — he’s a suspected arsonist and was charged with grand theft auto in 1980 — later tried to walk back his characterization of the president.)

Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., the history-challenged prospective GOP presidential candidate, also piled on, suggesting that if Republicans gained control of Congress, they should forget governing and do nothing but investigate the president. “Oh, I think that’s all we should do,” she said. “I think that all we should do is issue subpoenas and have one hearing after another. And expose all the nonsense that is going on. And it’s very important when we come back that we have constitutional conservative leadership because the American people’s patience is about this big.”

Now, in the wake of Pres. Obama’s order last Friday to bomb Libya in preparation for establishing a no-fly zone, right-wing radio talkers and others on GOP propaganda outlets are clamoring once again for impeachment. Critics of the president charge that he violated the War Powers Clause by initiating the bombing without first seeking approval of Congress.

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