There's furious effort by the left to recast the public image of Pres. Ronald Reagan. This April, 2013 column by lefty pundit David Sirota typifies it.
The Reagan Revolution is over - Salon.com
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Originally Posted by Sirota
Reagan today looks like an admirable moderate in comparison to the wildly unpopular fringe conservative elements that run today’s GOP.
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It's no secret why the left wants this recasting. Reagan is probably now the most popular ex-prez of the past century. Sirota himself quotes a poll that found Reagan would beat Obama in almost every age, income, gender, and ethnic group.
I just finished reading
"The Age of Reagan" by Steven F. Hayward (very good book, btw). If you read it, a very different picture emerges than the revisionism we're getting from the left. Here are 5 things that these lefties have forgotten, and would doubtless like everyone else to forget as well.
1) Reagan in 1980 inherited a GOP that was centrist-left. This meant that Reagan had to bring in many 'Nixon-Ford retreads' because there weren't enough "movement conservatives with sufficient expertise or experience for appointment to senior positions" (Hayes, p. 42). Thus Reagan brought in people like Richard Darman, George Shultz, James Baker, and GHW Bush, were decidedly not true believer conservatives. This was ok with Reagan, anyway. He wanted a WH that could engage in heated internal debate, and test all ideas by fire.
2)In the same vein Reagan faced opposition to proposed tax cuts not just from Tip O'Neil and the Democrats, but from his own party. When the Kemp-Roth tax cut proposal was killed in 1981, it died not at the hands of dems, but by Senate Budget Committee chair Pete Domenici (R, AZ) and Finance committee chair Bob Dole (R, KS).
3)Reagan had to go against the grain for all 8 years of his presidency. Steve Hayes opens his book with an account of the "tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev" speech.
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Originally Posted by Hayes
"Virtually the entire foreign policy apparatus of the U.S. government...tried to stop Ronald Reagan from saying 'Tear down this wall'....The State Department and the NSC persisted up to the last minute trying to derail it.
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A similar story happened surrounding the 'evil empire' speech, and the whole idea of SDI. In every case Reagan was virtually a lone voice, and in every case he was vindicated by history.
4)Ronald Reagan had to deal with a Democrat-controlled house for all 8 of his years. In spite of that, he did achieve one remarkable result. Economist Stephen Slivinski, calculated 'Real annual growth rate of federal spending, minus defense, homeland security, and entitlements,' for presidents from LBJ to W Bush. Under Reagan, there was actually a 1.4% reduction in federal spending, thus stipulated. There was positive growth in spending under all the others. The biggest number was a 6.4% increase, under Nixon/Ford.
5)Reagan redefined/transformed the national discourse. In 1976, Reagan had to fend off attacks that he was an 'arch-conservative,' 'ultra-conservative,' etc. By 1988, as Hayes recounts, Dems were running away from liberalism like Tirunesh Dibaba in the Olympics 5000 meter race.
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Originally Posted by Hayes
The L-word, as it came to be called, was for all practical purposes banned at the [dem] convention podium. An aide to Senator Bentsen [D, TX] admitted as much, telling Fred Barnes that "Democrats have finally learned that you can be a liberal, but you can't say you're a liberal."
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And Bill Schneider of CNN said in 1988, "Why as liberalism become such a scare word? The reason is that Reagan has changed the shape of American politics."
The idea that Reagan was a moderate, would be a moderate by today's standards, and was anything less than a true believer ideologue for individualism, is absurd. He was a persuaded right wing, individualist, pro-liberty believer, and that is his legacy.
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