Tag: Ronald Reagan

Trump’s GOP Drives Out Reagan Republicans

The GOP had long been looking for someone to fill the shoes of the former president and conservative icon. Instead, they found Donald Trump.

Republicans have spent decades searching for another Ronald Reagan, the conservative icon who for many continues to embody – years after his death – the small government, optimistic view of America and the Americans who make it happen.

They’ve yet to find him.

In the fruitless search, they ended up with Donald Trump. Now they’re stuck with him – even after his defeat for reelection last year – and the party is struggling with how to move forward and grow without a unifying ideology to define themselves and their vision for the future. Continue reading.

Reagan Foundation to Trump, RNC: Quit raising money off Ronald Reagan’s legacy

Washington Post logoThe Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, which runs the 40th president’s library near Los Angeles, has demanded that President Trump and the Republican National Committee (RNC) quit raising campaign money by using Ronald Reagan’s name and likeness.

“It was simply handled with a phone call mid-last week to the RNC, and they agreed to stop,” Reagan Foundation chief marketing officer Melissa Giller said in an email Saturday.

What came to the foundation’s attention — and compelled officials there to complain — was a fundraising email that went out July 19 with “Donald J. Trump” identified as the sender and a subject line that read: “Ronald Reagan and Yours Truly.” Continue reading.

Devastating new ad uses Ronald Reagan’s words against Trump to stunning effect

AlterNet logoThe Lincoln Project is not the only right-wing group that has been creating attack ads slamming President Donald Trump. Another is Republican Voters Against Trump, which uses the words of President Ronald Reagan in its latest video to illustrate Trump’s failures as president.

In the ad — which lasts one minute and 40 seconds — RVAT contrast Reagan’s words with images of the U.S. during the Trump era. The message is not subtle: Under Trump, the United States is a long way from Reagan’s vision for the country.

The ad isn’t aimed at liberals and progressives, many of whom would argue that Reagan’s economic policies were bad for the American working class during the 1980s. It asks Republicans: “Has your party left you?” Continue reading.

Trump is getting a failing grade on Ronald Reagan’s key test for re-election

AlterNet logoWhen Ronald Reagan ran against President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election, the country was in turmoil. The unemployment rate was high, and so was inflation. The Iran hostage crisis had dominated the news, and Carter couldn’t crack it. So when Reagan took to the debate stage a week ahead of the vote, he delivered a devastating argument for his candidacy that may well have propelled him to victory:

Next Tuesday is Election Day. Next Tuesday all of you will go to the polls, will stand there in the polling place and make a decision. I think when you make that decision, it might be well if you would ask yourself, are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we’re as strong as we were four years ago? And if you answer all of those questions yes, why then, I think your choice is very obvious as to whom you will vote for. If you don’t agree, if you don’t think that this course that we’ve been on for the last four years is what you would like to see us follow for the next four, then I could suggest another choice that you have.

The incisive attack wasn’t necessarily fair. Countries can experience any range of shocks and tragedies that are no fault of the president at the time. And Reagan’s economic policies were not the panacea he claimed them to be. But it was an impeccable volley in a political debate, and politicians have to play the hands they are dealt. Reagan took the opportunity to aggressively skewer his opponent, and the phrase “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” has become a perennial cliche of re-election politics. Continue reading.

Trump’s mental decline compared to Reagan’s hidden Alzheimer’s in brutal assessment

AlterNet logoOn Saturday morning a deadly serious MSNBC panel took up Donald Trump’s increasingly erratic behavior of late, which led one panelist to sincerely suggest the president needs to be evaluated by mental health officials because she believes the White House is covering for him.

Speaking with host David Gura, MSNBC legal analyst Maya Wiley admitted that she is no doctor, but that there are signs of the president’s decline that reminded her of how Ronald Reagan’s White House hid his Alzheimer’s from the public.

“This is the man last week said he was the second coming, the ‘chosen one,’” Wiley began. “It is very, very difficult to not have a conversation about whether or not he’s competent to serve as president. I say that because there were actually objective measures this week.”

View the complete August 24 article by Tom Boggioni from Raw Story on the National Memo website here.

This Old Video Shows How Low GOP Has Sunk Since Reagan

The immigration policies of Donald Trump’s presidency would have no room for his GOP predecessors Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush—who both embraced work visas, family unification, easy border crossings and a better relationship with Mexico.

That counterpoint can be seen in a very short video clip from the 1980 presidential election where Reagan and Bush—who became Reagan’s vice president for two terms before winning the presidency in 1988—were asked about immigration at a campaign debate in Texas. Their responses show just how far to the right the Republican Party’s current leader, President Trump, and voters who have not left the GOP to become self-described political independents, have moved on immigration.

The responses by Bush and Reagan in a 1980 televised debate sound like today’s Democrats. The exchange was prompted by a two-part question from an audience member: should “the children of illegal aliens… be allowed to attend Texas public schools free? Or do you think that their parents should pay for their education?”

View the complete July 20 article by Steven Rosenfeld on the National Memo website here.

A Question of Mental Fitness

The following article by Kenneth T. Walsh was posted on the U.S. News and World Report website January 12, 2018:

President Trump and his advisers are lashing out at the press after questions about his mental health.

Credit: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Official Washington is buzzing about whether Donald Trump is mentally fit for the presidency. This concern has plagued him since he emerged as a major candidate for the White House in 2016. It has persisted since he became president in January. And the question took on fresh urgency this week because of a new book, “Fire and Fury” by author Michael Wolff, that argues Trump is a dysfunctional leader who is too erratic, angry, unstable and disruptive to do the job.

“We didn’t disparage the press or the critics. The president let himself be defined by his deeds”

Continue reading “A Question of Mental Fitness”

Trump’s ill-advised claim that the media are covering his mental fitness like Reagan’s

The following article by Callum Borchers was posted on the Washington Post website January 6, 2018:

President Trump continued to attack Michael Wolff’s new book and compared the questions about his fitness for office to those that faced Ronald Reagan. (Reuters)

President Trump is fond of Ronald Reagan comparisons. As he campaigned on a promise to “Make America Great Again,” Trump cited Reagan’s presidency as the last time America was great.

But Trump might have thought twice before tweeting Saturday that the media is “taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence.” Continue reading “Trump’s ill-advised claim that the media are covering his mental fitness like Reagan’s”

Reaganomics Redux, But Worse

The following article by Jeff Madrick was posted on the Washington Spectator website June 5, 2017:

The tax cut proposals first announced by President Donald Trump this April are, simply put, a fraud. They are about greed and politics, not economic growth or true tax reform. The policy has been proved wrong twice already. As a broadly faithful rerun of the Reaganomics of the early 1980s, Trump’s policies, should they be passed, will end as Reagan’s “voodoo economics” did, a failure by virtually any measure. George W. Bush’s sharp tax cuts in the early 2000s also failed to generate a strong economy, one that was driven by speculation rather than strong investment.

Reaganomics was the name given to the self-serving claims of the wealthy that a huge tax cut for them would pay for itself—by creating incentives to invest and work that would lead to renewed economic growth. Tax revenues would simply rise with a growing economy to plug the revenue hole. Some call it trickle-down economics. John Kenneth Galbraith put it scornfully in The Culture of Contentment: if you give a horse enough to eat, some of the kernels will fall to the ground for the sparrows. Continue reading “Reaganomics Redux, But Worse”