GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

Happy Ronald Reagan’s Birthday!

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Today, February 6, 2008 makes the 97th anniversary of the birthday of the greatest American president of the second half of the twentieth century.

Would it that I had more time today to write a post worthy of this great man, remembering his vision and honoring his accomplishments.

Would it that we had a candidate of his caliber in the current contest.

Comments

  1. McCain was a dedicated foot-soldier during the Reagan Revolution. I really think he is poised to bring back those times of core Conservative values. The group Log Cabin is prepared to endorse McCain and are confident he will be our next President. The fact that McCain is so pro-gay is just icing on the cake.

  2. …easily the finest president of the last fifty years…

    Back on RR’s 90th birthday, Andrew Sullivan (yup, Sully) wrote a fine piece on Reagan. Still worth reading today. If I remember correctly, Rush Limbaugh read this in its entirity the day it appeared on Andrew’s blog.

  3. I miss the old Sully.
    Reagan was a wonderful man and president. But we have to vote for what we have, not for what we want.
    How many people in 1980 realized how wonderful Reagan would be?

  4. I supported the gipper and realize he changed the country. He brought back our pride in country and self. America was a basket case after 4 years of one of the most incompetent administrations in our history..Carter. We loved Ronald Reagan and miss him dearly. After he left the public scene it was almost as if he had passed away because of his illness, we lost him way too soon. His funeral was the largest display of love and affection since JFK’s. God Bless you Mr President.

  9. My teens were during the Eisenhower years and I have always benefitted from growing up with a President I respected and who allowed me to feel good about America.

    My kids were given the same gift and more during the Reagan years. The dems got so frustrated with his “teflon” coating. They really couldn’t understand the transcending power of character. (They still can’t: Clinton, Clinton, Gore, Kerry.)

  10. Dan, while you can contend with a serious and sane voice that RR was the greatest pres of the late 20th C, I think historians will have a sizably different assessment of his political career as Prez and his grasp at power. And it can’t all be chucked up to the notion that historians are a liberal-leaning bunch.

    I look forward to the balanced assessments of his Presidency –and his unquenchable lust for the Oval Office– when the critical bulk of his Presidential papers pass security clearance and are available to others than just the garden variety of bootlicking conservative insiders or syncophants.

    No doubt RR was adept at using the modern media for his own political advancement, but then so have the Clintons, Nixon and MikeyMoore. And no doubt RR took the mantle of modern conservativism, re-molded it and a very vocal following to his purpose, but it’s going to be a while before the moniker of “greatest prez of the late 20th C” really fits, if ever.

    As for the notion that no one in the presidential field matches RR’s skill set… I disagree. Romney, Huckabee both exceed RR’s best skill sets and there are lots of folks much better at communicating the voice of conservativism (and more reliably, too) than RR ever was… folks like Bill Kristol, Cheney, Frist, Lamar Alexander, Fred Barnes, Jeff Hart, Emmet Tryell and even guys like Michael Barone and Everet Ladd and Karl Rove.

    One thing I think we ought to remember on RR’s b-day is that he was the RIGHT man for the toughest job in 1980.

    But with one of the lowest voter turnout records in the 20th C, he won in ’80 against the WORST prez in history with only 50.6% of the vote. If John Anderson hadn’t pulled away moderate GOP votes from RR-GWB, Carter just might have won a 2d term.

    I appreciate this blog’s lovefest with RR… but I’ll wait for history’s more balanced assessment.