No Democrat has ever won the White House running against Ronald Wilson Reagan. Walter Mondale tried, but barely won his own state. Michael Dukakis tried to make the 1988 election about competency instead of ideology, but George H.W. Bush made it about Ronald Reagan and Michael Dukakis. The Gipper’s Vice President won forty states that year. Had that Bush remembered the Gipper, he might have held his own four years later against Bill Clinton who, understanding the appeal of the Fortieth President, promised a middle class tax cut.
So strong was the appeal of the Gipper’s idea of cutting taxes (instead of raising them in order to feed the federal behemoth) that even the most liberal Senator in the most recent (completed) Congress borrowed the idea and used it to win nearly the same percentage of the popular vote that H.W. had won twenty years previously.
But, tax cuts aren’t the only Reaganite idea which resonates. The Gipper realized that Americans don’t have much of a taste for big government. And recent polls confirm that even five years after that great man’s passing, we haven’t regained that unfortunate appetite.
That hasn’t, however, deterred the incumbent President and Democratic Congress from pushing such initiiatives, even as he’s finding less of a welcome for his proposed changes among the American people than he had hoped.
With Democrats having run up the national debt with their various programs they’ve passed these past five months, the American people are less and less open to the President’s costly reforms. We still don’t know the tab for Obamacare, with the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) finding the various proposals more costly than advertised. Now that the American people have wised up to the real nature of the President’s policies, expett concerns about costs to cause them to speak out against such reforms instead of reacting as they did to the “stimulus” with lukewarm support, mild indifference or silent opposition.
Indeed, Americans are becoming increasingly skeptical about that “stimulus” given its failure to stimulate the economy. So, will they now become more outspoken in their support of smaller government and stand up against Democrats’ proposed health care reforms, causing Obamacare to founder on the shoals of popular opinion, the same popular opinion then-candidate Obama channeled in promising a “net spending cut”? And this public opinion to close to Ronald Reagan’s own vision of a smaller federal government with more individual freedom.
Let’s hope and pray!!!
We should demand that Congress fix Medicare/Miedicaid first………. No country ever taxed itself into properity.
My view of the debate about socialized medicine/Obamacare is analogous to the gay left’s view of the debate about gay marriage: I absolutely refuse to acknowledge that there is room for rational disagreement on the issue. There is NOTHING to support the implementation of such a system economically, morally, statistically, logically, anecdotally, or hypothetically. Otherwise, liberals would be able to tell the truth about AT LEAST 1% of the proposal. Every positive thing that is ever said about it (or will ever be said about it) is an absolute, bold-faced, obscene, sickening lie. It is the best and purest example of bureaucratic evil, and unlike other debates where I can sincerely assure those who disagree with me that I respect them and their right to an opposing viewpoint, I have no such capacity for the proponents of this system. ANYONE who supports socialized medicine or defends it is either shockingly ignorant, profoundly narcissistic, or both. I am proudly and fiercely bigoted against these people and their wicked queen, Nancy Pelosi. Yesterday, when the Congressional Budget Office released the gazillion dollar pricetag for the plan, that useless waste-of-space Pelosi had the nerve to react as follows:
Pelosi accused the nonpartisan budget analysts of always providing “the worst case scenario” on the costs of health care reforms and ignoring the savings associated with the proposal. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/18/cia-pelosi-targets-congressional-budget-office-health-care-cost-estimate/
That’s right. She’s sitting on a $100 million real estate empire in a state with over 11% unemployment and she has the nerve to act as though we don’t have a right to know what the “worst case scenario” is with regard to how she plans to spend OUR MONEY. Of course, that is her elitist approach to everything she spends our money on, but in this particular case she is going to the mat to impose a system on us that will literally endanger our lives. She deserves nothing but our contempt and disgust.
Dick Morris had a great column awhile back on why Obama continues to garner support even though his policies don’t. Since the election is so fresh in our mind, we still want to come together to support Obama, even though we don’t like what he’s doing. However, by the end of summer his “inherited” lines will be used up, and you can see this already happening in his poll numbers dropping more and more. If the economy isn’t better by Sept 1, you can be sure the Democrats will be pissing their pants.
Maybe Obama and Democrats should first clean up the healthcare system they already control.
Veterans in this country continue to be subjected to less than quality care at times in this country as evidenced by 53 of them recently infected with HIV or Hepatitis at VA facilities. Democrats and President Obama talk about how quality care won’t be effected by Obamacare but the Veterans Hospital system in this country is a living-breathing example of a nationally run healthcare system.
I’m certainly not saying that errors don’t occur in our current healthcare system but the VA has been one oops after another through the years.
Our Veterans deserve better and I take no comfort in watching the Feds running the VA and how that will translate into running our entire healthcare system.
Sean A, I have also found that to be the case. In some other health care threads on this blog, some of us have opposed an individual who has been shockingly ignorant on basic matters of economics, business, health care as such, political philosophy and the constitutional order established by the Framers. In the latest example, he told me in essence (i.e., in his own foolish and misguided terminology) to go kill myself. When I pointed out the hatefulness and hypocrisy which exist in that (hypocrisy because this particular individual sometimes refers to his devotion to Jesus), he seriously tried to make it sound like I was at fault for having pointed it out – a typical Left “moral inversion” or deflection of responsibility.
Keep bringing Reagan as much as you’d like, but I think you and your supporters should cease and desist with messiah talk about Obama. Frankly, every time you bring up Reagan, you speak about him like a deified Roman God.
Maybe the June Gloom has me in a pessimistic mood today but I don’t think we can rely on “Reagan’s Spirit” to save us from gummint “medicine”. Many of the people who voted this latest buffoon into office were children when Reagan left office (and many still are – mentally and emotionally). They were edumacated in publik screwels and raised by child-like part-time parent(s) who themselves were raised by selfish boomers (yes – I’m a self-loathing “boomer”).
If you ask “adults” about the crushing legacy they’re leaving to future generations, they will likely shrug and say “not my problem”.
Let’s face it – Ronald Reagan probably couldn’t even be nominated if he were to run for office today.
Say what you will, Kevin… Reagan never thought of himself as a messiah.
Thems the worst kinda Gods…..them deified ones. I don’t know what Roman has to do with it, but if must require strong deodorant or something.
I like my Gods undeified. That way, I can deify them the way I want.
Now, on the other hand, I prefer my Messiah’s to be arrogant and self centered. I don’t get into that forgiveness and turning the other cheek and golden rule so much. I will take a good old fashioned Mussolini type fascist Messiah any old day. You know, a socialist czar among a politburo of czars. Something you can respect. Like the Mafia.
lol.
Kevin, say what you will about President Reagan, he acutally felt it prudent to ‘meddle’ in other nations affairs and was a key leg of the triumverant that brought the Soviets down. He also was able to work with a oppositon held congress and help usher in a new recovery. He also didn’t constantly blame his setbacks on his predicessor or the media. Even against his political opponents he used sarcasm and wit to disarm them.
McCain’s mistake (well one of several) was not emulating the conservative principals President Reagan articulated. If he’d answered all the ‘McCain is old’ memes with “I will not let my opponents youth and inexperience become an issue in this campaign” he’d have cut them off at the knees.
10: The term refers to Roman Emporers who were turned to Gods by an act of the Roman Senate after their deaths. I stand corrected for not writing it in a way that was clear.
11: McCain’s biggest mistake was constantly putting out messages that the majority of the electorate didn’t want to hear. Y’all seem to have a real forest through the trees attitude on this; you don’ want to tick off the things that were wrong about what conservatives did, but you try to turn the discussion to what was wrong with the message they were putting out. in ’76, the country had just come through Watergate and and our participation in a foriegn war that divided the country. In ’80, we had the hostages in Iran and stagflation. ’84 – well, going pretty well and no need for change, ’88 – ride in the coattails of the last guy ’92 – inflation and people not happy with the direction of the country. ’96 – see ’84, ’00 – sadly, it was bring decency back to the white house. ’04 – We’ll protect you from the terrorists (and several anti-gay marriage measures for good measure to get people to the polls. ’08 – A war no one wanted to be in anymore and the fall of the economy, the likes of which we hadn’t seen since the depression.
Thanks for edumacating me about them roamins. Whatcha gotta say about stray Messiahs?