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Banned
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Last Night's Reagan "Love Fest" of Republican Presidential Candidates
Does "running on Reagan" equal "running on empty"?
Quote:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...&type=politics
(05-04) 06:02 PDT Simi Valley, Calif. (AP) --
Ten Republican presidential candidates wanting to succeed President Bush embraced a more popular president, conservative icon Ronald Reagan, at every turn in their first debate of the 2008 race.
"Ronald Reagan was a president of strength," Mitt Romney intoned. "Ronald Reagan used to say, we spend money like a drunken sailor," said John McCain. And Rudy Giuliani praised "that Ronald Reagan optimism."
The world, however, is far different today than it was some 25 years ago when the nation's 40th president relaxed at his retreat in the rolling hills of southern California.
Iraq and terrorism now are top issues, support for Bush is at a low point and Republican hopefuls find themselves trying to prove to the party's base that they're conservative enough to be the GOP nominee — on social matters as well as the economic and security issues Reagan championed.
The three leading candidates — Giuliani, McCain and Romney — and their seven lesser-known rivals attempted to do just that Thursday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. They debated for 90 minutes in the shadow of the late president's Air Force One suspended from above and before Reagan's widow, Nancy, who sat in the front row of the audience.
They stressed the importance of persisting in Iraq and defeating terrorists, called for lower taxes and a muscular defense, and supported spending restraint.
<b>One by one, they invoked Reagan 19 times. In contrast, Bush's name was barely uttered; the president's job approval rating languishes in the 30s.
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"They went out of the their way on multiple occasions, no matter the question, to associate themselves with Reagan," said Mitchell McKinney, a political communication professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia. "They tried their best to not be explicitly bashing or attacking Bush. Most of them tried, in some way, to take a pass on that."
Republican operatives agreed that the debate did nothing to shake up the crowded GOP field.
They said Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, McCain, a four-term Arizona senator, and Romney, the ex-Massachusetts governor, remained the strongest contenders, with the most money and the best approval ratings in the polls more than eight months before the first 2008 national convention delegates are selected.
"Clearly the top three looked quite presidential," said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster.
Scott Reed, who ran Bob Dole's 1996 campaign, added: "McCain showed a little energy. Romney showed he's very polished. And Giuliani started to clear up some of his issues with the base of the party."
Each largely stuck to their talking points — and often reverted to their stump speeches — as they sought to present themselves as the most conservative candidate in the pack, and a worthy heir to the political legacy of Reagan.
The former actor and California governor took office in 1981 when the world was absorbed by the Cold War, and good versus evil was defined by countries that aligned with the United States and those that stood with the Soviet Union — "the evil empire" in Reagan's lexicon. The arms race and the ever-present threat of nuclear war overshadowed social issues like abortion. Stem cell research didn't exist. There was no public debate about gay marriage or the so-called right to die.
Fast forward to the 2008 presidential race.
The candidates expressed resolve in winning the war in Iraq and defeating terrorists across the world. They also had to answer for their positions on a range of social issues, including abortion, stem-cell research and evolution.
"Nobody wants to talk about social issues for more than 11 seconds," said Rich Galen, a GOP strategist. "But they had to talk about what they were asked about."
McCain is the only top-tier contender who has a career-long record of opposing abortion, a position that resonates with a wide swath of GOP political activists who support the overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion.
With a record of supporting abortion rights, Giuliani was the only candidate who said "it would be OK" if the Supreme Court upholds the landmark ruling. "It would be OK to repeal it. It would be OK also if a strict constructionist viewed it as precedent," he said.
His rivals agreed that it would be a great day if the court overturns the landmark ruling.
Romney, for his part, acknowledged he had reversed course on the subject and said his position had once effectively been "pro-choice."
"I changed my mind," Romney said, adding that Reagan did the same.
But Giuliani, who said he personally hates abortion, hedged when asked about his current position.
"I think the court has to make that decision and then the country can deal with it," he said. "We're a federalist system of government and states can make their own decisions."
Most of the contenders said they opposed legislation making federal funds available for a wider range of embryonic stem cell research. The technique necessarily involves the destruction of a human embryo, and is opposed by many anti-abortion conservatives as a result.
There are exceptions, though, including Reagan's widow, Nancy. Also, public opinion polls show overwhelming support for the research, which doctors say holds promise for treatment or even cures of numerous diseases.
McCain was the only one to unambiguously say he supports expanded federal research into embryonic stem cells.
Giuliani's response was open to interpretation. He said he supports it "as long as we're not creating life in order to destroy it," then added he would back funding for research along the lines of legislation pending in Congress. However, the bill he cited does not increase federal support for research on embryonic stem cells. Rather, it deals with adult stem cells.
The field split on another issue, with Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo raising their hands when asked who did not believe in evolution.
Other participants included former Govs. Jim Gilmore of Virginia and Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin; and Reps. Duncan Hunter of California and Ron Paul of Texas.
Missing were three Republicans still weighing whether to run — Fred Thompson, the actor and former Tennessee senator; Newt Gingrich, the ex-House speaker from Georgia, and Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.
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Will any of these republican candidates be able to top the "statement" that Reagan made, especially considering the current bid for the presidency, by rival party candidate, black US Senator (D-IL), when Reagan opened his campaign for the presidency by speaking at a county fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi and advocating for "states rights"? Reagan made his Neshoba County, Mississippi appearance, just 17 years after this:
Quote:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=1962220
Truth and Reconciliation in Neshoba County
Mississippi Region Grapples with Legacy of Civil Rights Murders
Arecia Steele
Marisa Penaloza, NPR
Arecia Steele, 73, reflects on changes in Neshoba: "I used to hear my granddaddy talk about how to hang them up on the limb. Thank you, Jesus, you don't find that no more."
Summer of 1964
Read historical newspaper accounts related to the Neshoba murders, from 'The Neshoba Democrat':
June 25, 1964: 'Missing auto of trio found by FBI Tuesday'
July 16, 1964: Search Continues for Missing Rights Workers (front-page story)
July 16, 1964: Families Sue Sheriff, Deputy for 'Terroristic Acts'
Aug. 6, 1964: Bodies of Missing Trio Found
All Things Considered, June 17, 2004 · This month marks the 40th anniversary of one of Mississippi's most notorious civil rights murder cases. On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers, in Mississippi for "freedom summer," were killed after traveling to Neshoba County to investigate the burning of Mt. Zion, a black church. No one has ever been charged with murder in the case, even though federal agents identified a local group of Ku Klux Klansmen as the killers.
Most of the suspects are now dead, but some still live in town -- most notably, Edgar Ray Killen, the alleged leader of the Klan klavern that chased down the civil rights workers, took them to a quiet county road and shot them. For years, the history of Neshoba County's racial violence was hushed up -- not taught in schools, or talked about in upstanding white families.
But as NPR's Debbie Elliott reports, a task force of black and white citizens in Philadelphia, Miss., the Neshoba County seat, is trying to come to grips with the community's legacy. The group wants to publicly apologize and is calling for those responsible to be brought to justice.....
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Quote:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/remem...eagan_6-7.html
.....Domestic policy
GWEN IFILL: Roger, let's talk about his domestic policy. Pick up where Michael left off and say how did this Reaganism translate into domestic policy in a way that still reverberates today.
WilkinsROGER WILKINS: Well, Reagan was an incredible combination of a person who was very optimistic, upbeat, but underneath there were some really ugly parts of his politics.
He was, I said once before on this program, he capitalized on anti-black populism by going to Philadelphia and Mississippi , for example, in the beginning of his campaign in 1980.
Nobody had ever heard of Philadelphia and Mississippi outside of Mississippi , except as the place where three civil rights workers had been lynched – in 1964 – he said I believe in states rights.
Everybody knew what that meant. He went to Stone Mountain , Georgia , where the Ku Klux Klan used to burn its crosses, and he said Jefferson Davis is a hero of mine.
He was rebuked by the Atlanta newspapers – they said we don't need that any more here. He went to Charlotte, North Carolina one of the most successful busing for integration programs in the country and he said I'm against busing and again the Charlotte papers rebuked him. And the impact of that plus his attacks on welfare women, welfare queens in Cadillacs, for example. And his call for cutting the government. He didn't cut the government; the military bloomed in his time. But programs for poor people day diminished entirely and America became a less civilized and less decent place. .....
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Quote:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=1962220
............Goldwater said he supported the white Southern position on civil rights, which was that each and every state had a sovereign right to control its laws. The Arizona Republican argued that each American has the right to decide whom to hire, whom to do business with and whom to welcome in his or her restaurant. The senator was right at home with Southern politicians who called the Civil Rights Act an attack on "the Southern way of life."
To overcome the forces arrayed against the bill, Johnson needed every bit of his political skill and every bit of emotional aftermath from the previous November's assassination of President John F. Kennedy. But once the bill had passed, Johnson told confidants that Democrats might have lost the South to Republicans for years to come. He was exactly right.
Today the South is solidly Republican. In every presidential election since 1964 -- save the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976 -- Dixie has been the heart of GOP presidential politics. The white Southern vote was key to the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, and President George W. Bush was elected in 2000 because he carried every Southern state.
Ronald Reagan was key to the South's transition to Republican politics. Goldwater got the ball rolling, but Reagan was at his side from the very beginning. During the 1964 campaign, Reagan gave speeches in support of Goldwater and spoke out for what he called individual rights -- read that also as states' rights. Reagan also and portrayed any opposition as support for totalitarianism -- read that as communism.
In 1976, Reagan sought the Republican nomination against the incumbent President Gerald Ford. Reagan's campaign was on the ropes until the primaries hit the Southern states, where he won his first key victory in North Carolina. Throughout the South that spring and summer, Reagan portrayed himself as Goldwater's heir while criticizing Ford as a captive of Eastern establishment Republicans fixated on forced integration.
Reagan lost the nomination to Ford in 1976. But when the former California governor ran for the presidency again in 1980, he began his campaign with a controversial appearance in Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers had been brutally killed. It was at that sore spot on the racial map that Reagan revived talk about states' rights and curbing the power of the federal government.
To many it sounded like code for announcing himself as the candidate for white segregationists. After he defeated President Carter, a native Southerner, Reagan led an administration that seemed to cater to Southerners still angry over the passage of the Civil Rights Act after 16 years. The Reagan team condemned busing for school integration, opposed affirmative action and even threatened to veto a proposed extension of the Voting Rights Act (the sequel to the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed a year later and focused on election participation). President Reagan also tried to allow Bob Jones University, a segregated Southern school, to reclaim federal tax credits that had long been denied to racially discriminatory institutions.
The genial Californian Republican denied there was any racism implicit in those policies. Even when he was characterizing poor women as welfare queens driving around in pink Cadillacs, he said it was a merely matter of encouraging people to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. The America he seemed to envision had no need to deal with racial divisions, and he said his only desire was to encourage self-sufficiency for all Americans and to reduce all Americans' dependence on government programs.
<b>Today it is hard to believe that Reagan had such success using the Civil Rights Act as a whipping boy.</b> The Civil Rights Act is now so widely accepted that it doesn't attract controversy in any region of the country -- including the South. There is no debate about the right of black people, Hispanics or Asians to stay in a hotel, shop in a store or to apply for a job without fear of racial discrimination......
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Why is it "hard to believe"....and what has changed since 1980?
Can any Reagan supporters seriously argue with this description of the man?:
Quote:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0617-06.htm
Published on Wednesday, June 16, 2004 by the Free Press / Columbus, Ohio
Ronald Reagan: A Legacy of Crack and Cheese
by Bob Fitrakis
........Caught up in the Goldwater conservative movement, Reagan realized that he could deliver the right-wing reactionary script better than the much more intellectual Senator from Arizona. Thus, in 1966, Reagan took his highly-honed hokum and became the ultimate shill for the far right. As the New Republic pointed out during his 1966 campaign for Governor of California, “Reagan is anti-labor, anti-Negro, anti-intellectual, anti-planning, anti-20th century.” Reagan campaigned against the civil rights movement, the peace movement, the student rights movement and the Great Society. In his fantasy world, Reagan equated giant price-fixing corporations with small town entrepreneurs. As every long-hair in the late 60s knew, Ronald Reagan was “the drugstore truck-drivin’ man, the head of the Ku Klux Klan.” He said if the students at Berkeley wanted a bloodbath, he would give them one. James Rector was shot dead soon after.
The real legacy of Reagan can be found in Philadelphia, Mississippi where he announced his candidacy for the Presidency in 1980. Previously, the most important political event in Philadelphia had been the deaths of civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Cheney in 1964. Reagan appeared, sans hood, to talk in those well-known racist code words about “state’s rights.” This was no mistake or misunderstanding. Reagan was signaling the right-wing movement that he would carry their racist agenda. Remember in 1984, his political operatives accused Walter Mondale of being “a San Francisco-style Democrat.”
Reagan reached out and embraced the racist apartheid government of South Africa through his policy of so- called “constructive engagement.” Reagan’s solution to the de-industrialization of America was to build the prison industrial complex. His centerpiece was a racist so-called “War on Drugs” while his friends in the CIA used narcotics peddlers as “assets.” And then Reagan’s El Salvadorian Contra buddies began bringing in crack. ..........
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As I see it....the contrast could not be more glaring. On the democratic side, youthful Barak Obama is a top contender in the 2008 presidential race, and on the republican side, a clump of ole white men met in racist and divisive Reagan's "palace" in Simi valley to wrap themselves around his name and his legacy?
.....And isn't that what the chasm in America today is all about? A "new south" controlled politically by white republicans (Governor of Mississippi is Haley Barbour, former RNC chairman....in a state with the highest percentage black population and the lowest per capita income, in the country....) vs. democratic party dominated, rust belt and the coasts?
Besides lower taxes and higher deficits, unending war on terror, no plan to deal with massive underinsurance of middle and lower income Americans, and a lack of appeal.....embracing of Reagan could fairly be called a divisive signal, to many minorities and to the majority of northern voters, even without the revelation of an apparent republican transformation of the US DOJ from an agency that protected civil rights and access of all Americans to the polls, to an agency with a mission now to do just the opposite, what do any of these republican canididates offer, that passes for leadership into the second decade of the 21st century? |