A look at how the GOP is changing icons, after the jump ……………...
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The recent release of yet another President Nixon tape — this time with he and the governor of California lambasting UN delegates from Africa (over their votes to recognize main land China and expel Taiwan) with racial slurs — surprised me in a certain way. Whereas once one heard the name Ronald Reagan incessantly … this was the first time I had heard Republicans talking much about him in awhile.
T’was not always so. Over twenty years ago Grover Norquist began his Ronald Reagan Legacy Project — to have something named after him not just in all fifty states, but in all 3,000+ counties in the US. And one often heard GOP candidates — when they were not describing themselves as “pure” conservatives — depict themselves as “Ronald Reagan conservatives”. Nowadays … not so much.
To be sure: a good deal of this is simply the passage of time, as he died fifteen years ago. Grover Norquist or not: for someone who last held elected office thirty-one years ago, those who worked with him are also departing this Earth.
“By the year 2060, Americans will probably remember as much about the 39th and 40th presidents, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan, as they now remember about our 13th president, Millard Fillmore,” predicts study coauthor Henry L. Roediger III, a human memory expert at Washington University in St. Louis.
Roediger has been testing the ability of undergraduate college students to remember the names of presidents since 1973, when he first administered the test to undergraduates while a psychology graduate student at Yale University.
Yet it is also the fact that Reagan is loved by those on the right more for his emotional appeal, rather than policy details. Four years ago, a libertarian conservative named Bonnie Kristian noted in an essay entitled Millennials don't really remember Ronald Reagan — and that's a problem for the Reagan-loving GOP ... some of the following:
I suspect a more significant factor is simply the passage of time: Reagan left the White House 10 years before this election's new voters were born. At 18, that's more than half a lifetime.
No one at Republican headquarters seems to have really absorbed this fact yet, even though the voters who can remember Reagan are not the ones the GOP needs to worry about attracting.
She noted that some had tried to break with the love affair …. except:
Jeb Bush, to his credit, said in 2009 that Republicans should abandon the Reagan nostalgia for a more forward-thinking message. But so far his (2016) campaign isn'tliving up to that hype — Bush has even hired numerous Reagan advisers to his own team. Similarly, Mike Huckabee argued in 2011 that Reagan would not be elected by the modern GOP, only to announce a "Reagan, Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II Tour" tour for pastors from early primary states. And Rick Santorum pointed out last year that Reagan is an outdated reference, but just two months earlier he'd all but claimed the Reagan mantle for himself.
She concluded that (at least in 2015) his legacy was shorthand for "Things we like, as the real Reagan's legacy is reduced to a myth of low taxes and aggressive foreign policy”.
That same year, someone with a different political mindset (liberal pundit Paul Waldman) asked, “Are Republicans falling out of love with Ronald Reagan?” , noting that the first GOP debate saw only ½ of the top ten candidates invoking his memory, and those that did so used his name as a shield, not a sword. Waldman believes that liberals helped bring this about (publicly citing the contradictions in Reagan’s actions vs. words) and went on to say:
Today's Republican Party isn't just more conservative on policy, it has become doctrinaire in a way it didn't used to be. Compromise itself — regardless of the context or the content — is now held by all right-thinking Republicans to be inherently evil. Far too much is made of Reagan's alleged friendship with Democratic House Speaker Tip O'Neill, but it's true that Reagan could be friendly with his political opponents. Today, every Republican has to express a deep and intense loathing for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton if they hope to win their party's favor.
Entire organizations now exist to police elected Republicans for signs of heresy, and punish those who fail to measure up. And no amount of Reagan-invocation will distract them once they've caught the scent. If that's true, we might hear his name spoken less and less often as time goes on.
If that continues, it will be because the GOP has abandoned the Gipper for …. you-know-who (at least for now). This has affected his offspring, and not just Ron Reagan Jr. who (as is widely-known) is a definite liberal, yet fond of his father.
More revealing is his other son Michael Reagan— who is supportive of his father’s policies. Also, that same year of 2015, he chastised the GOP candidates for not attempting to reach younger voters (“The Grand Old Party”, he called it.) He blamed talk radio (which he acknowledged being part of for twenty-six years):
You wonder sometimes if Ronald Reagan would pass all the tests today that he was able to pass back in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s. As I’ve said at RNC lunches and dinners and so on when I go speak:
”Hey, would you nominate Ronald Reagan today? Here’s a man who raised taxes, signed an abortion bill, signed no-fault divorce. My god, he was a union leader in the Screen Actors Guild! If that man were alive today, would you refer to him as a RINO?’”
And many people, in fact, would. What’s interesting is somehow they forgive Ronald Reagan because they loved him. But they have an absolute almost hatred for a Jeb Bush or Kasich because of Medicaid in Ohio ... or whomever where.
In 2016, Michael Reagan was on a roller-coaster ride with the Trumpster. At first, he disdained him: saying he would not vote for him in the California GOP primary, adding that the 2016 election campaign “most likely would be the 1st time — if my father was alive — that he would not support the nominee of the GOP.” He was particularly upset about you-know-who’s views on immigration.
Then, when Trump got the actual nomination he supported him — saying it was better he than Hillary Clinton. Finally, he jettisoned him for good in October … and not because of the Access Hollywood tape. A few days before that tape was released, he said that — had his mother Nancy not died earlier that year — he believes she would have voted for HRC, based partly on this:
Trump said, “I don’t even think she’s loyal to Bill, if you want to know the truth.”
“I am embarrassed by Trump and the applause he receives when inferring she cheats on Bill .. not the Party of Reagan.. someone has to stand up,” Reagan wrote on Twitter. “I ask all who loved my father to vote down ballot to save the country and Republican Party.”
Yet while Frank Rich noted that Reagan and Trump had nothing more “than a receiving-line acquaintanceship; Trump doesn’t appear in the president’s voluminous diaries” — there are some who ascribe Reagan’s perceived qualities to the Trumpster ……. yet state that that the new guy is the greater figure.
The actor Jon Voight has declared him to be “The greatest president since Abraham Lincoln." Before his retirement, Sen. Orrin Hatch said he was “the best president I’ve served under in terms of line of succession" and that the major tax cut passed would be the first step toward making “this the greatest presidency that we've seen, not only in generations, but maybe ever."
Others see the handwriting on the wall, yet are unhappy about it. In 2018, a GOP county chairman from southeast Ohio resigned (with the proximate cause being the Trumpster’s cave-in to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki) and Chris Gagin wrote:
Sadly, today, President Trump would beat Ronald Reagan, head-to-head, in a Republican primary — and I’m not sure it would be close.
Republicans, do you care that Ronald Reagan would no longer be welcome in Donald Trump’s Republican Party? According to Gallup, 89% of my fellow Republicans are just fine with this reality, as they approve of the president's job performance. Perhaps even more disheartening, this same 89% are content, if not intent, on driving away anyone not fully on board on the Trump Train, branding them traitors to America in the process.
To return to the Nixon tape release (w/Reagan’s private racial remarks) that opened this essay: history professor and researcher Tim Naftali, who pressed for the tape’s release noted this difference between the 40th and 45th president:
The most novel aspect of President Donald Trump’s racist gibes isn’t that he said them …... but that he said them in public.
Let’s close with the Lovin’ Spoonful’s version of the Fred Neil song The Other Side of This Life — with lyrics such as “My whole world's in an uproar, my whole world's upside down” — that seems to capture the future schizophrenia we are in now … and your-friends-and-mine across the aisle will find in the time before us.
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Now, on to Top Comments:
From brillig:
I wasn't expecting to find a Top Comment in mbbx6spp's The maintenance is finished…. a/k/a an update on some site work …. and then I saw mookieb's comment.And from Ed Tracey, your faithful correspondent this evening ........
In the diary by annieli about a possible sentence commutation for the convicted Rod Blagojevich— Laughing Gravy speaks for many in wondering how Jared Kushner thinks that giving Blago — a former Celebrity Apprentice contestant — a break carries any weight with Democrats.
And for something heartwarming: if you haven’t read the story of the US serviceman shot down over Vietnam in 1967 (with his son accompanying his remains back to the USA today in Dallas) that MTmofo chronicled …. besides the references to onions that many readers made ….. Catte Nappe fills-us-in on some of the back-story leading to today’s return.
And lastly: yesterday's Top Mojo - mega-mojo to the intrepid mik ...... who rescued this feature from oblivion:
1) This is all great, but we need to operate and GO … by VClib +242 2) Right. This has to be a victory so overwhelming … by EarthquakeWeather +163 3) What Trump supporters are afraid of is getting t … by srelar +146 4) True. But there was no mention of it on this sit … by shrike +141 5) ^^^ THIS ^^^ … by Captain Frogbert +117 6) There’s some people you just can’t reason with, … by sandbear75 +110 6) Who put the extra caffeine in Joe’s coffee? I kn … by ontheleftcoast +110 8) Donnie is a raging tool in this tweet. More than … by Yoshimi +105 9) I never start these conversations. What I really … by sandbear75 +104 10) Wow, that’s a comprehensive and frightening arti … by Mother Mags +97 10) Never piss off a loudmouthed Scotsman who won th … by sandbear75 +97 12) Deadbeat Trump still owes El Paso $500,000 for p … by I am Spartacus +94 13) Hi, all. by Rikon Snow +93 14) Nice job. Even though I know all the things you … by pines of rome +88 15) I have mixed feelings. I’m in a rural area where … by blugrlnrdst +87 15) I watched MoJo the past two mornings after not h … by blugrlnrdst +87 17) Or at least a “Consoler-in-Chief” … by dmhlt 66 +85 17) They can’t stop him from getting off the plane, … by Mercy Ormont +85 17) good speech but that does not make him nominee by laverdure +85 20) I really don’t like that I feel like I hate Trum … by vacantlook +83 21) “Treated like a rock star.” Well, that’s all tha … by rbaillie +78 21) I see your point. Thanks for the diary. I am not … by Mimikins +78 23) Beto is keeping it up. by pollwatcher +76 24) As a Dolphins fan, I can assure you that this is … by schmolioot2 +75 24) Yes, we went into 2016 assuming we could not los … by Captain Frogbert +75 26) Are you available for rent for our next family r … by Otteray Scribe +74 26) This breaks my heart. by bitches4Hillary +74 28) Yeah, my granddaughter has a guinea pig that is … by Pool House Doctor +73 28) What strikes me is that there is nothing excepti … by anastasia p +73 28) he’s already claimed it, he might as well wear i … by jfromga +73