What Would Ronald Reagan Make of Today's Republican Party?

They may not yet have secured a place for him on Mount Rushmore, but American conservatives have spent recent weeks attempting to rename a 3,366-foot mountain overlooking Las Vegas after Ronald Reagan.

The effort is part of anti-tax activist Grover Norquist's Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, which aims to name something after the 40th president in each of America's 3,140 counties. California leads the way so far: it has named at least 20 places or features after its former governor. Reagan's birthplace, Illinois, has named 15 places after him, while Texas - displaying either a fine sense of irony or scant historical knowledge - has named a local Department of Education building after Reagan, despite the former president's desire to abolish the institution.

Having lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections, it is unsurprising that Republicans are desperate to bask in a few rays from Reagan's reflected glory. In 2011, he ranked third in a poll of the most popular US president of the past 50 years behind Jack Kennedy and Bill Clinton.

But, as America marks the 10th anniversary of his death this week, just how comfortable would Reagan himself be in today's Republican party? In his recent book, The Party's Over: How The Extreme Right Hijacked The GOP And I Became A Democrat, Charlie Crist, a former Republican governor of Florida who defected to the Democrats in 2012, claims that while both the dwindling band of Republican moderates and Tea Party hardliners claim Reagan as their own, the former president would be 'booed off the stage' at a convention of the later. Crist's predecessor as governor, Jeb Bush, made a similar suggestion two years when he hinted that both his father, George Bush Snr, and Reagan would have been too moderate to survive in today's Republican party, thanks to their openness to 'finding accommodation, finding some degree of common ground' with their political opponents.

While the Tea Party may have arisen to resist Barack Obama's alleged plan to impose socialism on an unsuspecting American public, the 'Grand Old Party' has been propelled ever further rightwards by a dynamic which began with Barry Goldwater's capture of the Republican nomination 50 years ago this summer, and of which Reagan was both a part and a beneficiary.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/robert-philpot/republican-party-ronald-reagan_b_5447443.html?utm_hp_ref=uk

 

THE most fitting memorial would be a mental disease research institute, specialising in Dementia and Alzheimer's...

THE "Ronnie Raygun Alzheimers and Associated Dementias Research Centre and Tea Baggers' Retirement Village, Inc." sounds like a suitably loopy name..   

Reagan was definitely a far more centrist president than Tea Partyers and other right-wing fawners want to believe. His granting of amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants alone would have him drummed out early from any Republican primary held today.

Ben_Reilly wrote:Reagan was definitely a far more centrist president than Tea Partyers and other right-wing fawners want to believe. His granting of amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants alone would have him drummed out early from any Republican primary held today.

But Reagan bought into most of the policies that began the Tea Party and Norquist. Reagan started supply side economics.

Original Quill wrote:

Ben_Reilly wrote:Reagan was definitely a far more centrist president than Tea Partyers and other right-wing fawners want to believe. His granting of amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants alone would have him drummed out early from any Republican primary held today.

But Reagan bought into most of the policies that began the Tea Party and Norquist.  Reagan started supply side economics.

This is true, he was a weird duck. Sometimes he seemed very libertarian, especially on economics as you say, at other times he was laughably far from any sort of libertarianism, as seen in his endless intervention into other country's governments.

Nice to see you, Quill! Seems like you haven't been on as much lately.

Ben_Reilly wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

But Reagan bought into most of the policies that began the Tea Party and Norquist.  Reagan started supply side economics.

This is true, he was a weird duck. Sometimes he seemed very libertarian, especially on economics as you say, at other times he was laughably far from any sort of libertarianism, as seen in his endless intervention into other country's governments.

Nice to see you, Quill! Seems like you haven't been on as much lately.

I concur - with seeing Quill back.

and with his point about tea party ideas.....the welfare mother driving a cadillac springs to mind.

and who could forget the contras?

He was a charismatic Hollywood poster boy that was a puppet that makes the behind the throne power plays - similar to dubbya.

Ben' in hospital...and dealing with a computer virus...and also busy making a living.

Busy, busy...   

I don't think Reagan knew what he was doing...or, maybe I should say, not all the lights were screwed in. Remember, his was the administration that brought in all the nazis like Rumsfeld and Cheney, who later came to prominence under the next dullard...GWB.

Oh, hope you're all right!

Yeah...totally non-spectacular. Thx.