Ronald Reagan vs GOP Tea Party

Bill Maher, comedian, TV host, political commentator, was on the Jay Leno show on September 9th, after the Republican Presidential Debate and President Obama's speech on the job situation. When discussing why Presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman's political stance does not fit into today's Republican ideology, Maher suggested that "at some point, the left moved to the center and the right right got on a short bus to crazytown!

If you think that Maher is extreme in his analysis, just look to Senator Lindsay Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, who recently observed: “Ronald Reagan would have a hard time getting elected as a Republican” in today’s party." To emphasize the obvious, Sally Kohn, in her article Forgetting Reagan, states that "by today’s Tea Party standards, the Republican icon would have been a Leninist-Marxist-socialist America hater." Kohn lists at least 5 ways Reagan would have been in hot water with the Tea Party.

At least by Tea Party standards, Reagan was kind of liberal—a fact that seemed to escape the GOP candidates claiming his mantle. Here are the top five ways the real Reagan would have landed in hot water with Republicans beholden to the Tea Party.

1. Reagan Gave Amnesty to Undocumented Immigrants

When the debate last night turned to immigration, John Huntsman said that if “President Reagan was here he would speak to the American people and he would lay out in hopeful, optimistic terms” how to get to positive immigration reform. It was a fitting homage from the race’s only moderate.

After all, when conservatives today complain that a stringent legalization program requiring all sorts of hurdles and fines in exchange for citizenship is equivalent to amnesty, they forget they’re swiping at The Gipper’s record. It was Ronald Reagan who passed the law making any immigrant who had entered the country before 1982 eligible for real amnesty—no fines included. The bill helped millions of new Americans gain authorized residency in the United States.

In his farewell address as president, Reagan envisioned America as a city on a hill: “And if there had to be city walls,” he said. “The walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.” Strong words from the idol of those who now want to build even taller, electrified walls.

2. Reagan Shored Up Social Security

Last Rick Perry reprised his attack on Social Security, calling the program that has kept millions of seniors out of poverty a “monstrous lie.” But if Perry is going to keep insisting that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, that would make Ronald Reagan its Bernie Madoff.

After boasting of his plans to privatize Social Security so that “those who can make better provisions for themselves” be allowed to do so, Reagan bailed out the program to the tune of $165 billion. In fact, Republicans can thank Reagan that they even have a Social Security to rail against.

3. Reagan Was a Union Leader

Before running for office, Reagan was a union leader. He ran the Screen Actors Guild and boasted of being the first head to lead it in a strike. Once in the White House, Reagan said, “Collective bargaining … has played a major role in America’s economic miracle. Unions represent some of the freest institutions in this land. There are few finer examples of participatory democracy to be found anywhere.” True, Reagan is famous for busting the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (Patco) union, but he supported the right of government workers to form unions and bargain collectively—and extended these rights to public-sector workers when he was governor of California. And not only did Reagan win Patco’s endorsement for his 1980 presidential campaign; The New York Times reported that in pre-strike negotiations with the air traffic controllers, Reagan “directed his negotiators to go beyond his legal authority to offer controllers a pay raise before their strike—the first time a president had ever offered so much to a federal employees’ union.”

4. Reagan Opposed Weaponization

In his memoirs, Reagan wrote that he dreamed of “a world free of nuclear weapons.” During his presidency, conservatives within his own party accused him of “appeasing” the Soviets in signing a nuclear non-proliferation treaty with Mikhail Gorbachev. Following the negotiations, Paul Wyerich, a leader of the New Right, wrote, “Reagan is a weakened president, weakened in spirit as well as clout.” Yes, Reagan redeemed himself with conservatives by presiding over the greatest military buildup in U.S. history and, in so doing, increased the nation’s deficit by from $700 billion to $3 trillion—more than any president since George Washington combined. But by refusing to send more troops into Beirut in 1983 when Hezbollah murdered 243 U.S. service members, critiquing Israel’s preventative strike on an Iraqi nuclear reactor, and seeking to draw down the weapons cache worldwide, Reagan never quite fit the image of a right-wing hawk.

5. Reagan Raised Taxes

All of the candidates in last night’s debate pushed the conservative Kool Aid that tax cuts will save America’s economy. For kicks, Mitt Romney went a step further, endorsing tax cuts for the rich while complaining that poor people who don’t pay taxes aren’t doing their fair share to support the troops.

But when he was governor of California, Reagan “signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state” until that point in an effort to balance the budget (How would that sound to todays’ GOP candidates, all of whom indicated they would not raise taxes by a single dollar even if it were offset with $10 in spending cuts). Once president, Reagan raised taxes seven out of eight of his years in office—including four times in just two years.

Basically, Reagan was a giant disappointment for arch-conservatives. He did little to tighten restrictions against abortion as president and actually passed pro-choice legislation as governor of California. He grew the size of the federal government tremendously, adding 60,000 new government jobs (versus, for instance, Bill Clinton, who shrank government payrolls by 373,000). As governor of California, Reagan supported and ultimately expanded Medi-Cal, which is the nation’s largest Medicaid program. Both as governor and president, he was one of the most proactive presidents in restricting smog emissions and protecting wilderness. And after his press secretary was shot during an assassination attempt against him, the president came out in support of stricter gun-control laws.

Sally Kohn notes, "The GOP candidates may have been standing in the Reagan Library, but they were a million miles away from Reagan’s legacy."

Another Republican Double Standard

It's politics. The Democrats and the Republicans both do it. It's politics!

Bill Clinton, on behalf of the White House Chief of Staff, offered Joe Sestak an unpaid position. According to a memorandum from the White House Counsel, President Clinton raised with Congressman Sestak "options of service on a Presidential or other Senior Executive Branch Advisory Board. Congressman Sestak declined the suggested alternatives, remaining committed to his Senate candidacy." The memorandum claims there was no impropriety.

We found that, as the Congressman has publicly and accurately stated, options for Executive Branch service were raised with him. Efforts were made in June and July of 2009 to determine whether Congressman Sestak would be interested in service on a Presidential or other Senior Executive Branch Advisory Board, which would avoid a divisive Senate primary, allow him to retain his seat in the House, and provide him with an opportunity for additional service to the public in a high-level advisory capacity for which he was highly qualified. The advisory positions discussed with Congressman Sestak, while important to the work of the Administration, would have been uncompensated.

It has been suggested that discussions of alternatives to the Senate campaign were improperly raised with the Congressman. There was no such impropriety. The Democratic Party leadership had a legitimate interest in averting a divisive primary fight and a similarly legitimate concern about the Congressman vacating his seat in the House. By virtue of his career in public service, including distinguished military service, Congressman Sestak was viewed to be highly qualified to hold a range of advisory positions in which he could, while holding his House seat, have additional responsibilities of considerable potential interest to him and value to the Executive Branch.

The Republicans and right wing pundits have jumped on this event to suggest several scenarios. They have claimed that President Obama hasn't fulfilled his promise of "transparency" and this just reflects a "politics as usual" administration. There are allegations that this "could be President Barack Obama's Watergate scandal." Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), even went so far as to say that, “This is punishable by prison. It is a felony, and this is exactly what President Obama campaigned against."

Watch a Fox discussion about the legality behind the Sestak offer.

Bill Crystal claims that this is "not politics as usual." As usual, Bill Crystal is wrong!

The Obama Administration White House Counsel notes that this happens all the time.

There have been numerous, reported instances in the past when prior Administrations — both Democratic and Republican, and motivated by the same goals — discussed alternative paths to service for qualified individuals also considering campaigns for public office. Such discussions are fully consistent with the relevant law and ethical requirements.

There have been several times when Republican administrations have asked candidates to drop out of a race. President Ronald Reagan, Vice President Dick Cheney and even Karl Rove have pursued this course of action.

In 1981, AP had the following story. President Ronald Reagan offered a job to Senator Hayakawa in order to "clear the field" for his daughter, Maureen to seek the Republican nomination for Senate.

Sen. S.I. Hayakawa on Wednesday spurned a Reagan administration suggestion that if he drops out of the crowded Republican Senate primary race in California, President Reagan would find him a job."

Hayakawa, who was seeking a second term at the time, was being urged by GOP officials to withdraw from the 1982 primary, a race that included, among others, Reps. Barry Goldwater Jr. & Bob Dornan, San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson, and First Daughter Maureen Reagan. The last thing the White House wanted was a split-conservative field that would end in the nomination of Rep. Pete McCloskey, a longtime anathema to the Right.

Hayakawa ultimately decided not to run for re-election. Wilson won the primary and was elected in November.arl Rove

In an April 19, 2001 Minneapolis Star Tribune article. Both Vice President Dick Cheney and Karl Rove urged Minnesota House Majority Leader Tim Pawlenty not to challenge St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman for the 2002 Republican nomination for U.S. Senate seat .

Minnesota House Majority Leader Tim Pawlenty said Wednesday that he won't run for the U.S. Senate in 2002, but only because Vice President Dick Cheney called him on his cell phone earlier in the morning and urged him not to challenge St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman for the Republican nomination.

Pawlenty's dramatic last-minute decision is the latest development in an extraordinary intervention by the White House and President Bush on behalf of Coleman, who was chairman of the Bush presidential campaign in the state.

The White House's intense interest in the race is a reflection of the 50-50 split between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate.

It may also signal a keen interest by Bush for Republicans to win the seat held by Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., who has been among the president's most severe critics.

On Tuesday night, White House political strategist Karl Rove called Pawlenty and urged him not to run. Pawlenty said he was still intending to begin an exploratory candidacy after the Rove call.

But the request from Cheney, which came as Pawlenty was returning from a dentist's office with his daughters, was impossible to resist.

"On behalf of the president and the vice president of the United States, [Cheney] asked that I not go forward. . . . For the good of the party, for the good of the effort [against Wellstone] I agreed not to pursue an exploratory campaign," Pawlenty said at a news conference.

At the White House, a spokesman for Bush confirmed that Cheney made the call, but he declined to elaborate.

Not only does Bill Crystal have a selective memory but so does Liz Cheney and Karl Rove.

Is Karl Rove guilty of 18 U.S.C. 595? Rove et al. are at least guilty of a Republican double standard.

GOP Raises New Hope For Leadership

Zombie Reagan Raised From Grave To Lead GOP (via The Onion)

Who Believes Rush Limbaugh?

Rush Limbaugh has a theory for everything. His latest revelation has to do with Michael Jackson's death. He sees a parallel with Jackson, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. On his show Wednesday, Limbaugh stated:

Michael Jackson's biggest successes, and as it turns out his final successes, real successes took place in the eighties. That was Billie Jean, Thriller and all this. I mean he was as weird as he could be but he was profoundly, because of his weirdness, an individual. He wasn't a group member. He reached a level of success that may never be equaled. He flourished under Reagan; he languished under Clinton-Bush; and died under Obama. Let's hope the parallel does not continue.

Will Bunch sees another connection:

As for the Reagan's administration's role in MJ's musical burst of creativity during the 1980s, there was none. But it is worth noting that Reagan's steep cut in marginal tax rate for the upper bracket meant that Jackson kept a lot more of that surging income -- which he then squandered on a bad real estate investment while racking up millions of dollars in credit card debt before he died from lousy healthcare. So maybe in a perverse way, Limbaugh is right: Michael Jackson was a parable for the Age of Reagan.

It doesn't matter what Rush says, some people will believe anything.

The Issue of Torture

According to Glenn Greenwald, "(t)his is a perfect illustration of how severely our political spectrum has shifted in the last two decades and how depraved and extremist our political and media classes have become."

It's literally true that if you say today verbatim what Ronald Reagan said in 1988 about torture and the need to prosecute those who do it, then you are immediately and by definition a rabid score-settler from the Hard Left who is unfit to be trusted with national security decisions. Conversely, the views that Reagan vehemently rejected by words and by treaty -- that torture can be justified in some circumstances; that torturers should be shielded from prosecution; that other countries have no right to prosecute the torturers from other countries under "universal jurisdiction" -- are now not merely acceptable, but are required views in order to be not only a conservative, but to be a centrist. That's how severely the political spectrum and our elite consensus on these questions have shifted -- descended -- even from the time of the right-wing Reagan era when American exceptionalism and military aggression thrived.

Would the conservative pundits really call Ronald Reagan a "hard left ideologue?"

Pew Forum did a poll on the correlation between religion and justification of torture:

Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, April 29, 2009:

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified -- more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.