Ya Know What Reagan Did Not Do By: Mark W Adams

Wax delusional about some Reaganite of the past. [Or plagiarize, updated below.]

Ronald Reagan did not look back at some successful conservative politician of a by-gone generation as somehow bestowed with a kind of divinely inspired wisdom whose every platitude was gospel and approach to every policy to be followed to the letter.

I don't recommend reading AKMuckraker's account of a recent speech by Sarah Palin, except for the schadenfreude humor content of his running commentary. If you dig too deep into the word salad only the Ninny from Wassily can deliver and actually try to understand what the hell she's talking about, it's clear her message can be boiled down to one thought bubble: Ronald Reagan was right and we need to go back and do everything he told us to do.

Mind you, it should come as no surprise I'm no fan of our 40th President and never was. But I never remember him revolving his entire political philosophy around some previous prince of conservative thought -- let alone completely miss the boat when it came to understanding and applying history's lessons. At least he had the good sense examine the world honestly and try to make it better (as he saw it) without applying a three decade's old doctrine to contemporary problems. The man certainly was an original.

His imitators make themselves look so very small by their constant comparisons -- incapable of original thought.

Between Reagan and the two Bush boys we've had Reaganite conservatism running the Executive Branch for 20 out of the last 28 years, and Clinton only had two years to screw up their right wing paradise until Newt Gingrich took over Congress and stopped any chance of liberal reform dead in it's tracks. So dammit ... where's my perfect supply-side utopia?

Oh, that's right. We're living it ... never mind.

Honestly, go back? Sarah Palin wants us to go back to Reganism? When did we ever leave it? Obama's done a lot in the last 4 months, but a complete roll back of Reaganism will take a bit more time. Do these cookie-cutter conservatives really miss the Cold War so much?

Over grown military budgets ... Check. Out of control deficit spending ... Check. Unrestrained government bloat with a side dish of cronyism, incompetence and bureaucratic stagnation ... Check. Concentration of executive power at the expense of States rights and civil liberties ... Check. Shoot first and never answer any questions later foreign policy ... Check. Hell, Clinton did the right's dirty work on welfare reform.

Go back? Ronnie, we hardly missed you. These were the realities of Reagan's rule, despite his rhetoric to the contrary. Governor Palin, however, in her own unusual lexicon, remembers it differently some how.

Reagan knew that real change and real change requiring shaking things
up and maybe takin' off the entrenched interest thwarting the will of
the people with their ignoring of our concerns about future peril
caused by selfish short-sighted advocacy for growing government and
digging more debt, and taking away individual and state's rights and
hampering opportunity to responsibly develop our resources, and
coddling those who would seek to harm America and her allies.

She knows nothing, nothing -- absolutely nothing of what Reagan wrought. I think. You can't be too sure what the hell she means most of the time. One can only conclude she hasn't much of a clue either. Does she really think Reagan was some kind of a deficit hawk? Hell, not even Dick Cheney was so deluded, merely concluding that "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." The Bushes piled on more debt to Reagan's record spending. Clinton was the only one since who tried to get a handle on the budget, and left office with a surplus.

Reagan talked tough, but he also talked to our enemies. He got a lot more out of Gorbechev from private meetings between respectful equals than he ever did calling the Soviets names. The "Evil Empire" shtick was strictly for domestic consumption to win the hearts and minds of supporters who really thought he was John Wayne, and thought John Wayne was for real.

Iran? Obama is getting considerable push-back for daring to think we should talk to Iran. But Reagan not only talked to them, he sent Ollie North over there with plane loads full of weapons -- to trade, not to fire. If a Democrat tried that, I think they'd call it more than "coddling."

The only thing Palin gets remotely right, no doubt quite by accident, is Reagan's hostility to environmentalism. Palin is a kindred spirit with the millenialist bigot Ronnie put in charge of the interior, James Watt. He too wanted to sell off all undeveloped public lands to the highest bidder for gas and oil drilling, but in these modern times I'll bet she'd opt for a no bid contract if they threw in a nice pair of shoes.

UPDATE:
Seems that Sarah Palin is so devoid of original thought, she stole most of this speech from Newt Gingrich.

Sarah Palin's garbled, often incoherent speech delivered in Anchorage on Wednesday--the one in which she declared "screw political correctness" and wondered why "we have to pussyfoot around our troublesome foes"--was largely lifted from an article written four years ago by Newt Gingrich and Craig Shirley.

Palin apparently also felt that she could "screw" intellectual integrity.

While Palin twice mentioned Gingrich in the speech (she never once acknowledged Shirley), virtually every single reference she made to Reagan was lifted directly from the Gingrich-Shirley article. It's a pure case of unadulterated plagiarism.

Gah! Teh Stoopit! It Buurrrnnnnnsssssss.