Reagan & Trump?

The team helping to fuel Donald Trump’s run for president is working to brand the real estate mogul as the new Ronald Reagan, a notion Reagan’s closest aides call “preposterous.”

Draft Trump 2012, an independent committee that supports his potential bid for president, is hosting a speech in Las Vegas, Nevada on Thursday to “Bring Back the Reagan Revolution,” which they say will occur if Donald Trump is elected president. The group blasted out an ad for the event Monday, complete with shots of Reagan and Trump side by side with the tag-line, “From Ronald to Donald.”

Granted, it’s a Republican right of passage for a candidate to prove their worthiness of the Gipper’s legacy. But Trump?

The same Trump who called for a Canadian-style single-payer health care system just a few short years ago? The same Trump who wanted to raise taxes? The same Trump who once called the younger President Bush “the worst president in the history of the United States”? The same Trump who, on camera, once smooched with Rudy Giuliani while the former New York mayor was in full drag and makeup?

Yup, that Trump. But hey, Reagan started out as a liberal Democrat before taking office too, and he was an actor. That’s sort of like Trump, right?

Not even close, said Richard V. Allen, who served as Reagan’s National Security Advisor from 1981-1982.

“I could sum up everything I would have to say about the subject by saying: ‘Donald, I knew Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan was one of my friend[s]. And Donald, you’re no Ronald Reagan,” Allen told The Daily Caller. (Allen was invoking a famous moment in political history when Democratic vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen said a similar line about John F. Kennedy during a 1988 debate.)

“I consider that one of the more far-fetched things I’ve heard,” he added. “It’s totally preposterous.”

Others who knew and worked with Reagan during his years as California’s governor and in the White House laughed when they saw the Trump flyer. Some thought it was a joke.

“It’s the most audacious attempt by a potential candidate to wrap himself in Reagan’s mantle,” said Peter Hannaford, an adviser and speechwriter for Reagan. “It’s all bogus.”

To be fair, Trump is merely the latest among his peers to invoke Reagan’s legacy in an attempt to tie himself to the 40th president. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich hosted an entire documentary on Reagan, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty points to Ronald Reagan as the reason he entered Republican politics and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney last year sung the Gipper’s praises at the annual Reagan Lecture at the Reagan Foundation. Even President Obama penned an entire column in USA Today expressing his admiration. (When’s the last time you heard a Republican coo for FDR?)

To some observers, Trump is just doing what he’s supposed to do, striving for that old Republican gold standard.

As he should, said Grover Norquist, who started the group Americans for Tax Reform at Reagan’s behest in 1985.

“Is it the correct position if you wish to be an elected Republicans to say, ‘I would govern as Reagan’? That is exactly the right thing,” Norquist said. “Now, he’s got to make the case.”

That’s not to say Norquist isn’t skeptical The Donald can pull it off. “It’s possible,” he said. “But it’s going to be a long campaign.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/04/26/is-donald-trump-the-new-ronald-reagan-trump-would-like-you-to-think-so/#ixzz1KdZR8vM0

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GOP Bringing Down America

"Health care is a loser for the Left only if the Right has the steel to undo it. The Left is banking on an absence of steel. Why is that a bad bet?
Andrew McCarthy
Indeed. Look at it from the Dems' point of view. You pass Obamacare. You lose the 2010 election, which gives the GOP co-ownership of an awkward couple of years. And you come back in 2012 to find your health care apparatus is still in place, a fetid behemoth of toxic pustules oozing all over the basement, and, simply through the natural processes of government, already bigger and more expensive and more bureaucratic than it was when you passed it two years earlier. That's a huge prize, and well worth a midterm timeout.
Mark Steyn

McCarthy and Steyn assume that HCR in its present form will become law through reconciliation. They claim HCR is so unpopular the 2010 mid-terms will be a disaster for the Democrats. With Obama in the WH till 2012, he can veto bills posed by Republicans to amend the HCR.
The major problem with this scenario is that much-needed reform in areas such as education, alternative energy, collective bargaining [EFCA], deficit financing, banking and the stock market will stall. The factors that combined to start the first major recession remain in place to bring about a second one.
Both McCarthy and Steyn think GOP obstructionism will put the economy into neutral for two years while the Republicans regain the Presidency in 2012. Many economists believe other dynamics such as joblessness, homelessness, financial chaos, war and trade deficits will continue to extract a toll.

The Eagle Scout and the Prom Queen

In high school the Eagle Scout vied with the Prom Queen for Class President. Their joint mission was to amuse, entertain and distract us. They left the issues to the class nerds who rarely voted anyway.
The high school remains our single universal social institution. As it goes, so goes the nation. The elitist is the student who achieved a ninth grade reading level.
Print is out. The image is the rage. The traditional facts to form opinion is an outdated process. The first soundbites to reach the ears 24/7 dictate cognition. Talk radio plants the seed during the commuting hours. The only way to lessen the influence is to increase unemployment.
The corporations control the media and the message. The general term for this is information control. In the old days brainwashing was the staple of science fiction. We called it “far out” in those times. It was outlandish to think of nations marching to their doom as unresponsive robots in lock step. The far out has become common place.