[...] Reagan wasn’t a conservative. He was a corporate hack. He asked for even more money than Congress approved. The results are in this graph. Reagan had very little to do with the end of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe. Striking an actor’s pose and telling Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin wall may look good on TV, but the heroes are those ordinary people in Eastern block countries who put their lives on the line and poured into the streets by the hundred thousand, willing to face down heavily armed soldiers with just their courage. That courage won the day, not Reagan’s stagey pronoucements. Unfortunately, the GOP has lost its motivating ideals. The revolution of 1994 has been killed not by zeal but by a loss of faith in its own principles. The tragedy is not that we are faced with another fight for the soul of the Republican Party but that we have missed an opportunity to bring a new generation of Americans over to our point of view. [...]
Print This Post
[...] Reagan wasn’t a conservative. He was a corporate hack. He asked for even more money than Congress approved. The results are in this graph. Reagan had very little to do with the end of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe. Striking an actor’s pose and telling Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin wall may look good on TV, but the heroes are those ordinary people in Eastern block countries who put their lives on the line and poured into the streets by the hundred thousand, willing to face down heavily armed soldiers with just their courage. That courage won the day, not Reagan’s stagey pronoucements. Unfortunately, the GOP has lost its motivating ideals. The revolution of 1994 has been killed not by zeal but by a loss of faith in its own principles. The tragedy is not that we are faced with another fight for the soul of the Republican Party but that we have missed an opportunity to bring a new generation of Americans over to our point of view. [...]