Posts Tagged ‘Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan is honored as an American hero….in Great Britain
A ten foot high bronze statue of President Ronald Reagan was unveiled near the American embassy in London yesterday. On hand was Condoleeza Rice who was there representing not only the US but also former First Lady Nancy Reagan. British Foreign Secretary William Hague spoke at the ceremony…
“Statues bring us to face to face with our heroes long after they are gone. Ronald Reagan is without question a great American hero; one of America’s finest sons, and a giant of 20th-century history. You may be sure that the people of London will take this statue to their hearts.”
Hague also read a message from former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher…
“Ronald Reagan was a great president and a great man—a true leader for our times. He held clear principles and acted upon them with purpose. Through his strength and his conviction he brought millions of people to freedom as the Iron Curtain finally came down.”
But London wasn’t the only place honoring the great Ronald Reagan. On Friday, Prague renamed a street in his honor and on Wednesday, Budapest also unveiled a statue honoring the great American hero. All these celebrations are honoring Reagan’s 100th birthday (which was on February 11, 2011). Apparently, there will be other ceremonies taking place all over the world during this year long celebration.
What a wonderful thing to do for such an amazing leader.
Think Obama will rate this kind of attention when he turns 100?
Considering one of his first acts as president was to return the bust of Winston Churchill to Great Britain…a bust that had a long honored history in the White House, I don’t think the Brits will waste their money on Obama.
Ideas to Reagan-ize your SuperBowl party this year, in honor of President Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday
President Reagan would have been 100 years old on February 6th, SuperBowl Sunday.
Since many of you are having parties that day anyway, to watch the game, why not have a little Reagan Birthday Party too?
You could do something very simple, like get a cake that says Happy 100th President Reagan on it.
Have red, white, and blue Jelly Belly jellybeans scattered around the room in bowls (because they were his favorite, and a favorite gift to friends and supporters).
Decorate for the party with red, white, and blue balloons and streamers.
Or, if you aren’t a football fan, counterprogram the game with some of President Reagan’s old movies, like Dark Victory (bonus since it stars Bette Davis).
What other ideas do you have to share a Superbowl Party with a celebration of Reagan’s 100th…and anything interesting Governor Palin has to say that day, should she feel like saying anything.
What think you?
Governor Palin’s tribute to President Reagan: America’s Lifeguard
h/t Moonbattery
Governor Palin’s authored a wonderful tribute to President Reagan, as we approach his 100th birthday on February 6th (SuperBowl Sunday).
The Governor has often used Reagan in her speeches, most memorably one in Washington, Illinois last year, near Eureka College (which Reagan attended).
The metaphor of Ronald Wilson Reagan as a lifeguard and the stories of his upbringing and public service resonate now more than ever, when millions of Americans who were children of the 80s and are now living in this “Golden Age of Hope and Change” wish we had a President like Reagan again.
Here’s some of what the Governor expressed in her tribute:
Today, when we hear the worry in the voices of Americans wondering where the jobs will be for our children and grandchildren and wondering if the world will be safe and prosperous in the years to come, we should remember Reagan’s faith in our inherent heroism and greatness. When we see people around the globe looking to the White House for leadership, we should remember Reagan’s steel spine. He understood America’s purpose in this world and what we need to do to secure liberty. As Margaret Thatcher said of him, “He sought to mend America’s wounded spirit, to restore the strength of the free world, and to free the slaves of communism.” He sought those things and he succeeded.
This year, as we celebrate the centennial of Reagan’s birth, let’s remember the lifeguard from the Rock River who rescued us with his optimism and common sense. We need more lifeguards like him.
Rush Limbaugh talking about Governor Sarah Palin mopping the floor with Obama in 2012
Honestly, those of you who can’t visualize this for yourselves are just foolish: when Governor Palin becomes the GOP presidential nominee in 2012, she honest to goodness will mop the floor with Obama just as Rush Limbaugh says.
She will pull no punches.
Every day, she will smack Obama hard on something.
She will mock him mercilessly.
She will not just be “Reagan in a skirt”, but Ronald Reagan will ultimately be called “Sarah Palin in a suit”.
It’s gonna happen, you betcha.
Welcome to awesomeness: President Reagan's postage stamp to be released after his centennial anniversary
Pure awesomeness when we need it most.
Best news I’ve heard so far today.
It’s a great portrait of President Reagan.
Another person I did not appreciate while he was alive, but someone who carried out the duties of president with immense respect for America, her people, and the office of the presidency.
Those crisp salutes.
The boldness in staring down our enemies and telling them what to do, no apologies given.
That wit!
Those impressively fast, cuts-to-the-bone, retorts and rejoinders.
I am a child of the 80s who grew up with the image of Ronald Wilson Reagan on the TV every night, as my concept of what a “President” should be.
Though I grew up as a Democrat, and my family didn’t vote for Reagan, I don’t remember a bad word about Reagan ever being said. There wasn’t really much of an effort ever made to defeat him, either, from what I remember. I bet everyone in my house voted for Mondale in 1984, but nobody lifted a finger to campaign for him (Dukakis, either…both too liberal and creepy).
The Clintons were another story, where we went all in back in Cleveland.
But, it was comforting, even to Democrats in Cuyahoga County that when Reagan was president America had a champion in the White House who could stare down foreign threats and give the Soviet Union a swift punch to the gut.
We need a president like this again…but this time America, and the entire West, is up against the lunatic would-be global caliphate of Islam, and all the evils that it brings. It’s worse than communism, and the current “president” we have is worse than Jimmy Carter.
Which means we need someone more take-no-prisoners and kickass than Ronald Reagan was against our last great threat.
Hear that, Governor Palin?
It’s the sound of millions of postcards headed your way to Wasilla come 2011…with Ronald Reagan’s portrait affixed as postage…asking you to humbly take up his mantle and fight for us when we need you most.
Does Peter Beinart at The Daily Beast know it's the heat, not the bubbles, that boils water?
Sister Mister should be thankful every day that at least he's cute.
Please read this article by Peter Beinart over at The Daily Beast, then rejoin me here to talk about how crazy it is. SPOILER: it’s super crazy.
Sometimes, I think I could actually establish a steady career just pointing out the flaws in Beinart’s logic and noting his gross factual errors and departures from substantiated reality.
In this latest piece, Beinart claims that incumbent presidents only lose their re-election bids “when they have serious primary challenges”, citing three instances in the last 75 years when sitting presidents were rendered one-term failures (Ford, Carter, G.H.W. Bush) and claiming the reason they lost is because they were challenged. He then takes the major leap to insist that a president who is NOT challenged seriously is guaranteed re-election.
Which is not just poor logic, but is actually quite insane…and wholly ignores the elephant in the room that is race. The reason Obama will not be challenged in 2012, as I’ve stated many times before on this site, is because he is a black man and the Democrat Party is a Jenga-tower of precariously stacked identity-blocs that wins elections only when said blocs are not at war with one another. Because of the race-baiting nature of Obama 2008, I firmly believe that if Hillary Clinton or anyone else tried to challenge Obama in 2012, that the Obama campaign would paint that person as a RAAACIST for “trying to take this away from the black man” and even if this person succeeded in snagging the nomination, she or he would be doomed in the general election because Obama surrogates (most particularly First Spouse Michelle Antoinette, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Henry Gates, John Lewis, James Clyburne, and others in the Race Industry) would travel the country convincing black voters “to sit the election out” and “teach the Democrats a lesson”, so angry “the nomination was stolen from the black man”.
Unlike Ford, Carter, and Bush, Obama could have a 5% approval rating in 2012 and if he still wanted to run for a second term he would not receive a primary challenge because of the all-out-Race-War his campaign would launch against whoever ran against him in the Democrat primaries. Therefore, 2012 is wholly anomalous to any arguments Beinart is trying to make using past-as-predictor stats from previous elections.
But, even if Obama was white (and, in reality, he is ethnologically more white and Muslim than he is black, no matter how he race-identifies), the logic Beinart uses would still be fundamentally flawed because he confuses causes and effects illogically throughout.
Beinart is the sort of writer who I easily imagine slipping and falling on wet, muddy grass on his way into work and then insisting to everyone that it had just rained torrentially outside…not realizing the sprinklers were running for hours before he pulled up in his car. He also, for some reason, reminds me of a story my chemistry teacher Mrs. Frohwerk used to tell back in high school my sophomore year, about a girl she once had in class who thought the reason food cooked in boiling water was “because of the bubbles”. “Well, yes, there are bubbles in water when it boils, but that’s not what cooks the food, Brittany,” Mrs. Frohwerk said she explained to the (you guessed it) blonde. “The water’s at the boiling point and the heat energy in the water is doing the cooking, not the bubbles. The bubbles are a byproduct of that energy, just like the cooked food is a result of the time in the hot water”.
I wonder if, at lunch time, Beinart has ever tried boiling pasta in club soda at his desk…while everyone else at The Daily Beast laughed at him. Instead of seeing that sitting presidents destined to lose their elections were primaried and those on course to win weren’t, he concludes the REASON they were primaried is why they lost. In fact, the fact they were on course to lose was the heat applied to the cooking pot and the primary challenge was the bubbles…the electorate was prepped to cook their respective gooses and their primary challengers saw an opportunity to slip in and prevent disaster by taking the party’s standard away from them…which would not have happened if they, and the party, felt no heat on their rumps and a voting public setting the election to BOIL.
I was, oddly enough, a sophomore in high school during the 1992 presidential election, the same year I was in Mrs. Frohwerk’s chemistry class learning about water boiling. That was the very first presidential campaign I ever worked, as a volunteer going door to door throughout Cleveland for the Clintons. I paid attention to the Republican primaries only because there was some new, loudmouthed, radio talk show host named Rush Something-or-Another (just gaining national attention) that some of the conservative guys in my homeroom would listen to on little portable radios in the morning before school started.
Man, there are eleventy things in the above that make me feel SO OLD.
Pat Buchanan was a joke candidate who did not seriously endanger President Bush’s path to securing the Republican nomination in 1992. I guess I’m probably at least 5-10 years older than Beinart, so I honestly don’t know where he got this, but it’s going far beyond creatively remembering that race to insist Bush was in any danger of losing that nomination bid.
Bush carried 50 states and the District of Columbia in the 1992 primaries, for a total of 72.84% of the vote to Pat Buchanan’s 22.96%.
For some historical perspective, here’s how every president since Ford did in his nominating contests:
* Gerald Ford won his primary in 1976 with 53.29% of the vote to Ronald Reagan’s 45.88%, with Ford winning 26 states to Reagan’s 24. Democrat Jimmy Carter went on to win the general election. 1976 is as bad as things have yet gotten for a sitting Republican president come nomination-time.
* Jimmy Carter secured the Democrat nomination in 1980 by a vote of 51.13% to Ted Kennedy’s 37.58% (and Jerry Brown’s 2.93%, which was his win in California). Carter took 37 states and Kennedy won 12. Ronald Reagan went on to win the presidency, defeating Carter. 1980 was the nadir of support a sitting Democrat president has reached when it came time for re-election nomination.
* Ronald Reagan was almost completely unopposed for his nomination in 1984 (with perpetual also-ran candidate Harold Stassen dropping out moments after dipping his toe into the race, seemingly just for personal amusement). Reagan won all 50 states for a total of 98.8% of the vote.
* In 1988, George H.W. Bush won the Republican nomination with 67.90% of the vote to Bob Dole’s 19.9% and Pat Robertson’s 5.02% (the men had 41, 5, and 4 states in their columns respectively). When Bush ran for re-election in 1992, he secured the nomination with a 72.84% win over Pat Buchanan but lost the general election to the Clintons (despite getting MORE primary votes this second time around than he did four years early when he was nominated with 5% LESS support as Reagan’s VP).
* In 1996, the Clintons won their re-election primary with 88.98% of the vote to Lyndon LaRouche’s anemic 5.47%, easily besting the “it’s his turn” Dole ’96 campaign. 1996 was the highest re-election nomination percentage a Democrat has had in modern times.
* George W. Bush cleaned John McCain’s media darling clock in 2000, with 62.00% of the vote to McCain’s 31.23%, winning 43 states and DC while McCain claimed only 7 states (and Alan Keyes won none, though he did have 5.08% of the vote).
* Bush ran for re-election in 2004 wholly unopposed winning 100% of the vote, before going on to best John Kerry in the general election. 2004 was the highest re-election nominating percentage Republicans have had in modern times, but it was not the easiest win that they’ve had (which was Reagan ’84…an 18% win carrying 49 states).
* Hillary Clinton won the 2008 Democrat Primaries with 47.9% of the vote (18,046,007 cracks in the glass ceiling) but the DNC awarded the nomination to Obama, despite him winning just 47.4% of the vote with a total of 17,869,542 votes cast for him. In 2008, the Democrat presidential candidate was awarded the nomination with a NEGATIVE PERCENTAGE of the presidential primaries vote.
Just looking at these numbers, only an Obama cultist of the highest order couldn’t see that Obama is in deep trouble for 2012 right from the start because he didn’t break 50% of the vote total in his FIRST nominating contest, and actually was handed the nomination with a negative primaries percentage share. The Leftist media keeps trying to convince everyone that the wounds from 2008 have now all healed, but the things the Obama campaign did to Hillary Clinton and her supporters two years ago will never be forgotten — and many Jacksonian/Clinton Democrats (like myself) will most likely never vote Democrat again in our lives because we remain so thoroughly disgusted by our former party.
If the argument is that Carter lost in 1980 because Ted Kennedy’s challenge in the primary divided the party and made it impossible for him to win, then I argue that no challenge is needed for Obama in two years because the damage the DNC did in 2008 by handing the nomination to Obama when he had a negative percent of the primary vote was substantial enough that it already precludes him from a re-election win.
Beinart’s assertion that Obama’s “a lock for 2012″ is ridiculous to me for the simple reason that so many of us who were Democrats back in 2008 are Independent now, and I just don’t see a way the DNC can lure these people back into the fold between today and 2012. From where I stand, looking at all those past nominating contests, there’s never been a president that’s won re-election who had less than 50% of the vote when he was first nominated. A negative percentage of that vote is just “historic and unprecedented”. THIS is a statement that can be supported by facts…unlike Beinart’s argument that “no president has won re-election that had a serious challenger”.
I keep coming back to that 1992 Bush example Beinart uses because it’s just so ridiculous. I remember that race so well and know for a fact that if Ross Perot had not been encouraged on his vainglorious run the Clintons would have never won the White House. Bush coasted to a win very easily against Pat Buchanan, who did not have a realistic chance in Hell of winning the nomination.
Ronald Reagan and Ted Kennedy were both SERIOUS challengers to Ford and Carter respectively in their nominating contests, and they only got 45% and 37% of the vote respectively. Buchanan didn’t come anywhere near that, taking just 22% against Bush in 1992. If not for third party Perot, Bush would have won re-election fairly handily, I bet, since most of Perot’s votes were siphoned-off Republicans and conservative-leaning Independents who I highly doubt would have backed the Clintons.
Beinart so wants Obama to win a second term and not join the ranks of the failed one-termers like Ford, Carter, and Bush that he’s wishcasting in spades for 2012.
The Daily Beast really shouldn’t allow this if it wants to be considered a serious, reputable news source and not some random fanboy blog.
While Obama won’t be primaried in 2012, it’s not because he will be a strong re-election candidate…but because opponents like Hillary Clinton who would have primaried a white male president such as Ford, Carter, or Bush won’t risk their political futures doing so because once that nuclear Race Bomb is dropped with “you are taking this away from the black man” allegations there is no hope for a Democrat to go on to win the general election, since blacks will sit their butts home on election day mad that Obama is not on the ballot. When 91% of blacks give Obama strong support, after two years of dismal failure and broken promises, their race-pride guarantees permanent pariah status in the Democrat Party to any politician who would DARE run against him.
Only a fool would believe she or he could win the general as a Democrat with blacks sitting home in protest, upset “the nomination was stolen from the black man”.
Honestly, I think blacks would stay home in 2012 even if Obama decides not to run for a second term, using health or family reasons as an excuse to retire. I believe they would still see it as “they wouldn’t let him run again” and be so disappointed they couldn’t vote for someone of their race that they just wouldn’t care enough to turn out in the numbers Democrats need to win.
This would be exacerbated by a smart move by Republicans in making Lt. Colonel Allen West the Vice Presidential nominee in 2012, as I advocate and will campaign for in the next two years. If Democrats don’t get 75% of the black vote to turn out, they’re toast. A double-punch of Obama not running and having a charismatic and awesome black candidate on the Republican side of the ballot would be a nightmare for Democrats since I seriously bet they’d muster an anemic 60% of the black vote in 2012 if the stars aligned and Fates conspired this way.
I’m sure Peter Beinart at The Daily Beast disagrees with all of this, and that he already has a big bottle of Veuve on ice in his mini-fridge under his desk. I imagine he dreams of popping that open on Election Day in two years, and maybe even cooking something in all those bubbles if he and his office mates get hungry while celebrating what they believe is Obama’s inevitable re-election.
But the fact he is not going to be primaried says more about the Race Industry’s bully tactics in the Democrat Party than it does about Obama’s general election fate.
Heaven help the fools who legislate our rights away…
The Tea Party spirit continues to spread — and now, to people who can sing.
The video above is marvelous (h/t MichelleMalkin).
Our favorite part is when it calls Chris Dodd out for helping to rip up the Constitution every afternoon.
Just watching this, it further reminds us, especially at the end, how much Democrats continue to set the stage for a patriotic conservative from somewhere out west to roar onto the national stage in 2012 to answer Obama/Carter with a new Reagan.
A Reagan who could very well look like this:
How many United States Presidents won second terms?
Mr. 4,422 Days in Office
Just something to think about on this the Eleventh Day, Year One, of The Golden Age of Obama. It’s actually very rare for a President to win a second term, no matter how well things go in that first term. Because of Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush, we assume a second term’s a given for presidents because the majority of those in our lifetimes have been two-termers (especially for those of us in our early 30s, who’ve mainly known two-termers). But, historically, that’s not the case.
Here are the men (and, unfortunately all men so far, despite all the talk of change still in the air) who’ve held the office two terms (or more, in one case):
(1) Franklin Delano Roosevelt (served 3 full terms, but elected to 4)
(2) Thomas Jefferson (2 terms)
(3) James Madison (2 terms)
(4) James Monroe (2 terms)
(5) Andrew Jackson (2 terms)
(6) Ulysses S. Grant (2 terms)
(7) Grover Cleveland (2 nonconsecutive terms)
(8) Woodrow Wilson (2 terms)
(9) Dwight Eisenhower (2 terms)
(10) Ronald Reagan (2 terms)
(11) Bill Clinton (2 terms)
(12) George W. Bush (2 terms)
(13) George Washington (2 terms)
(14) Richard Nixon (2 terms)
(15) William McKinley (2 terms)
(16) Abraham Lincoln (2 terms)
Those who wanted second terms but lost their elections:
(a) John Quincy Adams
(b) Martin van Buren
(c) Franklin Pierce
(d) Benjamin Harrison
(e) William Howard Taft
(f) Herbert Hoover
(g) Jimmy Carter
(h) George H.W. Bush
(i) John Adams
So, 16 wanted a Part Deux and got one. 9 wanted re-election but were denied. Almost 2/3 of our presidents were thus one-termers (or less).
And another interesting thing to note is that the last time THREE two-term presidents happened in a row was all the way back in the early 1800s, with Jefferson/Madison/Monroe (the 3rd, 4th, and 5th presidents). That hasn’t been repeated for 200 years now.
Not saying it won’t ever again, because it’s much too early to tell, but just noting it’s not an automatic, considering past as probability if not predictor.
Clinton/Bush/Obama as three two-termers in a row would be anomalous but certainly not impossible.
Something really creepy in this picture
The way former president Carter is all the way over to the right, removed from the rest of the group, means nothing, as we’re positive it was not done deliberately, but it does remind us of a similar shot of the current and former presidents (at the time), taken in the early ’90s, where Richard Nixon was also far removed on the right, clearly apart from his peers.
At the time we had the same thought we have looking at Carter: that Nixon wasn’t going to be around for much longer. It certainly feels like this is the last year we’ll have Carter with us — which is sad, but not as sad as it would have been a year ago, because our opinion of Carter plummeted in recent months, and doubt that’s going to change now. The fact that many Habitat for Humanity homes are literally falling down around their owners doesn’t help (as that’s the one saving grace Carter’s always had in our eyes as an Ex-President).
We’ve had three encounters with Carter through the years, one in Manhattan and two in Georgia, the most surreal of which was a trip to Atlanta in 2006, to the Carter Center, where we happened by the replica Oval Office at the heart of the museum to find what we thought was a very convincing animatronic, talking with what looked like a handful of other robots. Overhead, Carter’s voice narrated a talk about the Oval Office, the Resolute Desk, etc. And then, after a moment of awkwardness, we realized Carter himself was standing in the exhibit, with staffers, just looking around — perhaps even pretending it was 1977 again, wondering what he could have done differently from Day One to change everything for the better for himself. A woman behind us, when realizing the robot was, in fact, the real Jimmy Carter, excitedly shouted, “Lookit! It’s him! It’s really him!”, before sympathetically adding, in more hushed tones, “Isn’t that sad? They just keep ‘em in there like that.”
Carter gave a lecture later that afternoon at his Library and Museum that we attended, and that we remember as being sad and out of touch with reality. He rambled, lost his bearings a few times, and reminded us of all the many reasons he didn’t win a second term. We will forever think of him as a very nice man who never should have been president. Strangely, that’s actually how we feel about George W. Bush now as well.
There are more similarities between Carter and Obama than anyone in the media cares to admit — except for that very nice man part. In less than two weeks, Obama follows in Carter’s footsteps…Reagan’s, the two Bushes’, and Clinton’s as well, along with all the other men who’ve come before all of them.
In our opinion, there should have been a woman in a pantsuit in that photo above — because THAT would be change we can believe in, change from yet another shot of assorted men with red or blue ties. Maybe there will be a woman in a skirt with glasses rocking a pair of killer boots in that shot in 2013 (with or without Carter). Maybe we will finally get a pantsuit in there in 2017.
If we can finally get half the country to see that all the promised CHANGE! resulted in basically the same damn picture that’s always been taken: a bunch of men in suits, with red or blue ties, standing in an almost round room, just like all the many men of varying abilities before them.
