I Want to Wallow in the Hate (remember when Reagan was compared to Hitler?)

Asbrook Center for Public Affairs ^ | 1/18/11 | Steven Hayword

[markomalley]

There's something more than a little ironic to see Chris Matthews, given his neck-bulging, vein-popping anger displayed every night on MSNBC, in today's Washington Post looking back with nostalgia on the wonderful comity between Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan back in the 1980s.  There's something to this, of course; Reagan could get along with anyone if they gave him a chance.  Just ask Gorbachev; first he smiled at Reagan, and before you knew it, his country went poof.

Matthews seems to forget or gloss over the fact that the "tone" of public discourse in the 1980s was just as bad as today.  For example, here's a public comment from O'Neill about Reagan that seems not to be in Matthews's archive: 

"The evil is in the White House at the present time.  And that evil is a man who has no care and no concern for the working class of America and the future generations of America, and who likes to ride a horse. He's cold. 

He's mean. He's got ice water for blood."

That's just a warm up. Democratic Congressman William Clay of Missouri charged that Reagan was "trying to replace the Bill of Rights with fascist precepts lifted verbatim from Mein Kampf."  Who can forget the desperate Jimmy Carter charging that Reagan was engaging in "stirrings of hate" in the 1980s campaign.  Los Angeles Times cartoonist Paul Conrad drew a panel depicting Reagan plotting a fascist putsch in a darkened Munich beer hall.   Harry Stein (nowadays a conservative convert) wrote in Esquire that the voters who supported Reagan were like the "good Germans" in "Hitler's Germany."  In The Nation, Alan Wolfe wrote: "[T]he United States has embarked on a course so deeply reactionary, so negative and mean-spirited, so chauvinistic and self-deceptive that our times may soon rival the McCarthy era." 

As Reagan's 100^th birthday approaches next month, don't be taken in by all the liberals who now say what a wonderful guy he was or how much more civil things were then compared to that dreadful woman from the northern territories today.  Funny how liberals always seem to discern the virtues of conservatives only after they're dead and gone.

[dforest]

I want to wallow in the misery Obama has caused in America. No jobs, failing businesses, super high gas prices, super high food prices. You name it.

Then I want to make Obama say what he will do to fix it all.

Then I sit back and wallow in joy as his chances dwindle away for another term.

[Le Chien Rouge]

GW Bush was/is still compared to Hitler.

Anyone the left doesn’t like is compared to Hitler yet the left have quite a bit in common with the German Corporal and his lefty policies.

[griswold3]

Reagan gave us reason to believe in ourselves again.

[Baynative]

Racist "comedianne" Wanda Sykes performing at the White House displayed the type of civility Obama finds acceptable.

"I think maybe Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker. But he was just so strung out on OxyContin he missed his flight. I hope his kidneys fail, how about that? ... He needs a good waterboarding, that's what he needs."

Obama joined the crowd in laughing at the crack about Limbaugh's "kidneys."

[Sicon]

Amazing how the left says the same things, over and over and over again. They are an absolute, broken, lying record...

[skeeter]

The lunatic American Left as typified by Matthews and the MSM is a lost cause - Reagan knew this thirty years ago.

Sen Colburns performance with Dick Gregory this weekend was a perfect example. Its always lose/lose.

The lunatic left need to be completely bypassed/ignored, our case made through alternate media as directly as possible to Normal America.

[kbennkc]

Imagine one of the press corpse(yes) shouting “Good Luck on your drug test” to Obambi like Sam Donaldson did to President Reagan.

[Reagan Man]

The attack rhetoric from the left is not much different today then it was in the 1980`s. There's just more of it thanks to the 24-7-365 news cycle and the internet.

In the 1980`s Reagan was under assault from the usual suspects -— on TV it was the BIG3 CBSNBCABC, newcomer CNN and PBS, plus the NY Times, LA Times and other leftist rags like USAToday, along with publications like Time and Newsweek and of course hostile Democrat Congresscritters.

National support and defense for Reagan was limited to basically Bill Buckley's National Review, the WSJ and Human Events magazine. Reagan did repeal the Fairness Doctrine through executive order but it was too late to help him out. Reagan's best asset was the Bully Pulpit and he knew how to use it to his advantage time and again.

[dfwgator]

Funny how liberals always seem to discern the virtues of conservatives only after they're dead and gone.

They'll do the same with W, as well.

[tumblindice]

Democratic (socialist, my addition) Congressman William Clay of Missouri charged that Reagan was “trying to replace the Bill of Rights with fascist precepts lifted verbatim from Mein Kampf.”

One of Tom Wolfe’s “rococo Marxists.” Democrats are so eager to use the fascist label that they always seem to forget that the Nazis and Soviets were both revolutionary socialists.

[magnificant bastard]

There has always been vitriol in politics. However, it was never ever has bad during the Bush years. How can the media and dems with a straight face and talk about the republican hatin Obsma is not even close, and it was just two years ago!

But you know what they did the same when Clinton was in office. With the media its is republicans hate, while democrats fight back. They are absolutely corrupt.