I would like to see specifics of where Paul has attacked President Reagan. Paul used to tout President Reagan's kind words about Paul written when Reagan was president and Paul was a mainstream conservative Republican congressman.
Jesse
Watch the Meet the Press videos where Paul calls Reagan “a failure.”
The interview comments.
MR. RUSSERT: You're running as a Republican. In your--on your Web site, in your brochures, you make this claim: "Principled Leadership. Ron was also one of only four Republican Congressmen to endorse Ronald Reagan for president against Gerald Ford in" '76. There's a photograph of you, Ronald Reagan on the right, heralding your support of Ronald Reagan. And yet you divorced yourself from Ronald Reagan. You said this: "Although he was once an ardent supporter of President Reagan, Paul now speaks of him as a traitor leading the country into debt and conflicts around the world. "I want to totally disassociate myself from the Reagan Administration." And you go on to The Dallas Morning News: "Paul now calls Reagan a `dramatic failure.'"
REP. PAUL: Well, I'll bet you any money I didn't use the word traitor. I'll bet you that's somebody else, so I think that's misleading. But a failure, yes, in, in many ways. The government didn't shrink. Ultimately, after he got in office, he said, "All I want to do is reduce the rate of increase in size of government." That's not my goal. My goal is to reduce our government to a constitutional size. Completely different. I think that--matter of fact, he admitted in his memoirs that he had a total failure in Lebanon, and he said he relearned the Middle East because of that failure. And so there--he--you know, he...
MR. RUSSERT: But if he's a total failure, why are you using, using his picture in your brochure?
REP. PAUL: Well, because he, he ran on a good program, and his, his idea was a limited government. Get rid of the Department of Education, a strong national defense.
I doubt Paul used the word traitor, but from an old Ron Paul newsletter.
Ron Paul: Traitor had direct line to President Reagan
Ron Paul Political Report
July 15 1992
Volume VI Number 7
Page 5
Armand Hammer: Traitor
The Soviet archives have been a real source of amusement since they have been opened. Armand Hamner, the wealthy, pro-Communist businessnan who earned a fortune off the Soviet government, was one of the few Americans permitted to do business with the Soviet Union at the height of its Leninist and Stalinist terror. He was even permitted to own an apartment in Moscow and a Russian art collection. Now the archives show he personally transported funds from the Soviet Union to fund the new U.S. Communist Party in the 1920s. A highly placed staffer in the Reagan White House once told me that Hammer was one of the handful of people able to call the President directly without any screening!
“I would like to see specifics of where Paul has attacked President Reagan.”
Here’s page four of the transcript. About sixty percent down the page:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22342301/page/4/