Posted on 12/30/2007 3:14:08 PM PST by FocusNexus
no sense getting your panties in a wad my friend. Have a nice new years eve, relax and enjoy!
You'd think Fred would say he wanted to win, no exceptions.
I’m not a Fred basher Norm, but that pic of him in post #24....
BTTT
There has never been a true conservative who has won the presidency of the USA. NOT ONE! NOT EVER!
I covered Reagan's campaign in 1980. Over and over he told the voters that his political heros were Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy. Reagan said over and over I did not leave the Democatic Party. It left me. He left the Democratic party when Kennedy was president. But he told audiences that Kennedy was his political hero.
Reagan also told every crowd that he was the only presidential candidate ever to be the President of a Labor Union and that he had been elected president of his union twice. He would tell his audiences that "If you think I am anti union, talk to my fellow union members. .. or better yet talk to the company bosses I negotiated union contracts with. .. But if you talk to the Company bosses about me be prepared to hear some bad words."
That doesn't sound all that conservative to me.
Reagan told every audience in the mid west that he was going to implement the same economic policy that JFK had implemented in 1961 and that Roosevelt and Truman had implemented the same policy to stimulate the economy. He said they had all cut taxes when the economy went down. Reagan was going to cut taxes. Cutting taxes in bad times had been the Democratic policy since at least 1932. When he proposed the tax cuts to the Democratically controlled congress they passed it easily. It was after all the way Democrats had traditionally fixed the economy. It was not a conservative policy. Conservatives always wanted to raise taxes and balance the budget as a way to fix the economy. Perhaps that is why the voters back then tended to only elect Democrats or RINOS.
Reagan said he was going to build up the military and challenge the Communists all over the world. What do you think Truman did in Korea, and LBJ did in VietNam and Reagan tried to do with the Contras.
Reagan was a tried and true Democrat from 1932 until 1960. He was a major donor to the party and he actively campaigned for people like Adlai Stevenson for President. Yes Reagan worked and donated money to defeat Ike Eisenhower in both 1952 and 1956. Over and over Reagan told voters in Midwest union towns that he had not changed his views on anything. It was the Democratic party under Carter that had changed.
Yet there are people on FR who say one has to be a conservative to win the Presidency. The opposite is true. Lets look at Republican presidents over the last 70 years. Ike was not a conservative. Truman had told Eisenhower that if he would run as a Democrat, that Truman would see to it that Ike got the Democratic nomination for president in 1952.
Ike told Truman that it was not good for one party to control the presidency for more than 20 years so he was going to run as a Republican. Yes mam.. Ike was real Conservative.. Damned near as conservative as Truman and Kennedy...... but not quite.
Was Nixon a conservative? Was Bush 41 a conservative? Is Bush 43 a conservative? Reagan was anything but a conservative. Reagan claimed in speech after speech in 1980 that he was a traditional Democrat who had been deserted by his own party. In 1980 Reagan ran against Jimmy Carter not the principles of the Democratic party. Reagan embraced them.
Walter Cronkite and Brokaw saw Reagan as a threat to Democratic dominance of American elections. They felt the best way to defeat Reagan was to paint him as a Barry Goldwater type Conservative. Reagan would have none of it.
But ever since ignorant conservatives have believed the media when it said Reagan was a conservative. If the media told some people on FR that Bill Clinton was a virgin some Freepers would believe them.
We had a pool in 1980. It would be won by the first reporter who could get Reagan to say the words "Barry Goldwater."
Reagan's only relationship with Barry was to speak for him at the 1984 convention. Cap Weinburger and Ed Meese convinced Reagan that Reagan's RINO image would prevent him from wining the Republican nomination for governor of California in 1966. The Republican base in California was small but it was conservative. They would not vote for a RINO like Reagan and Reagan knew it.
To reduce his RINO image Reagan spoke for Goldwater at the 1964 convention.
When Reagan made it to the White House he never had any contact with Goldwater. He never invited him to come to the White House or any other social event. Reagan in reality had only political contempt for Barry Goldwater. Reagan never trashed Goldwater, but his refusal to even say his name spoke volumes.
As to the Reporters pool to get Reagan to say Goldwater. NO one ever won the money. NO ONE could find a way to get Reagan to even say the words Barry or Goldwater. Everyone one of us tried time and time again. We could not get him to say it. He did say the Senator from Arizona once. But he did not say which Senator from Arizona.
I wonder what the photogs throw away. they have had some god hillary shots lately too.
Heck, I say being upright and self-locomoting and lucid in your mid-60s is doing pretty good myself..
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