feh...
Posted on 01/06/2011 3:15:56 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Outspoken former Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean apparently isn't planning to celebrate Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday February 6, around which there are coast-to-coast events planned. Instead, the former Vermont governor is shrugging his shoulders, asking what all the fuss is about?
At a media roundtable today, Dean suggested that Reagan had little impact other than stopping the social progression begun under FDR and seemed to dismiss the Gipper's efforts to crush communism, giving the last Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev credit for ending the Cold War, a statement sure to draw sneers from Reagan fans and even historians.
While Reagan is considered in polls and by historians to be one of the five greatest American presidents, Dean took the view that the Republican really wasn't consequential. "I think it's hard to point to particular singular accomplishments that are for the ages, I mean there was no civil rights bill or Medicare or Medicaid established. I attribute the collapse of the Soviet Union much more to Gorbachev than I do to Reagan."
Dean, a social progressive and doctor who is a champion of healthcare reform, even suggested that Reagan might have turned the country backward. "I think Reagan was a great leader, had leadership attributes," Dean allowed. "I do think that he put a roadblock in terms of the Roosevelt revolution. I don't think he reversed it, but I think he put a roadblock in it," he said at the roundtable sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. Dean added: "The thing in retrospect that you look to with Reagan was he did represent, I mean the Republicans are right to revere him, in the sense that he did kind of represent the end of the progress in terms of where Roosevelt was taking the country and a reassessment that we have been fighting ever sense. I think we've sort of fought to a stand still but he put a stake in the ground and stopped the progression to a more humanitarian country."
The often quotable former party chief also let loose on other topics:
-- The likelihood that small business would stop offering health insurance benefits and dump workers into the health reform exchanges is a good thing because it would make businesses more competitive because they've be spending less on healthcare.
-- He won't challenge President Obama in 2012, will encourage others not to take the president on, and believes Obama will win handily.
-- Called the Tea Party the "last gasp" of older whites who are afraid of diversity, adding that Obama's black face reminds them that the nation has changed for good.
“Whatever happened to the good old days when people who made absolute asses of themselves in public just “disappeared” and lived out the remainder of their lives in obscurity?”
That rule still applies to Joe Biden, unless Obama confesses his crimes.
Fixed it! Well, at least that part of it!
Reagan stopped the liberal socialist agenda dead in its tracks and had significant success slowing down the growth in the Democrats created nanny state through tax cuts and deregulation. Dean totally ignores the fact that Gorby was reacting to Reagan and not vice versa. Reagan drove the final dagger into the communist state and ended the Cold War with a victory for the good guys.
“— Called the Tea Party the “last gasp” of older whites who are afraid of diversity....”
We won.
Is 29 consider old for a white male? If so, I guess I am old.
I guess his value can be considered comic relief.
If Howard Dean’s preferences had been realized, our children would be studying the Cyrillic alphabet in order to better understand their roles in the New Soviet World. But Reagan won and although Dean can’t admit it, he is content to settle for the next best thing: a socialist American President. The substance of his complaint is that thirty years on, most Americans still think socialism sucks.
Howard Dean is the gift that keeps on giving...sorta like Venereal Disease.
Must be due those pink bunny rabbits running around in his head.
Reagan ended the cold war with the Soviet Union, what he didn’t get to was the communists within the US, like... uh, Howard Dean and his communist democrats.
Hey Howard, you know this is true, don’t ya?
Dean is just ticked off because he was rooting for the other side.
howeird dean is a liar... and the truth is not in him.
LLS
Yep this is what they teach these days. My Modern US history book in college spent exactly 2 paragraphs on Raegan and it pretty much blamed him for increased spending and a bigger gap between richer and poorer. It gave all the credit to Gorby for the fall of the Soviet Union.
Talked to my Prof. about it and she just said yep and walked away.
Howard Dean is a moron.
feh...
Great men make history. Insignificant little ones try to rewrite it when they find themselves on the wrong side.
It reminds me of that Jimmy Buffet song, where he sings, I don't think that I would ever let em cut on me.
It’s a real push which provides more valued information, a pronouncement by Howard Dean or a bubble gum wrapper. At least the bubble gum wrapper might be accurate about something.
This won’t be the pot-shot hear around the world.
It will be the whimper heard around his lips.
Howard Dean is a moron. Can you imagine if he was your doctor?
Next story in the news Democrats have the lowest party indemnification ever.
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