Posted on 02/03/2011 8:47:59 AM PST by MissesBush
WASHINGTON -- If President Ronald Reagan were alive to celebrate his 100th birthday this week, "he would be disturbed by the level of vitriol" coming from his own Republican party.
He also would be "furious" at recent GOP efforts to block an arms control treaty with Russia given that eliminating nuclear weapons was a signature issue he cared deeply about.
So says his youngest child, Ron Reagan, in an interview with AOL News.
An unapologetic liberal whose new memoir, "My Father at 100," has mostly garnered attention for the revelation that his father may have shown early signs of Alzheimer's disease while he was president, Ron Reagan is used to being discounted for his political beliefs.
Related Stories On 100th Birthday, Reagan Is Remembered for Good Reason 5 Things You Didn't Know About Reagan The Reagan Centennial: The Gipper Reconsidered You Said It: Ronald Reagan [VIDEO] Personal Memories: Reagan Was ... [VIDEO] Things Named for Ronald Reagan [PHOTOS] His adopted older half-brother Michael, whose new political manifesto about his father lags behind Ron's slim volume on Amazon, ripped into him for promoting "falsehoods and lies and conspiracy theories to sell books." Michael, a former conservative talk show host, tweeted that "my brother was an embarrassment to his father when he was alive and today he became an embarrassment to his mother."
The siblings haven't talked in years. Ron Reagan said his brother hadn't read his book when he fired the salvo on Twitter. But his mother, Nancy, who "is sharp as a tack" even if physically slowing down, has.
He said she instructed him on what to say to interviewers: "'You tell them that I've read it, I loved it, it made me cry, and I'm very proud of you.' "
Ron Reagan's run-ins with his father over politics and religion -- he declared early on to his parents that he was an atheist -- are well-known. But at 52, he said he had no interest in writing a political biography like his brother or to cover ground already superbly trod by others.
"I argued plenty with my father when he was alive; I have no intention of picking a fight with him now that he's gone and can't defend himself," Reagan writes.
Instead, "My Father at 100" muses on Ronald Reagan's formative years growing up in small-town Illinois. It is a chronologically liberal journey in space -- the author tootles along the backroads of his father's youth -- and time; the memoir veers from the potato famine in the Ireland of his great-grandparents to the California suburbs of his youth. Along the way, Ron Reagan dissects several creation stories told often by the 40th president.
(In what is either a very bad typo or a Freudian slip of epic proportions, he refers on page 40 to his father as the "forty-fourth president of the United States.")
"His was a life that spanned the twentieth century, stopping along the way in venues as quintessentially American as the small-town Midwest, Golden Age Hollywood, and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," writes Reagan, who traveled to Dixon, Ill., and other towns where his father lived before heading to California.
Though the elder Reagan's "voice still resonates" today, the son writes that his father was "an emissary from our nation's past" and "remained to the end of his days, in many respects, a child of" the 19th century.
The younger Reagan is convinced that having come of age in a more genteel time -- the president eschewed profanity except perhaps in private -- he would have been dismayed at the tenor of political discourse today.
"I feel comfortable saying he would be very, very disturbed by the vitriol, very disturbed by the 'birther' business, that (President Obama) is a 'terrorist,'" Reagan said. "All of that kind of stuff he would think was way, way over the top and just mean-spirited and stupid."
Ronald Reagan "was a very civil man, a gentleman," his son said. "I think he would find that rhetoric beneath the dignity of the country."
Reagan also said his father would not have been pleased "to see a bunch of people throwing up procedural B.S. to try and delay" ratification of the START treaty for political reasons. "He'd want to pinch somebody's head off," he said, without naming names of those he believes would have annoyed his father. Sponsored LinksThe first-time author warned against using the centennial of his father's birth Feb. 6 -- as Michael Reagan has done -- to extrapolate how he would come down on contemporary issues.
"As far as any specific policy things, it's just a big mistake to try to put words in his mouth or ascribe feelings to him," Reagan said. "Presumably his thinking would have evolved. It's been a long time since he was in public life. Times change."
Still, Reagan suggested his father might be considered a RINO today, a view shared by at least some conservatives.
After all, as governor of California, he signed a liberal abortion law six years before Roe v. Wade. As president, he granted amnesty for illegal immigrants and, after slashing taxes, he raised them when "that old trickle-down thing wasn't working," his son said.
"By some measures," he said, Ronald Reagan today would be considered "quite centristy, at the very least."
The nerve of this leftist creep to presume to speak for his father. If he understood his father in the least, and what he believed and why, he'd not be a liberal spouter. Why does the media give this clown 2 seconds-worth of attention? Wait, I know the answer.
Worry about the mean-spiritedness in your own party Ballerina Girl, like leftists saying as heard on the Blaze today that Clarence Thomas should be "sent back to the fields" or Congressional Democrats comparing Republicans to Nazis and so many millions of other examples of hate speech from liberals we could cite.
I don’t think President Reagan would like having an undocumented commie in the White House.
The little girl is “Furious” the GOP tried to block an arms control treaty with Russia, an issue President Reagan cared about...President Reagan would NOT have signed this stink burger of a treaty nor would he have approved of it, especially as it guts our ability to field the missile defense Reagan cared so much about. Shows how ignorant little Ronnie girl is. Reagan walked away from such a treaty with Gorbachev in Iceland. Go study your father’s own history before spouting off-—ignoramous.
But now he channels him?
I guess it’s not mean spirited to praise killing babies still in the womb... Ron jr.
“Son Says Reagan Would See Today’s GOP as ‘Mean-Spirited and Stupid’”
Classic liberal projection of personal character flaws: Failed son Ron is the very definition of ‘Mean-Spirited and Stupid’
Why is this thing still around?
How in the world would he know? He rejected and despised his father.
I know from a good friend who has run into Ronnie Reagan, that he is the most arrogant, mean spirited person you could meet.
Mommie’s Ronnie twitters again.
I imagine Jr was a tough cross to bear for Reagan.
Of all the offspring of modern-age American politicians,
POS
I can think of few things more depressing or pathetic than being a washed-up ballet dancer, lefty tool and aging Queen like Ron Jr.
And I’m trying to be civil.
Someday this guy’s gonna wake up and realize he’s old, his life is over, and his Dad really was a great man.
Ron needs to view his dad’s opinion of universal, govt-run healthcare. It is on Youtube, Ron.
To quote the Gipper...
“Well, now there he goes again...”
Personally, I think Nancy dropped the poor SOB on his head, when he was an infant.
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