Pat Buchanan: 'There’s a Lot of Myth About Tip O’Neill and Reagan Working Together. They Did Not'

NewsBuster.org ^ | January 19, 2013 | Noel Sheppard

[Kaslin]

A common media theme since the Republicans took over the House of Representatives in January 2011 has been that former President Ronald Reagan and former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill were great legislative partners despite being from different parties.

Syndicated columnist Pat Buchanan threw some cold water on this notion on PBS’s McLaughlin Group Friday saying, “There’s a lot of myth about Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan working together. They did not" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Pat Buchanan: 'There’s a Lot of Myth About Tip O’Neill and Reagan Working Together. They Did Not'

PAT BUCHANAN: There’s a lot of myth about Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan working together. They did not. Ronald Reagan…

JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, HOST: You saw the pictures.

BUCHANAN: They did not. Look, in Reagan’s first term, you know who he worked with? He had a Republican Senate by ten votes, and he had a Democratic House that had 40 guys in it called Blue Dog Democrats and Danny Rostenkowski of Chicago.

CLARENCE PAGE, CHICAGO SUN TIMES: Yep, yep.

BUCHANAN: These are the guys he worked with on his economic package. I went into the White House in 1985, John. Reagan had won 49 states, and they beat him again and again on Contra Aid. He fought for it, he finally got that through. We had to fight to get the MX missile through. And in ’87 when the Democrats took over the Senate…

MCLAUGHLIN: What’s the point?

BUCHANAN: The point is when the Democrats took over the Senate, they not only Borked Robert Bork, they almost got Ronald Reagan attempted to impeach him. The point here is we had Democrats for six years in that House we could work with, and Tip O’Neill was not the leader of that Democratic Party.

MCLAUGHLIN: I’m not talking about some zero sum game. I’m saying that all things considered he had remarkable success in dealing with Democrats.

BUCHANAN: He had, no he didn’t.

MCLAUGHLIN: De facto success he did. I just showed the record.

BUCHANAN: He had success in bringing the Blue Dogs whose Congressional districts he carried by huge margins.

MCLAUGHLIN: Right.

BUCHANAN: They came with him. The rest of the Democrats fought him every single year.

For myself, I've often wondered whether this supposed love affair between Reagan and O'Neill was a media exaggeration.

My recollection of that period was that the Democrats and their press minions fought Reagan much as they did George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

Today, with a Democratic President and a Republican Speaker, it furthers the liberal agenda to make it seem that Reagan and O'Neill were such great legislative partners.

By this illusion assuming Buchanan is right - and I for one view Buchanan's historical acumen as beyond reproach - it puts pressure on current Speaker John Boehner (R-Oh.) to acquiesce to President Obama's wishes.

I wouldn't be surprised if years from now the media claim George W. Bush and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) were bosom buddies too.

Stay tuned.

[Farmer Dean]

Just finding a time when Tip wasn’t pickled would have presented a real challenge.

[Vince Ferrer]

Ted Kennedy and other democrats collaborated with the Soviet Union, trying to subvert our own foreign policy.

[DuncanWaring]

I remember O’Neill sonorously intoning on the evening news “President Reagan’s budget is deaddddd onnnnnnnn arrivalllllll”.

[gleeaikin]

ping

[LoneRangerMassachusetts]

Tip O'Neil had as much class as a union steward. That fat sack of excrement used to tell people Reagan was stupid. Work together, spare me.

[Luke21]

I assure you, the Democrats were as vicious as always, and O’Neill was a nasty pit bull and liberal scumbag. The press and Dems advocated for a nuclear freeze in the first four years and glamorized Daniel Ortega. Then they ran national Watergate style show trials of Reagan and Robert Bork during the second term, capping it off by destroying Dan Quayle.

The Ronald Reagan espoused by today’s press is closer to Fidel Castro than reality. The liars don’t tell the truth about anything, but their view of the eighties is hysterical.

[1010RD]

That history is never taught in government schools. How can an American child learn without the facts?

[hinckley buzzard]

Read the Reagan Diaries. He was stabbed in the back by ONeill and had little good to say about him. They never "had drinks and swapped Irish jokes after business hours." This was a lie concocted probably by drunken liar Chris Matthews, ONeill flunkie. Reagan only had dinner a couple times with ONeill, with both wives present, because he didn't trust ONeill enough to be alone in a room with him.

Buchanan appears to be spot on with this one.

[nd76]

One slight inaccuracy: in 1981, the 47 Dems who crossed the aisle to vote for bills like Gramm-Latta and Kemp-Roth were called “Boll Weevils”. Rostenkowski, then the Chairman of House Ways and Means, did play ball with Reagan to allow these bills through his committee.

[ColdSteelTalon]

Reagan signed FOPA banning assault rifles in 1986.

[Theodore R.]

I seem to recall too that Barbara Bush “took up” for O’Neill and greatly admired the old MA liberal.

[TexasRepublic]

O’Neill was a nasty piece of work. I remember he would sit behind President Reagan during his annual State of the Union Address, always scowling the whole time.

[The Cajun]

Chris Matthews was Tip O’Neill's top aid.

Nuff said.