Posted on 01/25/2016 5:53:55 PM PST by BlackFemaleArmyColonel
Reagan was a liberal Democrat who decried wrongheaded Republicans before he became the conservative hero of wrongheaded Republicans.
Ted Cruz is positioning himself as the "true" conservative candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. The senator from Texas wants his fellow partisans to believe that he is the surest heir of the secular saint of modern conservatism: Ronald Reagan. Cruz says he has read stacks of Reagan biographies to bone up on policy and presidential demeanor. He tells crowds that Reagan understood that "simply giving voice to values of American people has power, and speaking the truth with a smile has enormous potency. It's what Reagan did every day and what I'm trying to do in this campaign."
Unfortunately for Cruz, despite all his alleged reading and actual pontificating, he does not appear to know very much about his favored president. The senator--who is rarely accused of "speaking the truth with a smile"--is battling billionaire Donald Trump for the votes of conservatives in the first-caucus state of Iowa and the first-primary state of New Hampshire. And in this fight he frequently invokes the 40th president.
Ripping Trump for past expressions of sympathy with the Democratic party and at least some of its preferred programs, Cruz declared the other day in New Hampshire that "Ronald Reagan did not spend the first 60 years of his life supporting Democratic politicians, advocating for big government."
Seriously?
Does Ted Cruz not remember that Ronald Reagan was a Democrat before he was a Republican? Raised in a Democratic family, Reagan cast his first vote for Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932--when Herbert Hoover was decrying Roosevelt as a radical--and remained an active and outspoken Democrat through the first decades of his Hollywood prominence.
(Excerpt) Read more at thenation.com ...
"During the first half-century of his life, Reagan did not just support Democrats. He gave donations, cut commercials, and argued passionately for the party of FDR and Harry Truman. He was a passionate New Dealer who described himself not as a bleeding-heart liberal but as "a near hopeless hemophilic liberal."
Interesting.
PING.
The Nation? What next? Socialist Worker? Anarchist Monthly? Pravda? TeleSUR?
I actually pity you.
the sourcing of the articles here has tilted a bit.. leftward it appears
LOL
Trump is still #2 on my list, but his supporters are making me rethink my position.
The Nation? Wow.
.
Trump is more like Hillary. He was a registered Republican earlier in life, then registered as a Democrat at 54.
This really is absurd.
We are posting The Nation as a litmus test on who Reagan was?
I honestly pray that God will open the eyes of trump supporters.
Good point. At one point, the democrat party was the party of lower taxes and smaller government. That slowly changed.
Interesting to see you using The Nation as a source...LOL
This is the truth.
Reagan was always a moral man and a thinking man, but he was a left as one could go before bumping into communism.
As he aged, he mellowed and turned around on most issues. He was always a proponent of homosexuality.
This is BS. First the NATION is a left wing rag. Reagan voted “grudgingly” for Truman, and soon thereafter became a Republican. He was not a dealer with Tipp but did convince some DEMs to vote for his tax cuts, etc. If Reagan had said so many outrageous statements or insults as Trump has, the media, as well as the GOP, would have never let him on the ticket. It is just amazing the number of former Reagan haters that now use Reagan as one to compare others with. Why is the left so supportive of Trump??
If I recall correctly, what turned Reagan into a Republican was dealing with the Communists and their enablers in Hollywood in the 40s - particularly when he was President of SAG. It doesn’t appear that Trump underwent a similar metamorphosis when dealing with hardcore leftists in the 80s and 90s and 2000s in NYC.
And became the Republican governor of California earning a track record before running for President.
Trump not so much. Believing Trump has really changed is all on faith. There is no actual evidence of doing any of it.
How many times did Reagan switch parties after his “enlightenment”?
Ouch. :)
Cruz knows more about Reagan.
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