Reagan is finished. He is dead. His ideas for the most part were an experiment which have now played out and failed. His building up nuclear arsenals just as the COld War ended was not smart or fiscally responsible. It left huge mountains of debt which took two administrations to pay off.
But as Ron Reagan, his son, always says, agree with his Dad's policies or not, you had to love him, because he was a truly likeable guy. But being likeable doesn't mean you were right on issues. Not by a longshot. And contrary to rightwing myth Reagan did not end the COld War, did not stand up to Iran or Hexbollah, in fact he armed them and retreated from their attacks, even negotiating with weapons to release hostages. Reagan also had a lot of crooked greedy people around him who created the S+L debacle, the deregulation of polluters and many other short-sighted misguided policies which did us harm.
But Reagan is irrrlevant now. That was 25 years ago. He is no more relevant than Jesse Jackson running for presdient. We are looking forward now, not backward. Things have changed and the great privatization-deregulation-pro big business-pro super rich policies of Reagan have shown us what they are truly made us - financial disaster. Never again let any Hannity type get away with the lie that lowering taxes on the rich or huge corporations helps us or raises more revenue. It's just the opposite and that has been proven. Ditto pollution being good for the economy.
The GOP is now a shell of its former self, confined to Old Dixie (minus NCFlorida and VA), the oil patch and a few mountain states. The Democratic party is now in charge and probably will be for the next 16 years, because we are not going to be selfish and blow it like the Bushies did. And yes, we are even going to reach out to the same far right traitors who called us terrorists, communists and weaklings. Because even those people, deep down, have the capaicity to be good Americans as they may have been once before they drank the Bushie poisonous koolaid. Time to turn off the Hannity, Limbaugh and Fox, and start facing the truth. United we stand, divided we fall. And we are tired of falling. |
