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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (90337)	10/16/2008 1:46:41 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542914

David Brooks defending Ronald Reagan is not going to persuade folk like me. If you totally discount his arguments because of his politics, then your also likely to totally discount mine. If your focused on the person rather than what they say then it would be rather difficult to make any argument that you would consider remotely worthwhile. But even assuming the arguments should be totally discounted (a rather unreasonable assumption IMO) presenting them would hardly be digging a whole for myself. Also you can hear the speach directly at onlinemadison.com and see if you can find anything that is racist or pandering to racists about it. And note at the time the state was more Democrat than Republican. Reagan probably exaggerated things when he said “I know speaking to this crowd, I’m speaking to a crowd that’s 90 percent Democrat.” But the south was largely democratic, even for some time after LBJ. In 76 Carter won every confederate state except VA. Yes Reagan did win most of them in 1980, bur Reagan won most of everything in 1980, gaining 489 electoral votes to Carter's 49 (basically 10 to 1, plus a 9.7 percent win in the popular vote). And the south was one of the closet areas (Carter won GA, won Tennessee by only 0.29%, Arkansas by 0.61%, Alabama by 1.30%, Mississippi by 1.32%, Kentucky by 1.46%, and South Carolina by 1.53%. The Republicans didn't dominate the south in an election for president where they didn't dominate the whole country until 2000.

To: JohnM who wrote (90337)	10/16/2008 5:15:31 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542914

>>You're just digging a bigger hole for yourself. David Brooks defending Ronald Reagan is not going to persuade folk like me. If you could find a reasonable nonpartisan source or even a Dem partisan source that takes your position, then I might take a serious look.<< John - Sorry to butt in, but Brooks provides some good factual background in his article, and also puts the words "states rights" in the context of what Reagan actually said. I disagree with Brooks all the time, but a factual argument will always be persuasive to me unless I have reason to doubt the facts that are being put forward. In this case, I have no reason to doubt the facts. Brooks may be a conservative, but he's not a liar. - Allen