GOP contenders embrace Reagan legacy

[rodeodance]

Source: ap




GOP contenders embrace Reagan legacy

By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer 28 minutes ago

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. - Ten Republican presidential candidates wanting to succeed
President Bush embraced a more popular president, conservative icon
Ronald Reagan, at every turn in their first debate of the 2008 race.

"Ronald Reagan was a president of strength," Mitt Romney intoned. "Ronald Reagan used to say, we spend money like a drunken sailor," said John McCain (news, bio, voting record). And Rudy Giuliani praised "that Ronald Reagan optimism."

The world, however, is far different today than it was some 25 years ago when the nation's 40th president relaxed at his retreat in the rolling hills of southern California.

Iraq and terrorism now are top issues, support for Bush is at a low point and Republican hopefuls find themselves trying to prove to the party's base that they're conservative enough to be the GOP nominee — on social matters as well as the economic and security issues Reagan championed.


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070504/ap_on_el_pr/republicans_debate_analysis;_ylt=ApbfcE.peb3OYDTGWtRkAvkGw_IE

[Donnachaidh]

1. The Debate was from the Great State of Denial

Ronald Reagan was the start of downfall of this country. And the way these idiots were chanting Ray-gun Ray-gun they are totally missing the point of what the American People want.

[Barrett808]

5. Exact;y. Resurrecting Reagan's moldy old ideas won't fly.

These guys are going to lose big in 2008.

:D

[speedingbullet]

2. Spending Money Like a Drunken Sailor...

Then he added, "The next round is on me."

[Felix Mala]

3. George W. Bush IS Reagan's Legacy!!!

This is what a nation gets when they elect a leader who acts like Reagan only "pretended" to act. The get tough, take no prisoners, shoot from the hip Reagan of the popular neocon myth belies the reality of the Reagan who actually spent trillions of dollars on pork, would lay down with any enemy of democracy (Saddam, Noriega, Marcos, ad nauseum), and was always ready to sell out principles (abortion, line item veto) to get a compromise.

[sutz12]

4. I couldn't watch it...

Watching the buildup, I was sure it would be a huge circle jerk with Saint Ronnie at the hub.

My only question is......who came first?

[electprogdems]

6. what, are they going to flood whole communities with cheap

extraordinarily addictive drugs, damn near wiping out a complete generation to (illegally and covertly) fund their pet wars? That's the real Reagan legacy.

[jamesinca]

7. You see what they were doing

Brought up the republic party hero, reminded people that they were delegates for him, and tried to relate how their ideas are similar to Reagan ideas. Morning in America II.

They also went with the social wedge issues of gays and abortions. Trying to say where they stand on the issues makes them the party of morality. We will be back to the arguments of amoral democrats v.s. the family value republics.

That is how the debates seem to be shaping up. Economy, government corruption, endless wars, environment will not be the issues of the debate or those asked by the national media moderator.

[Judi Lynn]

8. Ah, the Reagan legacy. Iran/Contra, death squads in Latin America,

backing psychotic right-wing dictators and sponsoring their programs as they wiped entire villages off the face of the map, slaughtering everyone they could get their SOA-trained hands on, even saving baby skulls as conversation pieces, and sending whoever was lucky to escape running to hide perpetually in the forests.

Yeah, some goddamned legacy.

]In addition to death squad activity, executions, rape, and torture, US government suppression of the murder of an American, etc., US backed goons engaged in scorched earth campaigns. While US military aid was halted in 1990, the CIA continued its own funding for another 5 years until reports in the US press made the funding public.

Guatemalan suffering continues to this day:

• UN Truth Commission on Guatemala: "during the period from 1981 to 1983 these acts descended to the level of genocide directed against elements of the country's indigenous Mayan population".
  
• Human Rights Watch - Guatemala
  
• Amnesty Int. - Guatemala
  
• National Security Archive - Guatemala: Corroberating US documents declassified under FOIA.
  
• NSA - US-Guatemalan policy documents: including a 1982 accusation by the U.S. Embassy that Amnesty International, the Washington Office on Latin America, the Network in Solidarity with Guatemala and the
• Guatemalan Human Rights Commission are supporting Guatemalan Communism because of their reports on human rights abuses in Guatemala - which have since been confirmed by declassified documents.
  
• Guatemalan Baby Organ Farming: the Myth and Legend and the indication of the "general mood"

http://www.flagrancy.net/timeline.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Reagan & Guatemala's Death Files
by Robert Parry
iF magazine, May/June 1999

Ronald Reagan's election in November 1980 set off celebrations in the well-to-do communities of Central America.
After four years of Jimmy Carter's human rights nagging, the region's anticommunist hard-liners were thrilled that they had someone in the White House who understood their problems.
The oligarchs and the generals had good reason for the optimism. For years, Reagan had been a staunch defender of right-wing regimes that engaged in bloody counterinsurgency campaigns against leftist enemies.
In the late 1970s, when Carter's human rights coordinator, Pat Derian, criticized the Argentine military for its "dirty war" -- tens of thousands of "disappearances," tortures and murders -then-political commentator Reagan joshed that she should "walk a mile in the moccasins" of the Argentine generals before criticizing them.
Despite his aw shucks style, Reagan found virtually every anticommunist action justified, no matter how brutal. From his eight years in the White House, there is no historical indication that he was troubled by the bloodbath and even genocide that occurred in Central America during his presidency, while he was shipping hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to the implicated forces.
The death toll was staggering -- an estimated 70,000 or more political killings in El Salvador, possibly 20,000 slain from the contra war in Nicaragua, about 200 political "disappearances" in Honduras and some 100,000 people eliminated during a resurgence of political violence in Guatemala.
The one consistent element in these slaughters was the overarching Cold War rationalization, emanating in large part from Ronald Reagan's White House.
(snip/...)

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ronald_Reagan/Reagan_Guatemala.html

[newscott]

9. So they're all doddering idiots and then they'll get Alzheimer's?

[otherlander]

11. No, even better!

Ketchup and coke!
Ketchup and coke!
:bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce:

[newscott]

14. LOL

[BLUEBOY]

10. Sad Old Party

Yeah bring back the good old days of Ronnie the old fool. Yikes :puke:

[aspencer]

12. LOL -- it's all they got left eom

[Thor_MN]

13. We will have to remember to tie them to St. Ronnie after 2008

Once we take the White House and revoke W's executive order sealing Ronnie's papers, we will have to remind them what they stand for. I can't wait Reagan's and Poppie's secrets to be exposed to the light of day. Should be some interesting books sealing the neocon's place in history as the greatest threat America has faced to date.