Nancy Reagan: Reagan would be ‘worried’
By on May 21st, 2007 at 9:48 am
Nancy Reagan: Reagan would be ‘worried’
about Iraq and the state of the country today. In the “Good Morning America” interview, the former First Lady agrees with a recent Time magazine article by Karen Tumulty that noted, “The principles that propelled the [conservative] movement have either run their course, or run aground, or been abandoned by Reagan’s legatees.” Watch it:
[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/05/nreagan.320.240.flv]
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He would be sleeping.
May 21st, 2007 at 9:51 amgreat thought…just 6 years too late.
May 21st, 2007 at 9:55 amOh, please.
Poor Nancy. Your place in history has already been set; your husband was a traitor to America, and the “conservative movement” shown to be an intellectual fraud. Boo hoo.
May 21st, 2007 at 9:57 am“Yes, he would be worried …”
He’s the one who started this whole mess. Nice try at ducking responsibility, Nancy.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:00 amWhat do they mean how the right went wrong. Their ideology and actions have been wrong from the start.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:02 amReagan — the great facilitator.
Give it a rest, Nancy.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:03 amThat picture is crap. Ronnie never shed a tear over any of his cronies making a buck.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:04 amThe RIght went wrong when Mr. Reagan was elected president.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:04 amTheir ideology and actions have been wrong from the start.
Comment by klyde
Spot on. They say this because US soldiers are dying in Iraq asthey were dying in Vietnam. But what whould they say if there were no US casualties? They dont give a f*ck about Iraqis as they were not asked if they wanted “democracy” and they are not listened when they say they want US forces out. It is all about the US general perception of the occupation in terms of US casualties. Sad.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:07 amI have that issue of Time. It’s a keeper.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:09 amOh, Juan, you gonna freeze me out today?
May 21st, 2007 at 10:09 amRonnie RayGun was responsible for dulling our political senses to the extent that we could stomach an idiot like GDumbya and a tyrant like Darth Cheney for these past six years.
The Republicans continually hark back to the “RayGun” years as if they were some kind of idyllic period in our history. This exposes (1) their separation from reality and (2) their desperation to divert attention from the current train-wreck in the White House.
After the 2008 elections, the Republicans will all be able to sit around on their rocking chairs and reminice about the “good old days”. They will have nothing else to do.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:09 amNot that her opinion really matters, but there are many who think her husband was like a god and so if her words matter to them and affects their thinking in a more positive way, so be it.
Actually her husband was horrible for the working man, terrible for children and he pretended ignorance about criminal acts (Iran-Contra) but many people seem to ignore his many faults and have set him on a pedestal. He set the stage for the boy-king to enter and take the nation straight to the hell we find ourselves in today.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:10 am“principles that propelled the movement”
Like putting party over country by observing Reagan’s Conservative 11th commandment, to never speak ill of another republican?
Cutting taxes, while letting federal spending run free?
Selling weapons to terrorists?
Subverting the rule of law by ignoring a congressional mandate (the Boland amendment)?
Cutting and running from Beihrut?
Making hostage deals with terrorists, while still running for office?
Declaring ketchup a vegetable?
If denying reality could be considered a conservative principle (and there’s plenty of evidence that that is the case), Bush is surely following conservative principle in an historically-correct fashion.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:11 amReagan would be ‘worried’ about Iraq and the state of the country today.
He would be sleeping.
Comment by Juan C —
That is a riot, Juan.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:12 am:D
Nancy are you living well on the drug money your husband and Ollie brought back from Panama? Drug dealers buying arms to fund a revolution, these are the repugnacan heros. Just say no.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:16 amI got banned from Redstate for calling Reagan an actor.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:16 am“The principles that propelled the [conservative] movement have either run their course, or run aground…”
Kind of like what happened to the Communist movement in the Soviet Union. It ran its course or ran aground because IT DIDN’T WORK!
May 21st, 2007 at 10:17 amPresidential Doodles
Click on the cowboy and you’ll get a glimpse of how Ronnie pictured himself.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:17 am“Well…there you go again…blaming ME for the folked up state of this country and the world…Wasn’t my fault — it was BONZO!!” -Ronnie Raygun
May 21st, 2007 at 10:18 amRemember when Reagan gave his longtime supporters the finger, and negotiated the arms deals with Gorbachev? Richard Perle called him a traitor, and George Will wrote, the day after the accords were signed, “Yesterday will be remembered as the day America lost the Cold War.”
It took a lot of insight for the uber-rollbacker to recognize that the containment endgame had come, and it took a lot of stones to reverse course 180 degrees like that.
Dubya doesn’t have the insight, or the stones.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:19 amReagan died peacefully enough, he could’nt remember what he did or stood for.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:20 am“The principles that propelled the [conservative] movement have either run their course, or run aground, or been abandoned by Reagan’s legatees.â€
It’s true.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:25 amComment by trueblue
Is that how he viewed himself? Reagan looks like a gay hooker.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:26 amIt’s true.
Comment by squegeebooo
Name one.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:28 amcomment by barfly
HAhahaha!
Or a member of The Village People!
May 21st, 2007 at 10:29 ami can’t wait for the white house mouthpieces to denounce the ’sad’ pathetic nancy reagan….
May 21st, 2007 at 10:30 amNancy Reagan, dutiful stormtrooper to the end. She’s just setting up the 2008 GOP talking point that Bush wasn’t “conservative enough” and that what America really needs is a “real conservative.” And Time is eating it up.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:32 amOr a member of The Village People!
Comment by trueblue
Reagan, the original conservative “macho man.”
May 21st, 2007 at 10:32 amReagan “legatee”
(snort, guffaw, gag, barf)
give it a rest
May 21st, 2007 at 10:34 amNancy Reagan, good GOP footsoldier to the end. She’s just parrotting the official 2008 GOP talking point that GWB wasn’t “conservative enough,” and what the country needs is a “real conservative” like Fred Thompson or Newt Gingrich. And Time is eating it up.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:34 ami can’t wait for the white house mouthpieces to denounce the ’sad’ pathetic nancy reagan….
Yup. I’m sure they think that Nancy is becoming “increasingly irrelevant”.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:35 amOf course, some of Reagan’s principles remain near and dear to the hearts of his disciples.
Just a quick sampling of Reagan’s own compassionate conservatism:
“I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at the point of a bayonet, if necessary.”
(October 20, 1965)
“I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
(June 17, 1966)
“…A faceless mass, waiting for handouts.”
(Description of Medicaid recipients, 1965)
“Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders.”
(April 28, 1966)
“[Not] until now has there ever been a time in which so many of the prophecies are coming together. There have been times in the past when people thought the end of the world was coming, and so forth, but never anything like this.”
(December 6, 1983)
“…the moral equal of our Founding Fathers.”
(Describing the Nicaraguan contras, March 1, 1985)
“I know all the bad things that happened in that war. I was in uniform four years myself.”
May 21st, 2007 at 10:35 am(Reagan spent World War II making Army training films at Hal Roach Studios in Hollywood)
Reagan, the original conservative “macho man.â€
Comment by barfly
Great, now I have that image and song stuck in my head.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:35 amWe had already won the Cold War when Reagan took office. The Soviets were already waving a white flag trying to surrender. But Ronnie and George Sr. had to keep it going to make more money for the weapons manufacturers.
And doesn’t it seem that Sr. was probably Reagan’s Dick Cheney? He just didn’t have to be so obvious because the actor could “act” like the president unlike GWB.
One historian said that GWB is the worst president ever but Reagan is the most overrated.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:37 amEric,
Exactly!
May 21st, 2007 at 10:39 amI like the way you think.
I’m not surprised any more how fiendishly clever the Republic666ans are. Anything that appears on the surface as a true lament of failed Conservat666ive policies usually ends up as rhetoric for ratcheting up the pathetic control these freaks desire.
I’m hoping that someone is prepping a box Guantanamo for this traitorous jackal. Just kidding. I’ve always liked nancy.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:39 amGood lord, I thought living through Reagan was bad – now this.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:40 amsomeone should call Jeane Dixon for comment
May 21st, 2007 at 10:43 amI honestly see Bush’s Presidency as an extension of the Reagan years, only this time around, because of the Internet, they aren’t getting away with their mendacity.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:43 amWhat is different?
Ideologues are running the show. Check.
Neadless tax cuts for the wealthy. Check.
Massive debt. Tripling the National Debt. Check.
Hating on the Minorities. Check.
Tax burden shifted to the Middle Class. Check.
Government for the Wealthy Elite, by the Wealthy Elite. Check.
Two fake Cowboys. Check.
Shane,
We were already dominant over the Soviets when Reagan took office, that’s true. Perle’s “Team B” report about the scary Soviet military was, of course, nonsense. But the Soviets most certainly were not “waving the white flag” – Andropov and Chernenko and Gromyko were Cold Warriors through and through. It wasn’t until Gorbachev came to power that they started “suing for peace.” In 1980, everyone thought the USSR was in it for the long hall, and was at rough parity with us militarily.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:51 amThe Neocons have abandoned Reagan’s ideas of Conservatism, and the Neocons’ policies have been outright failures. Now, the 2008 Republican presidential contenders all try to hitch their wagons to Reagan’s legacy. Unfortunately for them, Reagan’s policies were failures as well.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:55 amRemember, Ronnie was a Democrat before he sold his soul.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:57 amthis is absolute bullshit! reagan and bush the lessor are cut from the same cloth – the only difference is that they inhabit different timeframes. Switch the two, i.e., bush the imp in 1980-1988 and reagan the clown in 2000 to 2008 and you get practically identical results.
Reagan pushed the envelope of rational thought to irrational limits in the 80s (trickle down economics, evil empire, union busting, POTUS as clown, Iran Contra, etc.) , the chimperor pushes it now. Both want the same thing: oligarchy and omnipotence based on overwhelming greed and egomania. Both don’t believe in America’s ideals: equality, opportunity, a loyal opposition, etc.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:59 am.
Zoo… :)
TRue, hi. :)
May 21st, 2007 at 11:01 amwhy does Nancy Reagan hate America? she’s giving aid and comfort to our enemies…
May 21st, 2007 at 11:02 amI’m guessing that Nancy still converses with Ronnie.
May 21st, 2007 at 11:07 amDaily.
Hourly.
Constantly.
Absolutely right pluege. Bush is taking Reagan’s ideology to its logical conclusion.
May 21st, 2007 at 11:11 amGreat, now I have that image and song stuck in my head.
Comment by trueblue
Sorry true. Next time, I won’t click on your link.
May 21st, 2007 at 11:16 amWhy does Nancy Reagan hate our freedom?
May 21st, 2007 at 11:20 amBut the Soviets most certainly were not “waving the white flag†– Andropov and Chernenko and Gromyko were Cold Warriors through and through. It wasn’t until Gorbachev came to power that they started “suing for peace.†In 1980, everyone thought the USSR was in it for the long hall, and was at rough parity with us militarily.
Comment by joe
Actually, by that time hadn’t they surpassed us in nuclear numbers, because of multiple warheads? Anyway, detente was the Soviets’ tacit acknowledgement that they couldn’t keep up the pace of the arms race, which occurred during Brezhnev’s era. Before Reagan.
May 21st, 2007 at 11:21 amAll do respect to Mrs. Reagan, I think she is way off!!!
Bush is doing everything Reagan would have done, IF, Reagan would have had a Republican Congress.
May 21st, 2007 at 11:33 amSCREW YOU NANCY!!!
I tired to be nice to you an all. But I’m done.
Your husband was a wuss!! I’m a war time President. I’m killing them there so we don’t have to kill them here!!
DEATH, WAR, GOOD!!!!
Reagan = Wuss!!
May 21st, 2007 at 11:38 ambush = reagan: simple, stoopid, easily manipulated, a front for handlers
rove = attwater: vile, subversive, unethical, amoral, win at any cost.
May 21st, 2007 at 11:47 am.
Comment by Juan C — May 21, 2007 @ 11:01 am
Hi, Juan. :)
May 21st, 2007 at 11:51 amRemember, Ronnie was a Democrat before he sold his soul.
Comment by Zimzone — May 21, 2007 @ 10:57 am
Ronning probably was “acting” like a Democrat when he was the President of the Screen Actors Guild.
May 21st, 2007 at 11:57 am“Oh, it’s so sad!”
The GOP is hanging itself on the rope it stole from the public. Still, I think the Gipper has other worries right now, like how to escape the fiery pit where he will spend eternity attoning for all the women and children his death squads raped and murdered.
May 21st, 2007 at 12:03 pmThe White House released a terse statement noting that Nancy Reagan has become “increasingly irrelevant.”
;-)
May 21st, 2007 at 12:08 pmTime Magazine (next edition, hopefully):
“How the Left Went Loony”
May 21st, 2007 at 12:12 pmCompTROLLER V-1,
Or maybe they could call it “How the Right will insure the Left’s continued rise”
If the left is so loony, why is the country voting for them. Is the country loony? Is this the place where you blame the media for the fact that people can’t make informed choices?
Issues where the left has the overwhelming support of the people:
Minimum Wage
Social Security
Progressive Taxation
Stem Cell Research
Universal Helath Care
Energy Policy
Balanced Budget
Full Funding for Education and othe Infrastructure based investments
Oh yeah, and ending the war.
Not sure where the country is in line with the Right at this point.
May 21st, 2007 at 12:24 pm“Where the right went wrong”
I’d say that the right went wrong when the elected the lousy President and all around hack Ronald Reagan.
Only the current clown and his merry bunch of thieves could make Reagan look GOOD.
May 21st, 2007 at 12:28 pmThe right is off course. And it’s resulted in crazy liberals taking over congress and obstructing American foreign policy. For the good of the country and for the good of the world, conservatives better get back on track.
May 21st, 2007 at 12:43 pmbarfly,
They had more warheads, but that was because their guidance systems were so lousy that they needed to put up a lot more warheads to be confident in hitting their target. It was never a case of their nuclear arsenal suprassing ours.
Anyway, I should have written “In 1980, everyone IN AMERICA thought the USSR was in it for the long hall, and was at rough parity with us militarily.” My comment was about how impressive it was that Reagan was able to recognize and act on this insight given the intellectual and political milieu he came from, which was the “Containment is for Wimps” American right.
May 21st, 2007 at 1:00 pmComment by Crump’s Brother
The country is voting for them primarily because of their unsettlement of the Iraq war and need for change in that specific conflict. It doesn’t mean that it’s going to be a permananent fixture. The Democratic politicians of today are just mostly ambitious and not full of much substance (Baracka Obama’s “new kind” of politics, whatever the hell that means, given that he has an old-age liberal-type voting record). Their only solutions are raising taxes and finding new ways to intimidate those who don’t share their views (i.e., “We want you to quit your job and be without economic means because you don’t agree with us and don’t want conform to our radically P.C. setting”). Franklin D. Roosevelt, they aren’t.
I could go on and on….
And to get to your other claims:
Minimum Wage – I think one has to be very careful about this, because while I support a 10-year raise given healthy economic activity and surveying of purchasing power in each state, businesses have the right to eliminate jobs because of a minimum wage lift. The minimum wage may not afford lots of purchasing power, but at least the jobs are there. People can usually work hard at them and move on. Low-wage work is more about getting that initial experience than it is about a “living wage.” The person can always pick up a second or third minimum wage job until something better comes along. It’s tough, but your resume’ won’t be hurting. Let us not contribute to the faster decline of low-skilled work; It bugs me when seemingly every job out there requires “experience”, yet you don’t know where to get it because the non-college entry-level jobs are disappearing.
Social Security – Protect benefits for all boomers. People born after 1964(myself included) will need to plan for their own retirements and accept reduced benefits from Social Security itself.
Progressive Taxation – Not an expert, but the “bracket” system needs reform, better indexed to inflation.
Stem Cell Research – agreed.
Universal Health Care – needs the right definition and substance in order to go into effect. Health care certainly need fixing, though. Democrats have no definitive, substantive plan.
Energy Policy – No opinion.
Balanced Budget – overrated.
Full Funding for Education and other Infrastructure based investments. – Agreed, generally. I think Education in the United States gets plenty of funding. All that money simply needs to be better shuffled.
May 21st, 2007 at 1:21 pm…rough parity with us militarily.
Comment by joe — May 21, 2007 @ 1:00 pm
It is my recollection that “parity” was not economically sustainable by the USSR, and that was the proximate cause of its collapse.
Of course, it is yet to be seen whether “parity” was economically susatinable by us any better than by them. But, we have yet to pay down the debt that Reagan accumulated during those years.
The burden of that debt continues to be borne by working people through lower wages, poor healthcare and an uncertain future.
May 21st, 2007 at 1:25 pmTHE CORPSE OF RONALD REGAN IS INCREASINGLY IRRELEVANT!
May 21st, 2007 at 1:56 pmThere is one plain and simple truth the last 25% or so of Bush supporters needs to understand: Bush is not your guy. He would be rejected no matter what party he represents. There is no question this guy is worse than Nixon, and we need to remove him before his incompetence does more damage.
This is a non-partisan issue.
May 21st, 2007 at 2:07 pmOuch.
May 21st, 2007 at 2:51 pmpete,
“It is my recollection that “parity†was not economically sustainable by the USSR, and that was the proximate cause of its collapse.”
We now know that this is true. However, back in 1980, it certainly wasn’t widely believed in America – especially among the Republican Right hawks, whose hero was Ronald Reagan. They thought there was a “missile gap” in the Soviets’ favor. They thought the Soviet Union was going to last forever, and maybe defeat us in a war, unless we made an immediate effort to build up our military.
That all seems silly, now. But back then, such ideas were the central principle of Reagan-style foreign policy…and Reagan turned his back on them, even though they got him elected and defined his political beliefs.
May 21st, 2007 at 3:05 pmWhy can’t Nancy be labeled “irrelevant” the way Jimmy Carter was yesterday? She truly is.
May 21st, 2007 at 3:47 pmAnyway, I should have written “In 1980, everyone IN AMERICA thought the USSR was in it for the long hall, and was at rough parity with us militarily.â€
That’s not the way I remember it. Now, my memory is probably fuzzy on a few things, but I believe there were people at that time (Brezhnev era, in the US), pointing out the economic unsustainability of the USSR’s nuclear program. By that time, the west was beginning to see the economic strain in the USSR — in the gradually lessening of economic and military support for third-world regimes, cutbacks in medical research, and other areas. While Gorbachev oversaw the winding down of Soviet empire, it had been visible to the West in many ways before then.
May 21st, 2007 at 3:48 pmNancy, littel karl is revving up the irrelevent boats. Step away from the shore….
May 21st, 2007 at 6:59 pmFor the good of the country and for the good of the world, conservatives better get back on track.
Comment by paul — May 21, 2007 @ 12:43 pm
Paul, put the crack pipe down!!!!
May 21st, 2007 at 7:09 pmRegan started the Neo-Con bullshit! What is wrong with these idiots?
May 22nd, 2007 at 5:28 amThis is just one more attempted attack against America that we have President Bush to blame for. He is SO determined to make our country a one culture nation by letting foreigners in and giving them legal rights to their screwed up religions that praise their martyrs for murdering us in our own country. It makes me long for the days when Ronald Reagan was President. I felt so protected when he was President. I think President Bush is a spoiled rotten rich kid who doesn’t even have the intelligence to BE in politics, let alone become President. His daddy got him the job. We’re doomed. We better ALL enjoy each day that we have because living in America, to me, feels like living in the ghetto with no police protection.
June 2nd, 2007 at 2:13 pm