So what if there have been diaries on this topic already. I'm pissed off and I'm going to write about it.
It seems more than obvious to me that Obama's statements praising Reagan are meant to pander to Republicans who might someday be voting for him in the general election.
But I'll tell you, it's pissing off the progressive democratic base! Man, if I was somewhat in favor of this guy before, I'm NOT NOW. I'm going to hope every day that he's NOT our candidate. Let me be clear - I hated Reagan. An actor for president? It was a joke before it happened and an ironic complete failure afterward. The start of our continued downward spiral into economic ruin and amoral foreign policy occured with Reagan, our figurehead president.
The Carter/Reagan election was the first one I was eligible to vote in, so I remember a little bit about it. At the time I was a dirt poor college student.
It was the economy, stupid.
People voted for Reagan because Carter, while a great guy, wasn't doing so well as president - regarding the economy. We had double digit inflation and people were absolutely furious about it.
Also, thanks to Ted Koppel who wanted to make a big name for himself, we had a nightly hour-long diatribe about how poorly Carter was handling the Iranian hostage crisis. (This was before CNN and probably gave someone the original idea for 24 hour news.) In fact, I don't think Carter did that badly on that score - but the constant media onslaught, every day all the time, made it look like it was the most important foreign policy issue at every moment for the entire duration of the event. It wasn't. But Ted became famous - that part worked great.
So people voted for Reagan because the only other choice was Carter. And they figured a change might do something about the economy. Little did they know that Reagan planned to borrow us into the ground.
The election wasn't about hope, it was about despair. Peggy Noonan wrote flowery speeches for Mr. GoodHair to recite about 'morning in America.' Maybe Obama liked all that rhetoric containing FALSE hope and NO good policy suggestions. I never bought it from Reagan and I sure won't from Obama. And don't give me that crap about Obama's policies - they are just weaker versions of what we've seen offered by Clinton and Edwards. Obama is the worst of the top 3. That is all.