Barack Obama is taking some deserved heat for his recent Praise for the GOP and Ronald Reagan.
Obama told the Reno Gazette-Journal:
“I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”
Obama seems to agree with the Republicans that Reagan saved us from the "excesses" of the 60s and 70s, i.e., "Big Government."
John Edwards gave the correct Democratic response:
"Ronald Reagan, the man who busted unions, the man who did everything in his power to destroy the organized labor movement, the man who created a tax structure that favored the richest Americans against middle class and working families, ... we know that Ronald Reagan is not an example of change for a presidential candidate running in the Democratic Party."
Reagan also "was destructive to the environment by removing a lot of the regulation that existed," Edwards added in a later telephone interview with The Associated Press. "I would never use Ronald Reagan as an example of change."
This is not the first time Obama has sided with Republicans. As Paul Krugman has pointed out in the New York Times, Obama has moved to the RIGHT of Clinton and Obama on many issues, including Health Care and Social Security. Obama has also pandered to the religious right by attacking secularists and the separation of church and state and using anti-gay leaders and entertainers to reach black churches.
Instead of praising Ronald Reagan and helping the right-wing remake history, the Democratic Left needs to expose the truth about Ronald Reagan and his crimes. Robert Perry's Consortium News provides a more accurate overview of the record of Ronald Reagan.
Paul Krugman Debunks The Reagan Myth
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3 comments:
..the thing is, he never praised Reagan. He was just saying that he could shift the political trajectory the same way Reagan did for republicans - there is no praise there. I have to wonder, are people that daft, or that intellectually dishonest?
P.S Paul Krugman is a Clinton Lackey.
Obama also said that Reagan was responding to the "excesses of the 60s and 70s", that would seem to meant that he agreed with the conservative critique of the New Deal and Great Society programs that expanded government.
And Krugman is not a Clinton supporter. He seems to prefer Edwards since he has the most progressive economic programs.
Obama did in fact praise Reagan, at least implicitly. He said that Reagan "put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating." Obama is here giving credence to Reagan's critique of the welfare state, and implicitly acknowledging that liberalism needed to be put on a diet - that is, those who propose governmental social programs need to hold those programs accountable.
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