It's mind numbing to hear all the references by today's Republicans who claim to give adulation to Ronald Reagan even though were he to run for office with the positions he held, Reagan would likely go down to defeat at the hands of the Christofascist/Tea Party base of today's GOP. The hypocrisy of these pretend worshipers of Reagan is only exceed by the hypocrisy of the child rapist protecting Roman Catholic Church hierarchy. On a host of issues, Reagan would be anathema to today's GOP base. A somewhat tongue in check column in the Washington Post looks at how Reagan would have to be "genetically re-engineered" to conform to today's insane and extremist Republican Party. Here are highlights:
Party officials have been making the pilgrimage to the Reagan Library this year to express their wish to re-create the great man. “I believe boldness and clarity of the kind that Ronald Reagan displayed in 1980 offer us the greatest opportunity to create a winning coalition in 2012,” vice presidential aspirant Paul Ryan said at the library last week.
Also making the trip were VP hopefuls Marco Rubio and Chris Christie. “Like Ronald Reagan, I believe in what this country and its citizens can accomplish,” the latter declared. “The America I speak of is the America Ronald Reagan challenged us to be.”
The man they hope to join on the ticket, Mitt Romney, once boasted that he was “not trying to return to Reagan-Bush.” Now he says the party’s standard-bearer should be in “the same mold as Ronald Reagan.”
But before they go filling that mold by mapping the Reagan genome, Republicans may wish to consider some genetic flaws that party scientists should repair in the cloning process. To make the Reagan clone more compatible with today’s Republican Party, a bit of genetic engineering may be in order:
AFL-1 Reagan’s AFL-1 gene, on the labor chromosome, has a mutation that made him susceptible to workers’ rights. He said of unions: “There are few finer examples of participatory democracy.” He said the right to join a union is “one of the most elemental human rights.” And he said collective bargaining “played a major role in America’s economic miracle.”
EPA-4 Reagan’s EPA-4 gene, on the regulatory chromosome, has a protein that can summon anti-industry sympathies. He signed a law establishing efficiency standards for electric appliances and an update to the Safe Drinking Water Act punishing states that didn’t meet clean-water standards.
SSA-2 and MDCR-1 These related genes, on the long arm of the retirement chromosome, are problematic. Reagan expanded Social Security in 1983 and imposed taxes on wealthy recipients. He also signed what was at the time the largest expansion of Medicare in its history.
DEBT-1, DEBT-2, DEBT-3 A trio of abnormalities on the fiscal chromosome caused Reagan to increase taxes several times after his initial tax cut, to embrace much higher taxes on investments than current rates and to sign 18 increases in the federal debt limit.
SPND-1, SPND-2, SPND-3 These Reagan mutations, in the same sector as the debt mutations, created a genetic predisposition to expand the federal government. Reagan enlarged the federal workforce and the federal budget, added the Department of Veterans Affairs (one of the largest Cabinet agencies) and pursued a military buildup that would be impossible under spending limits proposed by congressional Republicans.
EITC-1 For all his talk about welfare queens, Reagan had a gene on the compassion chromosome that led him to champion the earned-income tax credit, a program for the working poor that takes more children out of poverty than any other program. Budgets proposed by today’s Republicans would cut or eliminate the credit. A related abnormality caused Reagan to say that bus drivers should not pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes than millionaires — one of President Obama’s tax proposals opposed by current Republicans.
By today's standards in the GOP, Reagan would be described as a tax and spend liberal Democrat. My goodness, he might even be called a Communist! Today's lunatic GOP base definitely has a very selective memory of the real facts about Reagan and his 8 years as President.
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