Yes, I know that GOP Reagan worship is strong, but really -- do Republicans now simply assume that Ronald Reagan was the Greatest President Ever? Really?
I ask, because (via Benen) of a new Mitt Romney ad bashing Barack Obama for claiming to be one of the greatest four presidents (which, natch, Obama never said, as Benen points out, but that's not the point here). The narrator says that Obama's claim is that he's better than "George Washington, John F. Kennedy, and even Ronald Reagan" (my emphasis).
Parsing that, it seems that the Romney campaign is asserting, or perhaps assuming, that claiming to be better than Ronald Reagan is a stronger claim than claiming to be better than George Washington. Right? That's what the "even" is doing there.
Do Republicans really think that Ronald Reagan was a greater president than George Washington? I guess so. What I'm really wondering, however, is whether that ad really was aimed for a general election audience. Does Team Romney really think that anyone outside of partisan Republicans thinks of Reagan as a greater president than Washington?
Granted, it's just a tiny point about an ad that hardly anyone (I assume) will see. Still, if anyone is looking for hints that Republicans are trapped in a feedback loop, this is the kind of evidence that goes into the pile.
(In case you're wondering: Lincoln was presumably omitted from the ad because Obama's original comment mentioned Lincoln, and thus Obama supposedly wasn't claiming to be greater than him).
Update: yet another awful typo, or whatever you call it when you put the wrong word in, fixed.
I think most Republicans would put Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln easily at the top. Usually when they talk greats they are talking post-civil war figures.
ReplyDeleteJefferson wouldn't make that list, Clark. Jefferson has been on the GOP shit-list ever since they discovered that he coined the phrase "separation of church and state." In fact, Texas is reducing his presence in school textbooks because of this. They'll mention Dec of Ind, and Louisiana Purchase, and then move on to more important things like Cotton Mather.
DeleteWe know how much modern Republicans love budget deficits, so why wouldn't Reagan be their top guy?
ReplyDeleteGeorge Washington did absolutely nothing to stem the tide of communist insurgents advancing from the tip of Patagonia on their long march to Brownsville. Poor old Monroe tried, but all he did was contain the commies, he did nothing to roll them back. Then along comes Carter giving away the Panama Canal, and the embiggened Reds started massing on our borders and leafleting schoolchildren in the Southwest with copies of the Communist Manifesto and Rules for Radicals.
ReplyDeleteLong story short, Ronnie beat back the commies in a decisive victory that would last until Nov. 2008, when the bastard child of Patrice Lummumba and Bill Ayers (cloning) was elected president and immediately set about destroying the foundations of America, starting by depriving Americans of their long-held and much-cherished right to die in the street rather than submit to the ministrations of "physicians" and other "healthcare" "professionals."
You can look it up.
Wow! That is some good stuff...
DeleteBrownsville was a devious Communist feint. Their real target was Harlingen, as Reagan brilliantly recognized: "Defeat for the contras would mean a second Cuba on the mainland of North America. It'd be a major defeat in the quest for democracy in our hemisphere, and it would mean consolidation of a privileged sanctuary for terrorists and subversives just 2 days' driving time from Harlingen, Texas" (3/3/86).
DeleteNeedless to say, there is no record of George Washington doing anything at all about the threat to Harlingen. He acted like Harlingen didn't even exist.
I can't remember if it was Travis or Fannin who came up with the phrase, but the rallying cry at the Alamo was "Don't forget Harlingen!"
DeleteRight! And look how well it worked! :-)
DeleteLincoln imposed an individual mandate depriving individuals of the liberty of choosing not to free their slaves anyway, so he is a socialist dictator according to modern GOP dogma.
ReplyDelete"that claiming to be better than Ronald Reagan is a stronger claim than claiming to be better than Ronald Reagan."
ReplyDeleteHuh? You want to fix that?
Thanks. Glad that several of you got the meaning of that even with the wording wrong, but I'm glad someone noticed -- thanks again, and fixed.
DeleteDo Republicans really think that Ronald Reagan was a greater president than George Washington?
ReplyDeleteWho did Washington play for? Because it's all about the team, your team. I remember my uncles singing "Better than his brother Joe.../ Dominic DiMaggio"
I don't think Washington was necessarily a great President. It seems to me that most of his greatness was before then. It's not like you can point to a long list of achievements in office. To the extent that he was a great President, it was because of what he didn't do - eg set himself up as dictator for life.
ReplyDeleteOf those who are normally spoken of as great Presidents, I'd put Reagan easily at the top. But it's subjective.
I think this ad foreshadows good things to come. Perhaps "Barack Obama thinks he has the 23rd best jump shot in DC. But that's only cause Reggie Love is taking the shots for him, while he's back at the office, spending borrowed money". Or maybe, "Barack Obama thinks he's the 17th handsomest man in the WH cafeteria line. But that's only cause he's spending so much borrowed money primping himself in the morning".
ReplyDelete(BTW - slightly unrelated topic - I never understood why liberals don't push back on the "Great Saint Ronnie" meme with Reagan's decision to flee Lebanon after the barracks bombing. Hard to say how much that contributed to the GWOT, but it surely wasn't immaterial, and Reagan's handling of same sure seemed cavalier considering the consequences.)
Reagan's decision to flee Lebanon after the barracks bombing.
DeleteIf you invade an enclosed-mall-sized island in the Caribbean fast enough on the heels of it, no one notices.
Basic magic stagecraft. If you want to disappear the beautiful girl stage left, you need a bang and a puff of smoke stage right.
CSH,
DeleteBecause there's a major asymmetry involved. Since Jan 1989, Democrats basically haven't cared about Reagan, but various pro-Reagan groups -- including, IMO, people who are basically using Reagan to squeeze money out of people -- do care a lot.
Same thing with Kennedy. There's just no incentive for anyone to be anti-Kennedy, and so he winds up massively overrated.
Thanks for the comments, guys. In an uneducated way, I was thinking that the lack of pushback for Lebanon reflected Democrats leery of inviting "fifth column"-type return fire (with which the Right is always ready). But either of your explanations probably makes more sense.
DeleteJust a thought here, but if this a general election ad, then it's mostly aimed at that narrow band of low-information, partisanship-eschewing "swing" voters. Or at least they comprise the group it might functionally have an effect on.
ReplyDeleteSo a low-information swing voter probably has a neutral to slightly favorable opinion of Reagan. Even if they know little about his policies or performance as president, they probably like him personally.
And along comes this smart, confident, flag-loving (and not to mention ruggedly handsome!) politics-talking guy implying that Reagan is one of our greatest presidents. And Joe Q. Swingvoter thinks that must be true. After all, if a guy running for president is willing to say it on TV, there is probably some truth to it.
I dont necessarily see the end-game here, though it can't hurt for those swing voters to have even more positive views of Reagan. But I think this is a plausible way to interpret the ad's method, if it is indeed primarily targeted towards a GE audience.
This Republican does not rank Reagan above George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, but I do rank him above all post-World War II Presidents. He liberated us from the 70% top marginal tax rate that prevailed up through 1980, and we have never gone back since then to anything approaching those oppressive tax rates. Neither Eisenhower, nor Nixon, nor Ford objected to such confiscatory tax rates, but Reagan made it the central mission of his Presidency to bring those oppressive rates down! He made it possible for a man like me to rise up from the working class (my father had only a 10th grade education) to become a multi-millionaire on Wall Street, and that could never have happened without the sharp reduction in tax rates pushed through by Reagan. He revived the animal spirits of American businessmen that were nearly destroyed by the Administration of Jimmy Carter. Reagan and Thatcher brought vigor and enthusiasm back to Anglo-American capitalism, and that makes them the premier political figures of the second half of the 20th century!
ReplyDeleteWell, Jimmy Carter was a terrible president, but there are two problems with this logic: since 1980, there's been much less upward mobility (so excellent that you made it, but you were swimming against a sharper tide than pre-1980), and overall economic growth has been worse.
DeleteNone of which necessarily means that the Reagan-era tax changes were mistakes, but it's hard to attribute to them the effects posited here.
That just illustrates why Reagan was one of our worst presidents ever. And likewise, Thatcher was Britain's worst 20th century PM.
DeleteLike a lot of Romney statements, it's a bit ambiguous. You could read the "even" as suggesting that Reagan is a dubious choice next to the other two, but still arguably a great president. I think Romney was going for the first interpretation, while leaving room for himself to fall back on the second. Which is a very Romney-ish thing to do.
ReplyDeleteHe liberated us from the 70% top marginal tax rate that prevailed up through 1980
ReplyDeleteTrue for some values of 'us'.