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Gallup poll: Reagan greatest president ever

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Phokus said:
He's like patient zero of the 'deficits don't matter' ideology of the GOP, all at the same time they praise him for small government ideals.
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So why is Dear Leader following in Reagan's footsteps, he wants to be just as popular? Maybe it had nothing to do with policy after all and the moron currently residing in the White House is setting himself up to fail.
 
Jaskalas said:
So why is Dear Leader following in Reagan's footsteps, he wants to be just as popular? Maybe it had nothing to do with policy after all and the moron currently residing in the White House is setting himself up to fail.
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But but Obama!
 
dullard said:
The Soviet Union was essentially in crumbles before Reagan was even in office. Reagan was the cherry on top of the cake, but he certainly didn't bake the cake. The Polish strikes at the Lenin Shipyards were on August 14, 1980 - a few months before Reagan. Solidarity started Sept 1980 - again before Reagan. The Czech Charter 77 was four years before Reagan. The Afghan war to get out of the Soviet Union started in 1979, yep before Reagan.
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Yes, those things started before Reagan, but he supported them and accelerated the results. He made the soviets realize that they were toast and that hanging on was useless. Had a wimp like Carter been there for 12 more years it could have been decades more. Of course this is all speculation, we'll never know.

Exactly.

Reagan RAISED taxes significantly 11 times. Yet, people remember him solely as a tax cutter. It is the disconnect between reality and fantasy that keeps him popular. Same goes with Democratic presidents, but this thread is about Reagan.
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The reason Reagan is beloved and revered has nothing to do with policy and taxes and all that. It's all about restoring confidence and self image after Carter left American's self image in tatters. He came in and allowed people to feel proud to be American again, to hold their heads up high. For all his flaws that was his biggest accomplishment, and that's why people remember him fondly.

Clinton was basically lucky to stumble into the great internet boom, combined with a republican congress to force him into the middle of the road and a minute level of fiscal restraint.
 
PokerGuy said:
Yes, those things started before Reagan, but he supported them and accelerated the results. He made the soviets realize that they were toast and that hanging on was useless. Had a wimp like Carter been there for 12 more years it could have been decades more. Of course this is all speculation, we'll never know.
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In other words, you believe that President Reagan ended the Cold War because you like believing that President Reagan ended the Cold War.

Mr Russian class went on tour of the Soviet Union in 1979. We were warned to bring plenty of soap, shampoo and any other toiletries we required because the finest hotels in the Soviet Union couldn't supply them; the finest hotels in the Soviet Union couldn't even maintain a supply of toilet paper.
The Soviet economy was crumbling long before Mr. Reagan ever took office.
The reason Reagan is beloved and revered has nothing to do with policy and taxes and all that. It's all about restoring confidence and self image after Carter left American's self image in tatters. He came in and allowed people to feel proud to be American again, to hold their heads up high. For all his flaws that was his biggest accomplishment, and that's why people remember him fondly.
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Apparently you think Mr. Reagan was a great President because he played one well on camera. As long as that's good enough for you...
 
In reality, Reagan was good, but not great. His 100th birthday was this month and he was all over the news. Then a poll comes out asking people to name a president. Guess who came out on top? Hmmm, it was the one who was all over the news. He'll be back down a few notches next year.
 
Craig234 said:
Just before I came here and saw this, I was reading about this book on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Tear-Down-This...f=pd_rhf_p_t_4

It's just one such book, there are ones that are probably better.

I've described many facts about Reagan recently that contradict this rating and show why he belongs on the worst president list; this poll is from ignorance and propaganda.
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Bush and McCain dominated the Republican party's nomination for the last decade. Their record is clear, you must be a big spending deficit multiplying SOB to be relevant to the GOP.

You think Reagan is based on ignorance and propaganda? I'm telling you it's directly in line with what's normal for Republicans. They've proven it time and again that they will elect moderates who forsake values and grow government.
 
Jaskalas said:
Bush and McCain dominated the Republican party's nomination for the last decade. Their record is clear, you must be a big spending deficit multiplying SOB to be relevant to the GOP.

You think Reagan is based on ignorance and propaganda? I'm telling you it's directly in line with what's normal for Republicans. They've proven it time and again that they will elect moderates who forsake values and grow government.
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To be clear, this poll's rating of Reagan is based on ignorance and propaganda.

That's what I was discussing - though much more of Republicans' behavior is as well.

Be fair to them, though. Their desire to elect radicals for 'small-government' views is a terrible opinion - but they have been misled again and again by the candidates.

George W. Bush ran as a far-right conservative - he was the 'finally we get a real conservative, one of ours' guy.

His father - 'read my lips, no new taxes'.

Reagan was the 'real' conservatve considered too far right to be electable. You couldn't shut him up about fiscal responsibility and small government.

In this last election, McCain said a lot of things portraying himself as far-right (flip flopping hugely, as has Mitt Romney).

My point? Both the 'big spending' Republicans they elect and the 'far-right radicals' they want are disasters.

A reason they're lied to so badly is that they want something utterly delusional - and any sane elected official doesn't give it to them, though they use them for votes.

Hence why Reagan raise taxes every year after the one tax cut, why Bush DID raise taxes, and so on.

Now, we're also in danger of the 'modern corporate democrat' who sells out to Wall Street, and pays for it with debt and/or cuts for the public.

That's the real enemy people should unite to oppose, but don't as it has more and more control of both parties, just as they're led to do, by breeding opposition over side issues.
 
Craig234 said:
George W. Bush ran as a far-right conservative - he was the 'finally we get a real conservative, one of ours' guy.
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How far from reality have you fallen?

George W. Bush, in 2000, ran as a 'compassionate' conservative who promised the biggest expansion in medicare this country has ever seen. There's nothing conservative about 'Medicare Part D' - let alone the far-right you'd like to paint him as.

Us conservatives hated George W. Bush for not being conservative. That is our exact problem with McCain. It's what I'm saying, there's nothing special about Reagan being a big-government Republican when that's the only thing the GOP has produced.

It's not a trick, it's exactly what they do. It's who they are.
 
Jaskalas said:
How far from reality have you fallen?

George W. Bush, in 2000, ran as a 'compassionate' conservative who promised the biggest expansion in medicare this country has ever seen. There's nothing conservative about 'Medicare Part D' - let alone the far-right you'd like to paint him as.

Us conservatives hated George W. Bush for not being conservative. That is our exact problem with McCain. It's what I'm saying, there's nothing special about Reagan being a big-government Republican when that's the only thing the GOP has produced.

It's not a trick, it's exactly what they do. It's who they are.
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Bush ran, not surprisingly, with different images to capture different voter groups.

He's put subtle religious phrases in speeches to signal the religious right he was 'one of theirs'.

And he portrayed himself to the far right as one of theirs. I remember their reaction they they FINALLY got 'one of theirs' in. Remember Grover Norquist endorsing him?

And yes, his 'compassionate conservative' was a nonsensical misrepresenting phrase cooked up because it would help pull in some moderate voters.

But the far right seemed to view it as just that, campaign politics, nothing to worry about. If those idiots on the left wanted to fall for it and vote for him, all the better.

I predicted before he was elected that if he was, after his disastrous policies, all the 'he's the real Republican' talk would be changed to 'he wasn't a REAL republican'.

How else can that party keep its same old bait and switch going and get any votes? My prediction was that after that, we might see a 'new party' of some sort as a re-branding, because the 'Republican' brand would be so trashed, but I had no idea how they might go about it - and voiala, the tea party 'WHO ARE NOT REPUBLICANS' they'll yell at you, they just happened to run every single candidate in a party primary as a Republican.

Really, it doesn't matter what the way it's packaged is, as long as the monied interests are allowed to use their money to get a huge edge in elections.

Heck, it could be a democrat whose number 1 private contributor is Goldman Sachs.
 
the finest hotels in the Soviet Union couldn't even maintain a supply of toilet paper.
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And yet the soviet union lasted more than another decade after that. If Reagan had not been there, and instead an idiot like Mondale had come along, it would have been several decades instead of a decade.

Apparently you think Mr. Reagan was a great President because he played one well on camera. As long as that's good enough for you...
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He did what needed to be done and he provided what the country needed. He helped restore confidence and pride.
 
PokerGuy said:
He did what needed to be done and he provided what the country needed. He helped restore confidence and pride.
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So republicans are children who need to have constant positive reinforcement then? And you call Carter a wuss, thats hilarious.

Also the Onion article today is dead on for this. Embarrassed Republicans Admit They've Been Thinking Of Eisenhower Whole Time They've Been Praising Reagan
http://www.theonion.com/articles/embarrassed-republicans-admit-theyve-been-thinking,19248/
 
Craig234 said:
How else can that party keep its same old bait and switch going and get any votes?
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Well played sir. Your last post is quite agreeable.

You took my own argument 'they keep doing it, it has to be on purpose!' and turned it, reasonably, into 'they're just that stupid'.
 
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CitizenKain said:
So republicans are children who need to have constant positive reinforcement then? And you call Carter a wuss, thats hilarious.
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Who said anything about republicans needing anything? The entire country mood had to change, and Reagan did that. That's why he was called "the great communicator".

You turds also seem to forget that Reagan didn't have a nice super majority republican congress to do his bidding. He had to fight the idiots in congress tooth and nail to get anything done. That makes his accomplishments even more impressive.
 
PokerGuy said:
You turds also seem to forget that Reagan didn't have a nice super majority republican congress to do his bidding. He had to fight the idiots in congress tooth and nail to get anything done. That makes his accomplishments even more impressive.
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Wow..."turds" huh?
 
werepossum said:
I love Reagan, but his beating out Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, and FDR (who managed to keep the USSR and the UK in the war although the nation was overwhelmingly isolationist and thereby probably saved the free world from National Socialism) is just wrong. Reagan cut taxes, set back the ever-increasing power of the federal government, and won the Cold War - good things, but hardly top five ranking.
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He didn't do anything to reduce Federal power, unless you mean stopping the regulation of Savings and Loans.

Iran Contra was almost as big a violation of the Constitution as Nixon almost defying the Supreme Court.

He set us on an unsustainable fiscal path, just like W did.

But, he did change the mood of the country, which is actually very important. Like right now things are actually pretty good here, but lots of people seem to think we're on the edge of disaster..

Well, we're always on the edge of disaster, the issue is will we work on it which is all it takes, or throw up our hands and blame someone else for our troubles ? (illegal aliens, Chines, teachers, unions, etc, etc, etc)

Perception is sometimes all that matters.

I'd put Reagan in the top half of Presidents.
 
LegendKiller said:
Point to exactly what caused that.
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Under all previous Presidents, Red China was considered the Communist Horde and was barred from transfers of virtually all modern technology. Chinese weapons and Chinese manufacturing at this time were generally at 1950s level American technology at best. Look for instance at 1980s Chinese MBTs - they mostly still used manual turret rotation and cannon elevation! We also applied a great deal of pressure to other countries to enforce similar bans. Clinton removed almost all bans and barriers to technology transfers to China, even relocating the veto power from State to Ron Brown's Commerce Department. You may or may not recall Clinton's approval after the fact when Loral Space & Communications got caught in 1996 passing highly classified missile technology to Red China, which allowed Loral to benefit from cheap satellite launches but also transformed China's ICBM program overnight from a system which failed to even reach the stratosphere more than half the time (not an admirable platform for a nuclear deterrent!) to a modern Western-style system capable of 90%+ reliability AND capable of the pin-point inertial reckoning and split-second release accuracy necessary for stable satellite orbits - or for a nuclear re-entry vehicle to actually hit its target. Loral finally agreed to pay a $14 million dollar for this technology transfer, but its management was facing serious prison time before Clinton retroactively approved dropped the barrier. Clinton went on to drop almost all such barriers, even going so far as to approve the sale to Communist China of our cruise missile manufacturing line - a system at the time was so classified that ordinary American employees were not allowed in the building that housed it.

This very rapidly led to all Western nations dropping their transfer barriers, less their companies lose out to American companies in trading with China. Within a handful of years, Red China went from an international pariah to a country possessed of the highest technology available. Within a decade, the technology was so widely available that no company in Red China need go without the latest technology in their field. Clinton's actions and China's embrace of capitalism - and the Chinese' great work ethic and native intelligence - are the "secrets" of its explosive growth.

Coupled with the theft of nuclear secrets during Clinton's tenure - remember making all the badges the same at nuclear facilities, so that you could not tell at a glance a person's clearance but supposedly lower clearance people felt better about themselves? - Red China also went from a country armed with 60s nuclear technology to a country possessing cutting edge nuclear weapons, including some (like the neutron bomb) that we developed but never fielded! Clinton literally made Red China a world power - soon to be THE world power. China's purchase of Clinton will surely go down in history as the best investment in recorded history. Mexico wishes it had done so well with Bush!
 
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