re: Trump: “Ron Desantis is a Reagan Republican”

Posted on 3/3/23 at 6:04 pm to HailHailtoMichigan!

Posted by AggieHank86

Texas

Member since Sep 2013

42941 posts

Posted on 3/3/23 at 6:04 pm to HailHailtoMichigan!

quote:
Ron Desantis is a Reagan Republican

He sees this as an insult?

Just proves that he is still a Dem at heart.

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Posted by Toomer Deplorable

Team Bitter Clinger

Member since May 2020

17953 posts

Posted on 3/3/23 at 6:51 pm to AggieHank86

quote:
Just proves that he is still a Dem at heart.

Ronald Reagan Was a New Deal Conservative….

Reagan never had a problem saying that he believed it was society’s obligation to take care of its weaker members. He did not have a problem saying that free trade works both ways, and that government should step in to protect American jobs when unfair competition threatened. He did not have a problem saying that no one should be denied needed medical care because of a lack of funds, and that government had a role in helping those people out.

He did not have a problem saying those things, because in his heart he loved the average American. America was not great for him because it enabled great men to rise, although he admired men and women who showed ingenuity and initiative. America was great because it provided a home to let all people live free and dignified lives.

In his youth, tutored by his parents and his times, he found the answer to those beliefs in Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Government intervention and action seemed to be what Roosevelt told Americans it was, new means to implement old, traditional American values. In the world that existed before the New Deal—where a man could be fired for joining a labor union, or be left penniless if he lost his job, because there was no unemployment insurance—it was surely easy for Reagan, as it was for many millions of others, to see the New Deal as restoring an individual’s freedom and dignity if he lacked bargaining power with his employer.

When that era’s conservatives said the world’s problems were none of our concern even as Nazi Germany marched and Imperial Japan sailed to wage wars of conquest, it was easy to see Roosevelt’s Democrats as both the voice and the arsenal of democracy. If the Democratic Party had stopped there, Reagan probably would have remained a Democrat all his life.

Starting with Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party, some New Dealers believed America needed to be transformed, its individualist culture tamed to march to the beat of a centralized plan. Those who wanted a planned society also found it difficult to find communism as horrific or as threatening as did Reagan. For if America itself is something to be replaced, how can a regime whose central tenet was that America was inherently immoral, something to be loathed?

But as the Democratic Party left Reagan, he did not leave his core beliefs behind. His new conservatism did not pine for the days when men were men and employers could treat workers like beasts. He was against losing freedom by installments; he was against the rule of the many by the self-appointed few no matter what form that rule took. But he was also for human dignity. He was also for treating human beings with the respect they deserved and for giving each and every one of them a real fighting chance to live a decent life. He was for using government, when necessary, to accomplish these goals.

Barry Goldwater wrote in The Conscience of a Conservative that “the Conservative’s first concern will always be: Are we maximizing freedom?” But Ronald Reagan could tell Americans in his famous speech endorsing Barry Goldwater that conservatives were for Social Security, even though that curtailed the freedom of a person to, as Goldwater wrote, “be free throughout their lives to spend their earnings as they see fit.” He could say that conservatives were for telling senior citizens that no one should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds, even though that takes money “from fellow citizens who may have different ideas about their social obligations,” against Goldwater’s beliefs.

In short, Reagan was against returning to the America before the New Deal. He was for interpreting Roosevelt’s legacy in a way that maximized freedom and minimized bureaucratic control and the direction of Americans’ lives….