re: Questions about Reagan

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Was he really all that great?

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Yes.

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Or is just what the GOP has pumped out in the last forever just not been that great?

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This is also true, so he looks even better, by comparison.

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listening to the Levin podcast he said for anyone under 50 years old they haven't had one single chance to vote for a true conservative.

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That's true - I didn't turn 18 until after the 1984 election.

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When it comes to Reagan I always either think of Reaganomics or the Iran-Contra affair which was a fricking shite show.

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"Reaganomics" absolutely worked - there was no "income" problem during the 80s - it was a spending problem. He never had control of the House, an only 2 out of 8 years in the Senate - to get his priorities passed, he had to negotiate a lot of spending with the Dems. His priorities were the defeat of the Soviet Union and reversal of a lot of the creeping socialism of the 70 - he accomplished those, in spades.

Iran-Contra is unfortunate, but I don't view it as a stain on Reagan at all.

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Not sure if the media was quite the same back then.

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Only CNN was in the 24-hour news cycle - they pounded on Reagan every single day - and he gave approximately zero fricks about it. Remember - he came out of Hollywood - their press has always been brutal.

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He entered office with a 51% approval rating and left office eights years later with 63% approval.

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I think you got to the truth by the end of the post - Reagan was an American first - he did what he thought was right, regardless of party priorities or public relations fallout. In the end, ordinary people respond to that favorably.

Today, everything is parsed and filtered through focus groups, strategic "messaging", nuanced, "triangulated" to create these temporary bubbles of 50 percent plus 1 - or they just outrigh lie about something's popularity (gun control, ACA, etc.).

Dumb as we are, as a society, we see through things like that, now.