re: #86 jamesfirecat

The problem is that Ronald Reagan is the only piece of driftwood the GOP has to cling to prove they can do things right.

Lets recap all the recent GOP presidents.

George W Bush: Do I have to say more?

George HW Bush: Was a one term president who oversaw the America economy taking a major nose dive.

Ronald Reagen: Like I said one small spark of hope.

Ford: A monumental accident, the one president the public never even voted for in the slightest to put in the White House…

Nixon: Need I say more?

Ike: A guy who decided to run Republican because he was afraid otherwise the nation would become just one democrat after another. Also he was responsible for sending federal troops into states to enforce integration. Big government muscling in on honest hard working Americans and so on and so forth. Also tried to warn us against Military Industrial Complex.

Herbert Hoover: Need I say more?

Calvin Coolidge: “Teapot dome” and “You loose” that’s all the average American can remember about him.

We’re now almost century back and the only Republican President who the Republicans can stand behind without getting mocked is Ronald Reagen, amazing isn’t it?

I must dispute.

Eisenhower — Ran as a Republican because moderate Republicans existed at the time. And as much as the “states rights states rights OMG” crowd wants to deny it, enforcing a Supreme Court Order (a 9-0 decision, btw, a rare thing indeed) falls squarely within the federal government’s enumerated powers. The Interstate Highways were an Eisenhower idea, the best domestic investment in generations. The Marshall Plan didn’t originate with his administration, but he did beautiful follow-through. And huge investments in public education.

George HW Bush — mediocre on domestic matters, but a *great* foreign policy president. He didn’t lose reelection because he mishandled the economy, he lost reelection because the party was already well on its way to insanity and couldn’t appreciate the soundness of his fiscal policy. He raised taxes and they never forgave him; but it was the right thing to do at the time.

Nixon — a criminal, and probably mentally ill, but his administration also made great domestic policy. EPA. OSHA. Affirmative Action. These are good things. He proposed a health care plan that I still wish would have passed, and he normalized relations with China.

I mark all three of those as better Presidents than Reagan. The Great Communicator gets cut a lot of slack on personality grounds, but his policies *sucked*. Supply-side economics set us on the path to bankruptcy (and huge increases in inequalty); his deregulatory frenzy created the S&L mess and set the stage for this more recent meltdown; his union-busting stalled middle-class wages; and he’s the one who brought the Religious Right into the electoral process.