It’s always all about Reagan with these lunatics:
A former senior adviser to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign skewered some of the GOP nominee’s surrogates Wednesday, saying it was “stunning” how they preened for administration positions when they thought Romney would win but then turned on the candidate as soon as he lost the election.
Dan Senor recalled an anecdote at the large rally held in Ohio the Friday before Election Day earlier this month. He said some of the event’s major headliners were praising the candidate backstage and had begun engaging Romney’s transition team.
“I won’t mention their names, but they’re talking about Romney like he’s Reagan. You know, ‘The debate performances were the best debate performances of any Republican nominee in presidential history. This guy–he’s iconic.’ They were talking about him because they believed he was going to win in four or five days,” Senor said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Since everything Dan senor touches turns to absolute shit, it’s just more evidence that Romney never had a chance if he was an advisor. But what really kills me is that it always comes back to Reagan’s rotting corpse. The Republican party has repudiated everything Reagan stood for in the last two decades, but yet, they still continue to think they need a new Reagan. A new Reagan would poll somewhere around Huntsman in the primaries with the current GOP.
Count Ulster
They’re talking about the authoritarian woody Reagan gave them, not the policies. The polices are whatever Democrats don’t like. Duh.
Baud
The Republican party has repudiated everything Reagan stood for in the last two decades
Not quite everything.
Rick Massimo
Everybody in the United States under the age of 35: Ronald who?
But seriously folks, what do you expect? It’s not there have been any other Republican presidents since 1988 for them to talk about …
Oh, wait a minute.
Shalimar
You have a much higher opinion than I do of what Reagan stood for. I don’t think Reagan would have a problem with anything the current GOP says. The only difference is that he was willing to compromise to reach his goals and they aren’t.
Suffern ACE
Hair. Apparently any rwpublican candidate with a full head of hair is still reaganesque. Reagan’s dyed hair has not been repudiated.
geg6
Of course they worship that senile, grifting old fuck. He perfectly mirrors who they are themselves: insane, old, white grifters who’d shiv any of their brethren if they could make a dime off of it.
That St. Ronnie is the catalyst for their downfall (trickle down economics, neoconservatism, and dog whistle racism), with a major assist from the C+ Augustus, is just a little ironic.
And yes, he’d be excoriated by today’s GOP.
PsiFighter37
Mitt Romney as Ronald Reagan?
When I read this earlier today, I had a small laugh at work. I wonder how many hallucinogenics Senor had to put in his system to get that warm starburst feeling that Saint Ronnie gives the wingers, and project that onto the heartless Mittbot 0.47.
PF37 +2
Evolving Deep Southerner
How do you figure, Mr. Cole?
red dog
Reagan never ran this nation but he was a face for Nancy or someone, who ran the nation and used dear old stupid senile Ronnie as the mouthpiece. I am really surprised this has not been written about,
so Nancy must be the one
AA+ Bonds
CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF THIS HOT MITT ROMNEY NEWS
Frivolous
The poster known as Ted & Hellen is irritating.
He or she or they talk about how John Cole does not like his own blog anymore and has been driven out by other bloggers.
This is probably untrue, but it is still irritating to witness.
Baud
By the way,
this is quite normal.
AA+ Bonds
But what does everyone think of Dukakis choosing Bentsen? That’s the real Rosetta stone for our time, let’s hunker down and chew on that for a while
the Conster
I watched Ron Reagan say last night that the Republicans are stuck pandering to their ignorant base, and wished he said what I said afterwards – it took 32 years, but the Republicans have been hoist on their own
rpetard. The love for zombie Reagan that Joe Scar and Dan Senor exhibited, makes them look like they’re frozen in amber.geg6
@Frivolous:
Meh. That’s just Special Timmeh, asshole extraordinaire. I’d love for John to ban him for good but he rises like Lazarus every time, with a new name and the same old trolling.
Wag
@Shalimar:
…and would therefore be a RINO in the eyes of the base.
Ben Franklin
Since everything Dan senor touches turns to absolute shit,
Funny. I was just thinking of what happened to Campbell Brown…
Karmus
The “real” Reagan is now, and henceforth, the one who occupies the pinnacle of Wingnut Mt. Rushmore, which exists only in the mind.
Chris
@Shalimar:
I’ll go you one better and say that if Reagan had grown up in the bubble our conservatives did, myth of invincibility and all, he’d be as fucked up on the compromise front as they are.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
The Republicans thought Eisenhower was a commie. They can’t revere Nixon. Ford was an SNL skit. George H.W. Bush was a one-termer. George W. Bush is he who cannot be named.
Of course it all comes back to Reagan. And if you choose to overlook things like Beirut, AIDS, Iran/Contra and his Alzheimer’s the Ronaldus Magnus looks even better.
brad
Add me to the list of those curious as to how the Repubs have repudiated everything about the guy who began his 1980 campaign in a town famous for all the wrong reasons and called government the problem, not the solution.
Yes, yes, Reagan felt being white and in the age bracket containing the “Greatest Generation” was heroic enough status to have earned Social Security and Medicare, and he wasn’t in an era when being full Bircher in public was acceptable. But his tribal allegiance was clear, the idea that he’d let such things as reason and rationality keep him away from his tribe were he alive today is laughable.
Carnacki
@Baud: Has he not read Ayn Rand?
AxelFoley
Today’s Republican Party: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
ding dong
Thread Should be titled Gory Daze.
Nicole
I was at Belmont Race Track the day Reagan died. Undefeated Smarty Jones was attempting to become the 12th Triple Crown winner, and there were about 120,000 people there. Around 3PM or so (I think it was about 3; I’d had a couple of Belmont Breezes by then, courtesy of hitting a 20-1 long shot on one of the earlier races), the track announcer reported Reagan’s death and asked for a moment of silence. People kinda, sorta complied.
Three-and-a-half hours later, as Birdstone passed Smarty in the last furlong of the race, the track experienced a REAL moment of silence.
As disappointed as I was in Smarty’s loss, I took great comfort that respecting the Gipper was outdone by a horse race.
The Dangerman
Romney WAS Reagan, but he used that famous SNL skit as a guide; a genteel man in public, a Machiavellian piece of crap behind closed doors. He forgot it was satire.
Also, I’m surprised he didn’t go pick up some migrant laborer to pump his gas (he’s not running for office any more for Pete’s sake); unless you are a little ol’ lady with a walker or cane in CA, you’e pumping your own.
Chris
@AxelFoley:
Judges, referring to voters: “You don’t need to see their identification. You don’t NEED to see their identification. GOVERNOR! You DON’T need to see their… damn it, is this thing on?”
Bill T.
They have just discovered the fine print at the bottom of the Mayan Apocalypse Calender:
“This prophecy only applies to the GOP and Tea Party.”
SatanicPanic
The Republican party of GWB did everything Reagan would have wanted to, but he didn’t have the Congress for.
Frankensteinbeck
Reagan gave them a set of lies they have worshiped to this day. Even more importantly, he made those lies plausible to most of the country. He convinced the public that any tax raise was a tax raise on everyone, and that the poor had it too easy. Those blatant and ridiculous lies have ruled America for thirty years, and are croaking their death rattle as we type. Yes, the GOP is absolutely desperate to have Ronnie back.
DPS
To be fair, what other figure can they point back to? It’s got to be Reagan; otherwise they’d have to go back to Eisenhower for a figure who hasn’t been totally discredited and/or disgraced.
danimal
As others have noted, not everything. They’ve been pretty consistent on the bombing brown people and throwing money at the military front.
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think the Reagan legacy was best expressed on this blog: “Reagan made white people comfortable with their prejudices again, and they loved him for it.”
trollhattan
@Frankensteinbeck:
Every time that shitheel Arthur Laffer pops up to opine on how to Fix The Economy I wish St. Ronnie had had only folks his age in the administration. That way they’d all be dayud and no longer able to screw this country.
Grifters still grifting thirty years later.
WereBear
Reagan sucked up the fifty years of the New Deal, the thirty years of the GI Bill, the decades of prosperity and infrastructure investment and comfortable accumulation of the citizenry.
Everyone thought that society was inevitable.
Of course they would rebuild bridges when they were about to fall down!
Of course they would keep giving children education!
Of course they would feed people who were starving!
Not so. So not so.
Zach
Presumably Senor goes back to hedge-funding after this round of media appearances. It will be interesting to see when he next gets a chance at being a GOP foreign-policy advisor. Good on Romney to give the guy another chance, I guess; who knows–maybe he’d learned something from being the only press secretary in history to have blood on his hands from his simple ineptitude. But his two biggest responsibilities in the Romney campaign (Romney’s foreign trip and the final, foreign-policy debate) were arguably the two biggest screw-ups of Romney’s campaign (obviously not including stupid things that Romney said himself without anyone’s help).
jl
@brad: I despise nearly 100 percent of Reagan’s domestic policy. Reagan was a dogwhistle race baiter, and frustrated white person resentment pitch man. Then there was Iran Contra.
But Reagan did stand up against his day’s version of neocons and wingnuts when he insisted on pursuing arms control agreements and working in other ways with the
Rooskies, un, Soviet Union. And he did raise taxes when he saw the supply side BS was not working, to accusations of ideological treason among the dead enders.So, nasty and contemptible as he was, I agree with Cole that Reagan with his record would do about as well as Huntsman.
On the other hand, a Reagan without a governing record, being a very gifted politician, might be able to pull it off. Unlike R_mn*y.
I disagree with Cole saying that the current wingnuts have repudiated all that Reagan was, but I think they have repudiated all of Reagan’s very few redeeming features, and they will doom themselves, if we have any luck at all.
mak
Leave it to world class ass-kiss Dan Fucking Senor to find an angle of the Rmoney thumping. This post gave me the warmnfuzzies thinking about how Dan was out of a job and likely without prospects until it occurred to me that he’s probably sticking up for and kissing up to Mittens since getting hired on at Bain for seven figures. Douche.
trollhattan
@DPS:
Well, poppy Bush committed the ultimate sin of losing but his true sin was rearin’ George Dubya.
I give him credit for his unilateral nuke disarmament, which must still frost some wingnut butts.
JPL
Does anyone miss Ari Fleischer?
Higgs Boson's Mate
@the Conster:
Or buried in bullshit.
Mike in NC
I always enjoyed the Ramones’ “Bonzo Goes To Bitburg”.
Schlemizel
Every time I despair about the horse shit that works as campaign advisers for the Dems guys liek Danny pick me up & realize it could be worse.
Steaming piles of shit like Mark Penn? Well, at least its not Senor.
Maude
@jl:
Reagan wanted to get rid of all nukes and was talked out it by his staff. What a shame because he could have pulled that off.
Frivolous
@geg6:
Ah. Long-term denizen then? Interesting.
Schlemizel
@The Dangerman:
The first time as tragedy the second time as parody?
Bobby Thomson
If by “repudiated,” you mean “endorsed and extended,” then, yeah.
Bobby Thomson
Seriously, this Reagan worship has got to fucking stop. He was a first class asshole that made me breathe a sigh of relief when Bush the Elder became president. He was that bad. I shudder to think what he would have done with a Republican Congress. It would have made Ryan and Gingrich look like pikers.
Chris
@Bobby Thomson:
Has there ever been a president who was as loved and popular as Reagan but ended up being reviled by history after the nation changed? I’d like to see the Reagan legacy crushed someday.
Rafer Janders
I just can’t get over the fact that these idiots genuinely thought they were going to win.
You don’t get high on your own supply, man.
Rafer Janders
Um, Reagan wasn’t that loved and popular when he was president. I remember him as president, and a lot of people actively disliked and even hated him. It’s only through 25 years of relentless GOP propaganda that lots of people know think that Reagan was universally popular.
redshirt
If Reagan were Reagan today he’d not be the Reagan that Reaganed back then. He’d be Wingnut Poobah Extraordinaire!
Chris
@Rafer Janders:
No, I knew that, but as he moved out of reality and into history, he got respectable. A lot of politicians only get that way after their time’s up anyway. I’m just asking if we can reasonably hope that he’ll end up with the memory he deserves.
Ezra
“they need a new Reagan”
They do need a new Reagan, in that Reagan is a guy who won two elections. That’s what they think of when they think of a Reagan, i.e., a guy who was successful. *How* to be successful in 2012 or 2014 they’re a little unsure about, but they’re quite sure they need a guy who wins elections the way Reagan did.
It’s the Great Man Theory of History.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
@Nicole: I recall walking into my wee country Post Office and remarking to the Postmistress (whom I have known for 20 years) that it was really a nice gesture commemorating Ray Charles by flying the flag at half-mast on the day of his death. “No, dummy,” she replied, “that’s for Ronald Reagan who just died.” “What?” sez I, incredulously. “Frankly, I’d add another 20 feet to the pole and hoist Ol’ Glory to the top of it.”
debbie
“they need a new Reagan”
Except they can no longer distinguish between fact and myth. Proof would be the “60 Minutes” appearance by Santorum, when he and his campaign advisor both denied the fact that Reagan had ever gone back and raised taxes after he’d cut them.
henqiguai
@Baud (#2):What Baud said, re:
“Not quite everything”. But to be explicit, they have firmly and openly embraced the bigotry, the misogyny, and the nativism. Bunch of sociopaths. And I’m sure someone further downstream will have pointed this out, but I just started reading…
binzinerator
@geg6: Long time reader here, too, but I cant recall who Special Timmeh refers to. The trolls I can think of off the top of my head are:
Political Observer (this one had other incarnations, just cant recall them all right now.
Spatula
Nolascopy ( also had several incarnations, i thought)
and of course Brick Oven Bill from long ago, the first one, who was actually pretty damn funny before descending into ugly racism.
I forgot a bunch, I know. So which is Special Timmeh?
Also, it’d be fun to have a thread devoted to infamous trolls, sort of a bestiary of trolls. With the collective input of the Juicitariat we prolly could suss out which ones are the same troll under different nyms. Plus have fun debating which were actually Dougj.
Vanya
@Rafer Janders:
Exactly. Those of us who were there in the 80s remember that quite a lot of us disliked Reagan. I think Reagan would feel right at home with today’s Republicans.