During his first term the WHO (White House Occupant) invoked the name of Ronald Reagan on several occasions, comparing himself with Reagan, and claiming Reagan agreed with the same kind of policies that the WHO was proposing. Then on December 20, 2011, he made what is probably the most arrogant, self-serving, boastful and childish comment that has ever come from a president when he implied that he is the fourth greatest president in American history behind JFK, FDR, and Abraham Lincoln. Well, he was right about one name being one of the greatest, but the WHO couldn't hold a candle to any of these three.
His comparisons with Reagan are really surprising since the left normally takes any opportunity it can to vilify him. Just tonight on CNN overseas a British reporter covering the crisis in Crimea referred once again to Gorbachev ending the Cold War. I thought, Oh no, here we go again. Actually though, he may be right. Gorbachev did end the Cold War by surrendering. He lost his grip on the Soviet Union and it fell apart right out from under him. He had no choice.
About ten days ago, Robert Sobel, a leftist pundit for the leftist Orlando Liberal Examiner, revised and reposted an article he had written in December 2011, just before Obama crowned himself with greatness. The column was as audacious as it was stupid, and brought up the same anti-Reagan rhetoric that the left has been spewing out of its collective mouth since before he was elected in 1980. Sobel made ten points that were the same blather the left always spouts when talking about Reagan. Why he had to revise the article is beyond me because nothing in it was original. Let me summarize and then offer a rebuttal.
1. Reagan cut taxes for the rich and increased taxes on the Middle Class. He lowered top tax rate from 70% to 28%, but was forced to raise taxes 11 times during his administration trapping the Middle Class in bad jobs and poverty.
As Reagan would say, "There you go again." (Heavy sigh!) This article is a distortion of the facts from the first point. In 1981 Reagan, who was known as "Rawhide" by his Secret Service detail, was able to get Congress to pass a 25% across the board income tax reduction for all Americans. Furthermore, the reduction of the top rate allowed businesses to grow and resulted in more jobs and the longest peace time expansion of the economy in history prior to the Clinton economic boom, which only came off when Clinton gave up his socialist tax hikes and adopted Reaganomics after the 1994 Republican Revolution. I get the impression Sobel is a young brainwashed Democrat who wasn't around to suffer through Carter's disastrous economy, or experience living through Reagan's robust economy once it got passed the recession of 1981-82.
2. He tripled the national debt from 900 billion to 2.8 trillion because the government was left short of funds due to the tax cuts.
As always, blame Reagan. And as always, not true. Reminds me of the WHO, who after five years still blames Bush. In fact, the government was not left short of funds due to the tax cuts in the 1980s. Revenues doubled under Reagan's administration proving his "trickle-down" tax cut plan worked. The problem was the Democrat controlled House tripled spending. A child can do the math. The House controls the purse, and the Democrat led House increased spending more than the double revenue coming in.
3. He secretly sold arms and money to Iran in the Iran/Contra scandal. He lost popularity and never recovered.
Oh please, do we have to do this again? Reagan was investigated and found innocent of involvement in any illegal activity in Iran/Contra. It was the biggest scandal of his presidency, the only one really, and it showed a failure of leadership on his part to have allowed the scandal to happen under his watch. His popularity did also take a nose dive, and although it never fully recovered, in the end it did remain above 50%. Nobody's perfect, but Reagan broke no law. And if you want to start pointing fingers at scandals, the WHO is presiding over more scandals than any president in history.
4. Reagan funded terrorists by sending money and weapons to the Mujahadeen and the Taliban, the same people that attacked the World Trade Center on 9/11.
We were at the height of the Cold War. The USSR had invaded Afghanistan. The US funded the Mujahadeen to fight the Soviets. It was a battlefield of the Cold War. At the time nobody knew who bin Laden was, or had any knowledge that he would start an anti-American terrorist network in the 1990s long after Reagan was out of office. The reality of it is, the strategy was successful. By 1989 the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan.
5. When Reagan came into office in 1981 unemployment was at 7.5% and it went up to nearly 11% in 1982.
This is totally disingenuous by Sobel. Reagan's first budget didn't go into affect until 1982. The 1981 recession came on the heals of Jimmy Carter's disastrous economic policies which had inflation at 12.5% when he left office. When Reagan left office inflation was at 4.1%, and had been as low as 1.1% in 1986. Unemployment peaked in January 1983 at 10.8% dropped back to 7.5% by 1984 and was at 5.8% when Reagan left office in 1988. In other words, capitalism recovered the economy from Carter's socialist policies.
6. Reagan Ignored AIDS, and said nothing about it until seven years into his presidency. Instead of using his position to bring awareness to it, he kept quiet about it. “A leader not so much.”
Again, not true. AIDS was an unknown disease when it began to show up in 1981. It was not labeled AIDS until September 24, 1982. At the time it was still only known to show up in homosexual men until an infant contracted it through a blood transfusion. Congress began hearings on AIDS in 1982 and allotted 5-10 million to the National Institutes of Health for research. In 1985 Congress allocated 70 million for AIDS research and the US military began testing for AIDS. It was in 1985 that AIDS began taking on epidemic proportions. On September 17, 1986 Reagan addressed Congress vowing to make AIDS research a priority. Six years into his term with a disease that was unknown when he started.
7. He gave an amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants.
Reagan was duped by Ted Kennedy and the Democrats who wanted amnesty for 300,000 illegal aliens in exchange for a border fence. Ultimately 3 million were included and funds for the fence were never appropriated. Liberals are smooth-tongued lying operators, and Reagan fell for one of their schemes. Shame on him for being naive enough to trust the Democrats. But if this is a criticism of Reagan, what hypocrisy is it of Sobel who apparently approves of the WHO's attempt to grant amnesty to 12 million illegal aliens?
8. He attacked unions, illegally destroying PATCO, proving he didn't care about the Middle Class or their jobs.
First of all, unions do not represent the Middle Class. In fact, they've done more to hurt their own employees than they have to help. General Motors is a grand example of union excess destroying a company. PATCO illegally went on strike. As a government union it was not allowed because of the danger it would have on air travel as well as the overall economy. The union was disbanded, new workers were hired, and ATC continued operating which was the best result for the whole country. There's nothing there to criticize. Reagan handled it firmly and properly.
9. He raided the Social Security trust fund.
The Social Security Trust Fund was broken into first by Lyndon Johnson and has been used ever since to cover government deficit spending, which, once again, tripled under the Democrat controlled House. It was the Democrat controlled House that dipped into the trust fund. If Reagan is guilty for that, even more so was Congress.
10. Reagan's loyal followers offer endless worship and never ending praise for “one of the worst presidents this country has had to endure over the last 100 years. (H)e would be considered too moderate to be nominated by today’s conservative standards.”
Sobel obviously doesn't know conservatives or our standards. Conservatives are constantly talking about how they wish they could find someone of Ronald Reagan's character to run for president again. He was definitely much more conservative than any Republican who has run recently. Twenty-five years after he left office Reagan deserves to be memorialized because unlike the self-exalting WHO, he actually was one of the three or four greatest presidents in our history.
There are two sides to every story. Sobel was very deceitful in the telling of his. The WHO was very deceitful in his comparisons. This is the truth about Rawhide and it needs to be remembered.
