Pres. Reagan was not perfect.  Not at all.  But the differences between Reagan and Carter/ Mondale?  Yeah, I'd take Reagan/ Bush any day over those choices.  IMHO, he was the best President we have had from the Carter Admin through today.

"Reagan confided to one [Secret Service] agent that on his first presidential trip to the Soviet Union in May 1988, he had carried a gun in his briefcase."

Fuck yeah.

Reagan (and Rumsfeld) looked the other way and financially supported Saddam Hussein, along with allowing him to get chemical agents. That resulted in the genocide at Halabja.



Reagan talked a good game, but really his war against communism was done to pad defense contractors' pockets.

He didn't (your words) "talk a good game"

He won the Cold War.

No doubt.

Reagan *proves* the perfect conservative candidate myth is just that... A myth.

Did he really? So you mean people are no longer being oppressed in Soviet states by thug-like dictators?



I'll concede your point that the "Cold War" is over. What's the net gain for us citizens? Were our taxes cut? Are we spending less on defense? What's changed for the better?



 

You cannot lump all that under Reagan. He did what conservatives elected him to do...

He had Democrat majorities. He had political opponents. He had a liberal media to contend with.

He toed the line on gun rights. He tried to control taxes (against dems). He supported the free world and the free markets.

He was far, far from perfect. But he did what needed done at the time with the resources he had available...

Perfect? Not in a million years.

Did what he was elected to do. Yep.

And along the way, he made it cool to be a conservative. He made it cool to support an open market. He made it cool to say we want lower taxes...

And... He supported massive massive spending on military technology that beat everyone in the world.

He won the Cold War.

And even then Democrats wanted to cut spending for more entitlement spending...

Democrats will point to Communism and socialism being alive and well in the world today and say, "see Reagan's way was a failure, you need try our way with global apology tours and expensive social program spending. Our hugs to terrorists will keep us more safe than military spending..."

That is what iberals will say.

Reagan won the Cold War. Reagan's massive  massive spending on huge technical military projects won the Cold War. And we would have been well off financially if Democrats had not also ride funding wasteful and shameful generational welfare.

I cried watching his funeral.   Miss that man.

A lot of people would argue that the breaking up of the Soviet Union was more of a response to people wanting more free markets in those places.



And Reagans war on drugs has made us more/less free?



Terrorists don't want to kill people living in America, they want to attack people in the U.S. Government. There's a big difference.



 

history! do you know it?

1986 machine gun ban ring a bell?  its the reason you cant go buy a new machine gun... the registry was closed and the few existing items on the registry are the only ones that can ever be on the registry all thanks to a law Ronnie signed.  

Reagan is overrated.

I don't know about the New Black Panther Party but I have no problem with the Black Panthers policing the police to make sure that people civil rights were not being violated and to inform those people of said civil rights.

Exxon-Flourio,,cut taxes,increased goverment spending,paid for a war in europe that never came, with money from other areas,like mental health care,.Ronald Reagan said he would never make deals with terrorists,and then we got the Iran-Contra scandal.Reagans conservatism didnt make it far past his lips.Reagan was a mediocre president at best.And for all of the people who want to say,Well,he ended the Cold War!,not really,communism had been loosing its grip on eastern europe long before reagan said;Mr Gorbhachev,Tear Down This Wall!.The soviet union begun detoothing itself of the stalinist form of communism even under Kruschev.By the time Gorbhachev came unto the scene,alot of the old stalinists had already died off,the Iron Curtain was destined to come down.

Yes,there is no perfect candidate,but how about someone that actually follows what the party touts-smaller,limited government??

Is that really too much to ask?

Ronald Reagan's history doesn't match the myth. Truth is he was very pragmatic and that's how he got things done. Not everything he wanted, but most of what he wanted. People have lost this; they stand so firm on "principle" that nothing gets done instead of incremental progression. We remember him for his "successes" Ronald Reagan could not pass the so called "Ronald Reagan Test" himself.

No, just trying to keep him in perspective. He did well; better than others in a long, long time. He doesn't need the myth to show his leadership skills were way beyond others.

didn't he push the machine gun ban?

You're only saying all this because he was Mormon.

Half of modern GD would have called him a RINO at best, a Communist at worst.

The American body politic has lost all perspective.  We are victims of our own success.

Reagan bucked the party-line on more than a couple important conservative principles.

He is the poster child for the conservative perfect candidate myth being just that... A myth.

You owe me a new keyboard...

Arfcom GD has no sense of proportion or perspective, and many live in a cartoon black & white world. There's no "good" or "adequate", there's "absolute perfection in every way" or nothing. (see "her elbows are too pointy") Traces of it permeate virtually every topic that comes up, but it's oddly glaring when it comes to past and present Republicans.

Does this one make you beat your fucking head against the wall too?

http://articles.latimes.com/1994-05-05/news/mn-54185_1_assault-weapons-ban


From the link:

WASHINGTON — Three former presidents endorsed legislation Wednesday to ban the future manufacture, sale and possession of combat-style assault weapons as a closely divided House neared a showdown today on the hotly controversial issue.

Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan sent a letter to all House members expressing their support for the measure, effectively joining President Clinton in urging approval of the ban.





Let the excuses/justifications fly!

Again,how hard is it for Republicans to keep their word about wanting smaller/limited government and personal liberty/freedom?

No one is saying they want perfection,and there are no perfect candidates out there,but the R side should at least try and live up to the platform.

Is that really too much to ask?????

What year was that again?

8 years as president, and the best people can ever do is show a signature on a letter from two administration after he left office.

That smacks of pathetic desparation, really.

Kind of like the desperation of whomever put that letter together and ran it by the estate of an elderly man with Alzheimers, so as to lend credibility to nonsense.

One thing about President Reagan, he left the country much better off than when he took over.

Lasted all the way to the end of the klinton regime.

signing the amnesty bill was one of his greatest mistakes, his own admission.

He also regretted sending marines to beiruit.

After all the years battling alzheimers, and growing weaker, the day he died I felt a huge loss, almost like now he can never come back.

He didn't push it, he got stuck with it.

Push?  No.

Sign it into law?  Yes.

certain forms of ammunition have no
legitimate sporting, recreational, or self-defense use and thus should be
prohibited. Such action is long overdue.


 

Strange The Chemical weapons I saw in Iraq were warsaw pact...

First media manufactured president. It's been down hill since then.

^^This^^  But I'd go as far as saying he was the greatest President of many generations.

He was my first vote for president . He was better than Carter but he was not the saint he is made out to be . He did pass amnesty for illegals and a few other not winning things

I have a little different take on thing.  For me at least, I've gained perspective.  I realize we need to INSIST on extreme conservative American actions by our leaders.  Everyone on here giving props to Ronnie seem to be justifying his actions because of the other side of the aisle.  Screw that mentality, look at the leftards.  They set their sights high so that when they achieve partial success they still make inroads into their direction.  

What's that thing about yellow strips and the middle of the road?

People like Cruz need to be standard fare in the R party.  He needs to be considered a moderate Republican by the other side.

I realize most herein disagree vehemently.

Uh, the media was batshit insane on hating Reagan. It made Dubya-hatred look tame.

Seeing as those of us who are independent and resilient enough to actually desire and thrive in an environment of minimal government and more personal liberty are a minority in the USA... sadly, I think it is.  Both sides of the majority either want big government, or are perfectly OK with it as long as the fedgov is doing what they want it to do.  (Like... it's for our own good and stuff.)
IIRC Reagan had a Dem-controlled House, lost the Senate in the '86 mid-terms, and there were (R) Congress critters who were not happy with him and his platform - so there was compromising in order to get business done.  IMHO the fedgov could have easily grown larger and faster than it did during his two terms.
I'm OK with Reagan.  Perfect?  No.  Could he have done better dealing with Congress?  Maybe.  Could things have been worse?  Most certainly.  Again, I believe him to be the best President we've had from Carter through Obama.
 
 
 
 
 
 

maybe wenis doesn't remember the media blasting Reagan's trickle down economics.

Would that be "ammunition of unusual lethality"?

I agree he was the best since Carter.

He was OK,I just don't see the God like following he has.

The problem is,things do get worse under every successive administration-the gov grows in size and power,and our freedoms diminish on the other side of that.And I sure as hell don't see that changing.

Freedom, liberty, founding fathers, puppy dogs, free the weed.......

Free the guns too. Freedom of religion. Freedom of one's property. Freedom to educate one's child. Freedom from taxes to violent ends, etc...
Most libertarians (small l) probably vote for more republicans, especially in local elections, than they vote for Libertarians (big L).
Republicans should realize they can either embrace the libertarians, or never win another presidential election again. Big government, establishment RINOS won't be able to win presidential elections.
 

Yes,
the chemical weapons, at least in the early days, were Soviet (East
German primarily) but the money was dollars. (I didn't claim that the
RINOS supplied chemical weapons to Saddam, just that they allowed Saddam
to commit a genocide, while sending Iraq money, food, supplies and
other arms).



God forbid a bunch of relatively well-educated,
autonomous, resource-rich Kurds, who have their own languages, religion,
etc... (apart from Arabs and even Muslims) didn't want to be enslaved
in Saddam's army to fight against Iranians, who weren't really harming
Kurdish people.



All sourced here



"Reagan/Bush administrations permitted—and frequently encouraged—the
flow of money, agricultural credits, dual-use technology, chemicals, and
weapons to Iraq."



"Starting in 1982 with Iranian success on the battlefield, the United
States made its backing of Iraq more pronounced, normalizing relations
with the government, supplying it with economic aid, counter-insurgency
training, operational intelligence on the battlefield, and weapons.^{[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_war#cite_note-spidersweb-3][3][/url][url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_war#cite_note-13][13][/url]}"



"President Ronald Reagan initiated a strategic opening to Iraq, signing National Security Study Directive (NSSD) 4-82 and selecting Donald Rumsfeld as his emissary to Hussein, whom he visited in December 1983 and March 1984"



"[T]he United States actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying
the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing U.S.
military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely
monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure that Iraq had
the military weaponry required. The United States also provided
strategic operational advice to the Iraqis to better use their assets in
combat... The CIA, including both CIA Director Casey and Deputy
Director Gates, knew of, approved of, and assisted in the sale of
non-U.S. origin military weapons, ammunition and vehicles to Iraq. My
notes, memoranda and other documents in my NSC files show or tend to
show that the CIA knew of, approved of, and assisted in the sale of
non-U.S. origin military weapons, munitions and vehicles to Iraq"



"the Central Intelligence Agency secretly directed armaments and
hi-tech components to Iraq through false fronts and friendly third
parties such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kuwait, and they quietly
encouraged rogue arms dealers and other private military companies to do the same:"



 

"What's everyone's favorite ice cream?"
"Ima gonna tell you but first I'm going to drone on and on and on about what a freedom loving libertarian I am, and you better be nice and listen to me pontificate or else I'm going to take my ball and go home".

That was an interesting mix of ignorance of the Iranian threat, ignorant hyping of Kurds, and oversimplification of Cold War-era conflicts in general.  Impressive, really, from a propaganda standpoint.  I salute you.