One of the soundburps I caught on the newsfotainment program I watch to catch the weather was Willard (DubbaYooToo) Mitt Romney scolding John McCain for dirty campaign tricks. McCain saying that Romney was for a timetable for troop withdrawal, according to Mittens "sort of falls into the dirty tricks I think Ronald Reagan would have found reprehensible".
Somewhere deep in the bowels of hell, Lee Atwater looked up from the steaming pile of crap he was assigned to shovel for the day and laughed.
Even if you love, love, love, lovey love Ronald Reagan you have to be on such a super deluded Brylcreem high to suggest that Reagan was above dirty campaign tricks. Conservatives admit there was the issue of the stolen briefing book, what they haven't come up with is the name of the person who actually stole it.
A few years ago I heard Jimmy Carter tell Terry Gross that a reporter who was a Reagan supporter stole his debate briefing book from the White House during the 1980 election. He said it was George F. Will. George Will's reaction? David Stockman already had it. And Will never recused himself nor pointed out his obvious lack of objectivity covering that race either.
And then there's the whole "October Surprise". Which was the secret endo of Reagan insiders (including CIA big George H.W. Bush and our current Defense Secretary Bob Gates) illegally negotiating with an enemy to delay the release of hostages until after the 1980 election.
Lee Atwater signed on with Reagan in 1984 where he brought us such gems as 'Geraldine Ferraro's parents were involved in the numbers racket'. False lies stirred through with a little Italian bigotry. Yeah, Reagan was above it and spanked Atwater mightily. (Ha, I kid.) And Atwater's protege? You know it: Karl Rove.
Someday soon, Willard is going to try to get us to believe that Reagan was conceived via virgin birth. I mean, do we really know all that much about his dad?
11 comments:
Stop it. Ronald Reagan invented the microprocessor, the string bikini and Cheez Whiz, so I humbly request that you cease your unholy bashing of his holiness immediately.
Ha! What a great graphic! You are a genius. I betcha the baby lamb poops all over his rhetoric.
My favorite aspect of the "October surpise" was the Iran-Contra scandal. To Reagan's credit, once he was caught he went on TV and took full responsibility for the event. You will never see President Cheney do that.
randal g I knew he was behind processed string cheese, but the rest of it-are you sure?
dr. z I do not know what you mean about "my graphic". I bought this as a set of trading cards at my local gopchristianbook&gamblingcasino outlet.
You are right about Ronnie. Only an actor could say the lines "mea culpa mea culpa" with such grace!
I'm laughing so hard I threw up. Oh wait, I threw up at the idea that anyone would believe that Reagan or any repug is "above" dirty tricks. I was laughing so hard because you're so goddamned funny, Jess!
Reagan was a saint, but not one from heaven.
i still think they would dig him up in a minute, run him and he would win.
the best part is atwater on his death bed asked for forgiveness..... ok Lee you are forgiven, now die
I keep waiting for the current thugs to get what I refer to as "the Lee Atwater treatment." Not very Quakerly, I know. Thanks for pointing out the Atwater/Rove connection. That doesn't get talked about nearly enough.
"October Surprise"?...
..."The secret of Reagan insiders illegally negotiating with an enemy to delay the release of hostages until after the 1980 election."
Yes. That's right. The same people were behind 9/11 and the Kennedy assassination.
As though an unelected presidential candidate had more to offer the Iranian revolutionaries than the wimpy President Carter, who would have kissed Ayatollah Khomeini's ass in Tehran if it would result in the return of the hostages.
Reagan had nothing to offer the Iranians. Carter had already become the image of compliance and incompetence in the hostage fiasco. The Iranians knew they had him over a barrel and that he was afraid to act decisively. His rescue attempt was botched in every possible way. If there was a conspiracy, it was a conspiracy to engineer a mission designed to fail.
Moreover, if secret deals had been made, it would have been better for Reagan if the hostages were released BEFORE election day. If Republicans were truly responsible for back-channel dealings that had won the release of the hostages, Reagan would have beaten Carter like he beat Mondale.
Who was in charge of that rescue attempt?
Richard Sekord and Oliver North. Just so you know that when you are talking about incompetence and a "conspiracy to engineer a mission designed to fail" you place the blame correctly.
You offer many points that are nothing more than your own opinion, then you don't back your opinion.
How in the world would having hostages released before election day have helped Reagan?
Your surmision that Carter was "afraid" also carries nothing to back that up.
Jimmy Carter says that one of the things of which he is most proud is that every one of those hostages came home alive, and a war was not necessary to achieve that goal.
Hostages under Reagan and under Bush have not fared as well have they?
Bravery in foreign policy is obviously in the eye of the beholder. I'm assuming you believe that Carter was not brave because he didn't continue to pursue the avenues preferred by North/Secord.
That's fine, that's your opinion. But if you are going to make these arguments you ought to come to the table with a little more than just your own feelings.
Ugh. Nice post, and I'm trying to deal with that wretched pic of Ronzo and the lamb.
You claim no one died in the Iranian Hostage Crisis.
But 8 members of the rescue team died. Does that mean military deaths don't count?
YOu claim that Oliver North and Richard Secord were central figures in the planning of the rescue attempt.
I know you have NO information to prove that claim. The rumor has been around a long time. But you cannot substantiate it.
Meanwhile, the military name factually associated with the rescue plan is Colonel Charles Beckwith. Look him up.
But any way you cut it, Carter approved the mission. He approved a mission that was extremely risky. In other words, likely to fail.
He could have approved a mission likely to succeed.
What would that have been? It would have looked a little more like the US build-up in Saudi Arabia before the first Gulf War.
When you line up enough US military personnel and hardware in the right place, the bad guys always rethink their plans. That's why we've had 40,000 troops on the border between North and South Korea since 1953.
If we had stationed 500 soldiers on the border in 1953, North Korea would have rolled in decades ago.
How would a pre-election release of the hostages have helped Reagan? Well, if, as you claim, Reagan people had access to the punks in Tehran and were able to pursuade them to act in Reagan's favor, he could have easily exploited and REVEALED that same persuasiveness BEFORE the election to demonstrate his ability to manage foreign affairs.
Carter proved only that he was timid and unwilling to sail the big warships near Iran to send the message that Iranian leaders were easy targets.
And yes, you are right. After Carter showed the spinelessness of a US president, people did die in later encounters with muslims.
Thank Carter for convincing muslims that American leaders will back down.
You might know that 241 Marines were killed in Beirut in October 1983 when Hezbollah committed it FIRST suicide bombing. The suicide bombers drove a truck full of explosives into the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut killing the Marines while they slept.
Reagan did not retaliate, which was a huge error. By the way, Hezbollah is the terrorist arm of the Iranian government.
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