Last weekend, we celebrated the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan, and this weekend we celebrate the 202nd anniversary of Abraham Lincoln, the founder of the modern Republican Party. What both men had in common was governing by the principals found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
The Democrat Party tried all through the 20th century up to now to co-opt Lincoln for its own purposes, and now is trying to co-opt Reagan. There was the recent Time Magazine cover putting Obama arm in arm with Reagan. If it weren’t a Democrat Party mouthpiece, I would have thought it satire.
The foundation of the Republican Party was anti-slavery, and a civil war had to be fought to bring it to an end. (The Democrat Party was pro-slavery) Another part of the framework of the Party was and is keeping government limited. Democrats will say, when trying to co-opt Lincoln, was that he was a good Progressive because he expanded government. He did; he had to conduct a war. The US budget began at $63.2 million in 1860 and increased to $1.29 billion in 1865, and it was reduced to $293 million by 1870. Blacks voted overwhelmingly Republican after the Civil War and into the 1930’s when the Democrats started offering something for nothing. Since then Blacks have seen themselves moved into urban ghettos, put in housing projects, seen their families dissembled, and the men emasculated by those policies. The Ku Klux Klan was all Democrats; one could say they were the terrorist wing of the Democrat Party. Yet Blacks overwhelmingly (over 90%) still vote for the Party and politicians that resisted freeing slaves, murdered them, continued to impoverish them, then re-enslaved them to the State. When Moses was leading the Jews out of Egypt, the hardships were such that many begged him to take them back to Egypt and slavery, it being better to suffer that than what they were going through. Democrats and Franklin Roosevelt (Moses) complied and lead Blacks back into slavery.
Ronald Reagan came to power inheriting double digit inflation, double digit unemployment, and double digit interest rates. He did exactly the opposite of what Obama is doing now. Obama has increased regulation of private business, Reagan reduced it. Obama has weakened the military, Reagan strengthened it. Obama wanted to raise taxes, but even he recognizes that doing so during a recession would be a near death blow to the US economy. Reagan cut taxes across the board. The top marginal tax rate was 70% and he reduced it to 28%. Obama has weakened foreign policy and Reagan strengthened it. Reagan believed in strength by projecting power, and Obama projects appeasement and apology. Part of co-opting Reagan is trying to redefine the man’s ideas and principles, just as they have Lincoln’s. They are trying to rewrite history too, saying they (Democrats) were always respectful of Reagan and his policies.
Here’s some of the things said about him during his presidency. Tip O’Neill, Speaker of the House during Reagan’s presidency, said, “The evil is in the White House at the present time. And that evil is a man who has no care and no concern for the working class of America and the future generations of America, and who likes to ride a horse. He’s cold. He’s mean. He’s got ice water for blood.” Lot’s of ‘working class’ people were thrown out of work during Carter’s administration, yet during the Reagan administration, 21 million jobs were added. Democrat congressman William Clay of Missouri said Reagan was trying to replace “the Bill of Rights with fascist precepts lifted verbatim from Mein Kampf”. I remember all kinds of comparisons of Reagan to Hitler and Nazism, part of the unrelenting attacks and insults that have lasted until recently.Even during Reagan's funeral, Democrats and their mouthpieces in the Jurassic Press were making snide and cynical comments about him and people that agreed with his policies and principals.
The Democrats are now saying Reagan was good on foreign policy, yet at the time were horrified that he called the Soviet Union the evil empire, were aghast he told Gorbachev to “tear down this wall”, mocked and blocked his Strategic Defense Initiative; in short opposed everything he tried to do in foreign policy.
The reason for this attempted usurpation is the Democrats are losing power. They lost 63 seats in the House of Representatives in the last election, six Senate seats, several governorships, and several state legislatures. They are going to lose several more in the next election. The latest census shows that Democrat run states, with serious over regulation of business and uber high taxation have lost a lot of population; people have moved to business friendly states with low taxation. Those Republican states will gain, through redistricting, more house seats, in addition to more Democrats and RINO’s (Republican In Name Only) being voted out next year. Since their shine is off, Democrats are trying to gather for themselves some of the shine that comes from leaders that actually believe in, and apply, the principles of the Constitution.
It was important to Lincoln that he keep the Constitution intact. Lincoln was castigated for not, by the stroke of the pen, abolishing slavery the minute he came to power. He responded saying, they “seemed to think that the moment I was president, I had the power to abolish slavery, forgetting that before I could have any power whatsoever I had to take the oath to support the Constitution of the United States and execute the laws as I found them.”
Reagan wrote a friend in 1979: “…the permanent structure of our government with its power to pass regulations has eroded if not in effect repealed portions of our Constitution.” It was during Reagan’s second term that he directed his Attorney General, Ed Meese, to start challenging legislators and the Courts to apply the “original intent” of the Constitution to law and governance. It caused a big fight, and the Democrats hated it.
The principals set forth by Reagan and Lincoln today is the foundation of the TEA Party movement and the re-emergence of the idea of limited government, low taxation, and the return to the original intent of the Constitution; that there is human equality, not equality of outcome through governmental regulation outside the parameters of the Constitution.
