Since we can’t dig him up (are we totally sure about that?), let’s celebrate his principles.
Oh, sorry — didn’t mean to be “partisan”!
As you watch the events of the day, watch for the phenomenon of “The only good conservative is a dead conservative.”
But it’s Ronald Reagan who really stands out. As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth, the Gipper is enjoying yet another status upgrade among liberals. Barack Obama took a Reagan biography with him on his vacation. A slew of liberals and mainstream journalists (but I repeat myself) complimented Obama’s State of the Union address as “Reaganesque.” Time magazine recently featured the cover story “Why Obama (Hearts) Reagan.” Meanwhile, the usual suspects are rewriting the same columns about how Reagan was a pragmatist who couldn’t run for president today because he was too nice, too reasonable, too (shudder) liberal for today’s Republican party.
Now, on the one hand, there’s something wonderful about the overflowing of love for Reagan. When presidents leave office or die, their partisan affiliation fades and, for the great ones, eventually withers away. Reagan was a truly great president, one of the greatest according to even liberal historians like the late John Patrick Diggins. As you can tell from the gnashing of teeth and rending of cloth from the far Left, the lionization of Reagan is a great triumph for the Right, and conservatives should welcome more of it.
On the other hand, what is not welcome is an almost Soviet airbrushing of the past to serve liberalism’s current agenda. For starters, if liberals are going to celebrate Reagan, they might try to account for the fact that they fought his every move, alternating between derision and slander in the process. . . . [S]o much of the effort to build up conservatives of the past is little more than a feint to tear down the conservatives of the present.
Today’s example comes from left-wing cretin Eric Boehlert:
Hunch: Reagan would have been repulsed by Beck, Limbaugh, Breitbart and the rest of today’s RW hate merchants
Better hunch: Reagan would have been repulsed by Eric Boehlert.
This will happen all day. Be alert to it.