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Who’s Crying Now?  

From his controversial campaign embrace of Reagan nostalgia onward, Barack Obama has set Fantasy Reagan as the standard to be measured against.  But he’s lacked the twinkling whimsy to pull off the big whoppers Reagan could do with half a brain, and the shamelessness of his handlers in putting them across.

But now, light from the East.

Obama was already three up on the Gipper in the coveted killing Qaddafi relatives category, hitting a son and three grandchildren. Reagan had to make to do with his sole Qaddafi hit, the adopted daughter killed when the US bombed Libya in 1986.

Now the rebel conquest of Tripoli threatens even that Reagan accomplishment.  The Irish Times reports from the wreckage that Hana Qaddafi may have never died, and had gone on to a career as a doctor.

The Reagan bomb run was storied in legend and song, featuring daring-do, plucky Maggie Thatcher as Churchill in drag, and the perfidious French.

But now all we may have gotten out of it was the Lockerbie bombing.

Grant Me This 

It was a gathering of the conservative faithful at CPAC this past weekend, and the search for novel political analogies reached strange new heights.

Among the oddities was Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, whose doomed Presidential campaign took its first tentative steps off the cliff by reminding the assembled Neo-Confederates    of a past glorius Republican office holder,  U.S. Grant.

Somehow today’s conservative struggle resembles Grant’s grinding Civil War victories over the South, his scandel infested administration, or his occasional lunges towards protecting blacks and Republicans from the Klan in the South. Which is unclear, but Pawlenty has his own upbeat, crackpot version:

“We’re on the side of limited government. And, like Grant, we fight.“

But perhaps not win.  Pawlenty came in fourth in CPAC’s presidential straw poll.

Also up for CPAC recycling,  Margeret Thatcher, AKA The Iron Lady.  Indiana Representative Mike Pence, straw poll fifth place holder, put America’s striking coal miners and Trotskyist local office holders on notice by evoking everyone’s favorite Churchill in drag. Just wait till that North Sea oil saves our ass!

A Romantic View Of History

Pence also entertained the crowd with a musty Ronald Reagan yarn, one where Reagan encountered a magic pipe-fitter.  This proto Joe The Plumber begged Reagan to save tax cuts for the rich, so guys like him could be hired by them.  Pence has trotted out the tale of this wondrous encounter at least twice going back to 2005.

CPAC turned to Glen Beck for insane historical tales with a grain of truth.

Peeing all over John McCain’s myth of a muscular progressive Republican past, Beck rightly called Teddy Roosevelt an interventionist.

But calling Roosevelt a socialist is as insane as labeling Obama one.

Remember, Remember The Eleventh Of September

The George W. Bush Presidential Library has no building yet, but in our up to the minute virtual world they’ve begun filling the Internets with thoughtful reminders of the glorious Bush Era.

The Library website has an exciting 9-11 look-back slide-show,    featuring our hero on the phone,

videoconferencing, 

and   staring urgently.

All of our old friends are there:

Tony Blair,

    Hamid Karzai,

even good old Pervez Musharraf.

And never forget: we invaded for the children!

I’d forgotten former New York Governor    George Pataki was with Bush on the rubble mound

in NYPD drag, anticipating the butch look  Bush would sport the next seven years.

Chips Ahoy!   

The Wall Street Journal dips into the bottomless well of presidential pastimes to discuss poker and its role in the defense of the West.  Harry Truman’s lifelong devotion to gambling is approvingly reviewed, with side discussion of Winston Churchill’s legendary alcohol consumption and failings at cards.

  Poker was played on the eve of Churchill’s storied Iron Curtain speech, allowing writer James McManus to wrap himself in ominous clouds of doom.

“The Cold War was just weeks away. The ability to read who was bluffing and who wasn’t would be more important than ever.“

Analogize This 

“It is to the eternal glory of the American nation, that the more hopeless became their cause, the more desperately the Southerner fought”

- Churchill

The Washington Post this President’s Day gives us hints at the parties would-be roads to power, and if the Republican portrait is accurate we won’t be seeing them for a good long while.

The Democrats continue to parade about as cut-rate New Dealers, seeing one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished, and vowing to get around to that.

The Republicans are the fun bunch.  I assume the Post reporters here are faithfully paraphrasing Republican emissions, because actual reporting might call them into question.

“Rep. Eric Cantor (Va.), the House minority whip who led the fight to deny Obama every GOP vote for the plan, is studying Winston Churchill’s role leading the Tories in the late 1930s, a principled minority that was eventually catapulted into power over the Labor Party. “

Where to begin with this mulch-pile of myth?

“A principled minority:”

Churchill spent the late thirties on the outs with his Conservative Party leadership, but the party held a parliamentary majority until being crushed by Labour in 1945. If by leading you mean making speeches while out of power, he did.

Perhaps this is the catapulting:

Churchill returned the Tories to power in 1951, but on the basis of an election in which Labour received more than a million votes more than the Tories.

Meanwhile, the Churchill bust on loan from Britain which graced the Bush Oval Office has been shipped back by Barack Obama.

Head Tossed