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…AND SO THE DREAM DIES 

Tuesday’s election primaries yielded many disturbing results, with colonial dress clowns triumphant in Delaware and elsewhere.  But Long Island voters have sensibly turned away from the past, rejecting Christopher Nixon Cox’s bid to untarnish the legacy of his grandfather, Richard Nixon.

Young Nixon Cox had time on his hands after his debut political effort, losing New York State to Obama for McCain by 25%.  Cox tried to go local in pursuit of a House of Representatives seat, ditching his home in Manhattan to claim local residency with the rubes, even announcing an engagement to an under-aged heiress.

All for only a quarter of the vote.

Republican Tinkerbell

The thoughtful press peepers at Media Matters For America [just typing it gives a tingle!] have detected a pattern in Republican affairs:  free-floating New Reagan naming, often not tied to any visible speaking skill or charisma.

Christie On A Stick! 

They run down the usual names named, your Palins, Rubios and the like, but several of the reborn seem to have escaped their view.

Lest we forget, some have imagined the mantel falling on Rubio’s leathery opponent, Charlie Crist.  Before his auditioning to become the Robert Byrd of the desert wastelands,  John McCain was considered amoung the Reagan Undead. Until he stumbled into a cracker history morass Virginia Governor Robert F. “Bob” McDonnell was seen, at least in Pat Robertson’s alternative universe, as Reaganesque. And South Korean hard man President Lee Myung-bak was Reagan walking until it was discovered voters didn’t thrill to the prospect of confrontation with the North.

But our favorite New Reagan of Today lives in South Africa:

  step forward President Zuma!

Lights Out, Nobody Home 

 America was awash with InfectiousOptimism®, as an avuncular Ronald Reagan rolled towards 1984’s crushing of Walter Mondale.  Reagan was campaigning in Hammonton New Jersey, when he felt a song coming on…

“America’s future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts…It rests in a message of hope in songs of a man so many young Americans admire: New Jersey’s Bruce Springsteen.“

  Bored In The USA

It was the start of a classic GOP trope*,  rope in the youngsters by referencing that rock music.  It was also the beginning of musicians asking the Republicans to please stop.

Reagan labored under the misconception that Springsteen shared his cornball vision, and even better, cultural seer and future enemy of denim-clad youth George Will was the fount of this error.

 Hammonton was apparently so thrilled with Reagan’s visit the town ignored the event’s fallout, and plunked down a monument to the legendary day.

The years have not been kind to the stone.

 A recent visitor writes:

“When I visited this late afternoon, the landscape was kind of dull and the light in front of the rock was broken and off its mount. I found a blog where citizens are debating whether it should be repaired and if so where would the money come from.“

*Attempted again in the 2008 campaign, and for Springsteen, twenty-five years on some of the faithful continue tirelessly beating the same horse.

                                                        

Code Of Silence  

An Obama nominee’s shocking mockery of Ronald Reagan may torpedo his nomination.  Dennis Hayes is up for deputy secretary of Interior, but soldier of the Reagan Revolution John McCain claims to take great offense at some five year old musings   somehow tying Reagan to cowboy mythology.

Hayes wrote of the legendary man of the west,

“a rugged, gun-toting individualist who fiercely guards every man’s right to drill, mine, log, or do whatever he damn well pleases on the land…Like Ronald Reagan before him, President Bush has embraced the Western stereotype to the point of adopting some of its affectations—the boots, brush-clearing, and get-the-government-off-our-backs bravado.”

That’s it, end of mockery.

McCain pronounced himself unhappy, as well he should, being a product of the DC suburbs parachuted into the wilds of Arizona with only native guile and his wife’s money to support him.

For christ’s sake, Hayes is a chemical and utility lobbyist.

New Math For Tired Arguments      

America’s ceaseless quest for a New Reagan has taken myriad forms, from Charlie Crist, to Sarah Palin, to Barack Obama.

That last one has proven controversial!

Now Reaganauts of the true faith are fighting back, mobilising the armies of infectious optimism to carry John McCain over the last mile.

A hilariously ignorant ad by neverfindout.org shows it’s the economy, stupider:

“MAN 1: Senator McCain, history has shown us your economic plans will work.
WOMAN 1: When Ronald Reagan took office, the economy was far worse than it is today.
MAN 2: You understand that Reagan’s plan worked. Senator Obama does not.”

What were His wonder working ways?

              “Ronald Reagan cut spending and reduced the size of the federal government. Senator Obama plans to increase spending by nearly a trillion dollars. So who’s right?”

Gosh, if by “cutting” you mean increase by a quarter,  and if by “reduced” you mean added 200,000 federal workers, then they are right on track.

Bill Clinton was actually closer to their mad dream.  He cut heads, and shrank the government portion of GDP by twice what Reagan did.

  What Reagan did do is jack up unemployment, cut incomes and goose the stock market, and Clinton beat him on that last marker too.

 source: Dollars & Sense

 

“MAN 5: Senator McCain, we are hopeful.

MAN 4: Because your economic policies are the policies of Ronald Reagan.

MAN 2: As a nation in crisis, we’d be fools not to embrace your ideas.

ANNOUNCER: What happens when we pick the alternative? Please America. Let’s never find out. “