Which One Is Not Like The Other Ones?
 
Among those apparently driven round the bend by Obama’s poll numbers is the National Black Republican Association.
Always a little on edge, the Association has tried its “King Was A Republican” campaign with no visible effect,
 “Urban Print” 
 and now they are reaching back to defend Nixon’s embrace of Southern, er, traditions.
“President Richard Nixon’ 1970’ “Southern Strategy†began a 30-year odyssey to get fair minded people in the South to stop voting for racist Democrats who were discriminating against blacks.”
Fairminded Folks 
Return To Yesteryear! 
“Mills of the gods” visits the opened to the masses and gussied up Johnson Ranch outside Austin, and comes away whimsically impressed by the old monster’s lair:
“The newly opened office brought back a flood of memories of mid-sixties furnishings and decorations. God but it has hideous. They had to tear up a very nice room to bring it back to the schlocky state Lyndon had left it in. Cheap paneling, a large T.V. built into the wall, crummy portrait of the homeowner , phones with six lines, hunting knife, everything but the head of a deer… Here were the tools of his domination of the Western world for five years. Here were the telltale signs of the Texas farm boy from Southwest Texas State Teachers College, overcompensating so that he could overcome in his own mind the fact that he was not like a Kennedy.”
The enduring weirdness of past greats is of course our endless obsession at Presidents”R”Us. True LBJ completests should check out a brief-lived but commendable effort at Minor Tweaks, where an impressive collection of Johnson oddities was accumulated in a short period.
Nixon & Morris, Together At Last 
Reagan: Better Read 
Our gal chose to close last night quoting the sainted Ronald Reagan [after earlier misattributing “city on a hill” to Reagan, rather than John Winthrop, whom he quoted.]
And magnificent words they were. The empty vessel that is Sarah Palin, already caught channeling FDR assassination fans on the glories of small town life, was pumped up with yet another oddity from the Republican party’s controversiall past.
As was widely noted, Palin’s closer was lifted from Reagan’s “Operation Coffee-cup” crusade against Medicare, back when it was the opening wedge of socialism.
Near, But Not N’er  
Reagan worship takes many forms, most recently in the form of miraculous interventions from beyond. His all-knowingness takes multiple forms, most acutely when He foresees our present troubles.
Sadly, one of the most popular instances never happened. Many have enjoyed the Reagan diary item about a visit from his Vice President’s n’er-do-well son, but it’s a long disproved fake.
But it feels so good.
