:
“Because of its vast readership, “Killing Reagan: The
Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency” by Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly and
his collaborator, Martin Dugard, will distort public understanding of Ronald
Reagan’s presidency more than hostile but conscientious scholars could.”
Will it? Honestly, who cares? For the record, why is anyone writing
and promoting the conservative cause for liberty still talking about “Killing
Reagan”? Ronald Reagan is dead, and has been so for more than a decade. You can
visit his grave at his eponymous Presidential library in Simi Valley. Still, with
the Republican Presidential candidates’ imitating and Fox News hosts’
redefining the inimitable Gipper, one would think that they are retreating to
the past. To paraphrase Barack Obama, I have to declare: “The 1980s called.
They want their President back.”
Conservatives need to get over fawning, overdone Reagan idolatry
and return to a well-placed, measured respect for Ronald — and move on. The
female David Brooks, Jennifer Rubin is a mouthpiece conservative token for the
“shrilly, shrilly liberal” Washington Post, but she was spot on when she wrote
about Reagan worship: “Tear
down this icon.” A conservative friend and leader in Rhode Island, Rhode
Island Republican Assembly President Raymond McKay, mused very simply to me and
his colleagues among the National Federation of Republican Assemblies: “Ronald
Reagan is dead”.
We need to get over our Reagan nostalgia, folks, and the
laughable blow-up between O’Reilly and Will is proof positive why. The problems
which the cause of individual liberty, limited government, and constitutional
rule face in our times need more than a little bit of Reagan to resolve.
Entitlement reforms, the repeal of vast expanses of the state, the taming of
Wall Street through the free market – all of these reforms cannot wait one more
election cycle, while two big wigs of the conservative movement and the
Republican Party snarl at each other and rile up the base.
Why are two conservatives debating the legacy of a long-gone
conservative President, when the current slate of conservative contenders is
blasting past him in record and rhetoric? The fact that talking heads on a
conservative news program are scratching at each other over one book from one
hack is just sad.
There is too much going on in our country for this foray of
fight and fancy.
Conservatives, traditional fighters, and liberty activists
are attacking the behemoth of Big Government writ large and imposing. Senior
citizens are asking: “Children, where’s my country?” With health care costs
spiraling out of control, and the cost of living crushing those on a fixed
income, is anyone surprised that Grandma and Grandpa are pessimistic about their
golden years? Middle class workers, taxpayers, and homeowners see bills piling
up, but not the financial resources to defray those costs. Moving up has become
more of a fantasy than a part of the American Dream. This is wrong. US Senator
Rick Santorum and other Republican Presidential candidates have outed a federal
government which is now picking winners and losers. This is a loser deal all
around. Millenials face crushing national and student loan debt. Future
representatives in Congress and the White House need to make it easier for all
of us to live and thrive in our own houses.
Yet on Fox News, O’Reilly and Will don’t seem to care. It is
discouraging and sad to see these two intellects demeaning each other. They
should be fighting for a restoration of our country’s foundational principles. They
should remind us why Reagan was great, then focus on how the next generation of
Republicans can and will make this country great again, better than Reagan,
better than Coolidge.
Republican presidential candidates have anything to worry
about, anyway. Who are conservatives activists running against in Election 2016?
The old codger of the Left, “Weekend at Bernie” Sanders wants to play socialist
Santa Claus and take more from those who work and subsidize those who do not.
The Democratic front-runner is an old granny with a penchant for lying, yet no
skill at operating two email servers or talking straight to black people about
racial tensions. “Black Lives Matter” for Democrats – on Election Day. For
Republicans fighting in Inner City Los Angeles or Baltimore, Maryland, black
lives matter all the time and more than ever, and African-Americans are
starting to vote the right way. As for Martin O’Malley, even the Wall Street
Journal diminished him as “an unidentified bystander” during a priceless
photo-op. If anyone is paying attention to the Democrats’ declining
enrollment in registration and elected
office – as opposed to two old white guys fighting over a book and a memo — they
would see Democrats scrambling for contenders against strong incumbents in
Georgia, the Midwest, and even in California, where an East Bay Republican assemblywoman
has yet to draw a noticeable Democratic challenger.
Democratic illiberalism is on the run, because this country
has had two straight Presidential terms of it, and American voters by and large
have come to terms with it: they don’t want any more. George Will described
these necessary growing pains for the American electorate: “There is no better
inoculation against liberalism than a heavy dose of it.” O’Reilly would do well
to remember this. Stop fighting over Reagan, guys. Let’s win today!