If you’re on the fence as far as an opinion on a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, Steny Hoyer seems to be unwittingly trying to push you in the “pro” direction:

(CNSNews.com) – House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D.-Md.) said on the House floor last night that if the balanced budget amendment Republicans are supporting is ratified and included in the Constitution it would make it “virtually impossible” to raise taxes.

“In order to pay our bills, Republicans would require us to pass a Constitutional amendment that would permanently enshrine their partisan budget priorities in law and make it virtually impossible to raise revenue,” Hoyer said.
[...]
Hoyer was evidently alluding to the amendment’s requirement that taxes could only be increased with a supermajority vote of Congress when he said the proposal would make it “virtually impossible to raise revenue.”

It might make it virtually impossible to raise taxes, which is Hoyer’s obvious concern, but he’s wrong in saying it would make it virtually impossible to raise revenue. That part isn’t hard at all. Shrink government, back off and watch the economy grow — the revenue will come. That was the Reagan philosophy, and what DC Democrat isn’t running around these days quoting Reagan?

They’re all about Reagan at the moment because Reagan raised the debt ceiling many times. Democrats even used snippets excised with surgical precision from one of Reagan’s radio addresses in an ad. But what they’re not playing are other sections of the same address:

“You don’t need more taxes to balance the budget. Congress needs the discipline to stop spending more, and that can be done with the passage of a constitutional amendment to balance the budget.”

There’s the Republican response to the Democrat ad right there. I don’t recall ever hearing Reagan expressing concern that a potential Balanced Budget Amendment would make it too difficult for the government to raise taxes. That might have been a reason he’d have supported it, but I’ll bet a case of jelly beans it wouldn’t have been a deal-breaker.

Hoyer can rest easy though, because the odds are against a Balanced Budget Amendment making it through the entire process and preventing the Democrats and any willing Republicans from increasing those economy-growing taxes.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

I’m still not feelin’ it, Mitt.

From the LA Times:

As Democratic and Republican leaders in Washington struggled to find agreement on spending cuts and extending the debt limit, Mitt Romney struck a conciliatory note in New Hampshire on Monday by lamenting partisan feuding while touting his record of working with Democrats — even the Senate’s onetime liberal lion Edward M. Kennedy.
[...]
At both stops, Romney pointed to the warmth between former President Reagan and former Democratic House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill as an example of what is needed in the Capitol.

“I worked with [former Massachusetts Sen.] Ted Kennedy, for Pete’s sakes,” Romney said in Concord, noting that they disagreed on “almost everything.”

One issue that Kennedy and Romney worked closely on was legislation expanding healthcare coverage in Massachusetts. He recalled, to laughter, that at the ceremonial signing of the Massachusetts healthcare law, the Democrat had joked that when he and Romney agreed on a piece of legislation “it proves only one thing – one of us didn’t read it.”

“The truth was we had both read it and we’d found some common ground,” Romney said, “and I think that has to happen in Washington.”

Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill were cordial in an “agree to disagree” kind of way and were tolerant of each others’ views — they didn’t have babies together. Too many “bipartisan Republicans” in Washington can’t tell the difference between “let’s meet for a drink and a few laughs” and a booty call.

Part of the reason Romney lost the 1994 Massachusetts Senate race is because he tried to out-Kennedy Ted Kennedy, and people voted for the genuine article over the knock-off, which is generally the case.

The “virtues of bipartisanship” sales pitch never fails to crack me up: “When a politician with an idea that’s 20% lousy gets together with another politician whose idea is 100% lousy to produce a compromise that’s only 60% lousy, America wins!”

In the 2012 election, if voters want a president in the White House who can find common ground with Democrats, they’ll vote for Barack Obama. Will Republican voters keep this in mind in the primaries?

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Joy Behar’s had a good day… first Elizabeth Hasselbeck completely silenced her on the subject of presidential brainpower, and then Hasselbeck reminded her (along with Whoopi Goldberg) that maybe they’re stretching the truth just a little too far concerning the recent spate of air traffic controllers doing an impression of Joe Biden listening to an Obama speech and falling asleep.

Joy & Whoopi (that’s got to be the title of an Alex Comfort book) didn’t blame Bush? That’s hard to believe. However, the president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association already blamed Bush last month, so maybe Behar and Goldberg wanted to stake their own claim with this:

The left-wing comic bizarrely compared, “[Reagan] busted the union, the air controllers’ union. And they probably would have been strict about having two people there, because the main thing about the unions is they want more people to work.”

Fellow co-host Whoopi Goldberg joined in, complaining, “It sort of started with the- Ronald Reagan saying, you know, you guys asking for too much money. He fired everybody. He cleaned them all out.”

Which of course caused a controller to drift off to sleep in the tower at Paducah International in the middle of the night three decades later.

The union “would have been strict about having two people there”? That’s the point — in 1981 they were unionized (as they still are) and they weren’t there at all. The controllers were on strike and air travel was crippled as a result. Nobody was sleeping in the tower at the time in question in 1981 because nobody was in the tower, Joy.

Cue the brilliance:

(h/t Newsbusters)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Thanks to contingency plans, confusion in the air around Reagan National Wednesday night was avoided, but a controller has been suspended:

Authorities have suspended a control tower supervisor working alone overnight who couldn’t be roused to guide two airliners landing at Washington’s Reagan airport, the nation’s top aviation official said Thursday.

A lone controller manning the tower did an impression of me listening to a Joe Biden speech and fell asleep at the switch, so naturally the president of the controllers union blamed… George W. Bush:

“One-person shifts are unsafe. Period,” Paul Rinaldi, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said in a statement Thursday. He said the union has long been concerned about single controller shifts, citing a 2006 air crash in Lexington, Ky., in which a Comair regional airliner attempted a takeoff at night from the wrong runway. A single air traffic controller was on duty in the airport tower at the time.

“The administration inherited an unsafe policy of staffing to budget instead of putting safety first,” Rinaldi said. “We fully support the administration’s aggressive actions to change this policy.”

I’m sure somebody will get around to blaming Reagan too (after all, this happened at his airport)… oh, and global warming, of course — not necessarily in that order.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

At what point do jelly beans make an appearance on the Oval Office desk?

Real Clear Politics:

President Obama recounts an anecdote about the 2004 Democratic National Convention at White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ final press briefing:

“The most challenging problem was what tie to wear. And this went up to the very last minute. I mean, 10 minutes before we were about to go on stage we were still having an argument about ties. I had bought five, six ties. And Michelle didn’t like any of them, Axelrod didn’t like a couple of them — him being one of the best dressed men in the world. So we really valued his opinion.

“And then somebody — I don’t remember who it was — turned and said, ‘You know what? What about Gibbs’ tie? What about Gibbs’ tie? That might look good.’ And, frankly, Robert didn’t want to give it up because he thought he looked really good in the tie. But eventually he was willing to take one for the gipper, and so he took off his tie, and I put it on. And that’s the tie that I wore at the national convention.”

Video by way of The Blaze:

Ten bucks says that Obama uses the phrase “There you go again” in a 2012 debate.

Update: Some on Twitter are noting the difference between “win one for The Gipper” and “take one for The Gipper.”

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

To mark the centennial celebration of Ronald Wilson Reagan’s birth, here he is in his own inimitable words on our unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness:

LIFE.

“Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation,” Human Life Review, 1983, reprinted 2004:

We must all educate ourselves to the reality of the horrors taking place. Doctors today know that unborn children can feel a touch within the womb and that they respond to pain. But how many Americans are aware that abortion techniques are allowed today, in all 50 states, that burn the skin of a baby with a salt solution, in an agonizing death that can last for hours?

Another example: two years ago, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a Sunday special supplement on “The Dreaded Complication.” The “dreaded complication” referred to in the article-the complication feared by doctors who perform abortions-is the survival of the child despite all the painful attacks during the abortion procedure. Some unborn children do survive the late-term abortions the Supreme Court has made legal. Is there any question that these victims of abortion deserve our attention and protection? Is there any question that those who don’t survive were living human beings before they were killed?

Late-term abortions, especially when the baby survives, but is then killed by starvation, neglect, or suffocation, show once again the link between abortion and infanticide. The time to stop both is now. As my administration acts to stop infanticide, we will be fully aware of the real issue that underlies the death of babies before and soon after birth.

Our society has, fortunately, become sensitive to the rights and special needs of the handicapped, but I am shocked that physical or mental handicaps of newborns are still used to justify their extinction. This Administration has a Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Koop, who has done perhaps more than any other American for handicapped children, by pioneering surgical techniques to help them, by speaking out on the value of their lives, and by working with them in the context of loving families. You will not find his former patients advocating the so-called “quality-of-life” ethic.

I know that when the true issue of infanticide is placed before the American people, with all the facts openly aired, we will have no trouble deciding that a mentally or physically handicapped baby has the same intrinsic worth and right to life as the rest of us. As the New Jersey Supreme Court said two decades ago, in a decision upholding the sanctity of human life, “a child need not be perfect to have a worthwhile life.”

Whether we are talking about pain suffered by unborn children, or about late-term abortions, or about infanticide, we inevitably focus on the humanity of the unborn child. Each of these issues is a potential rallying point for the sanctity of life ethic. Once we as a nation rally around any one of these issues to affirm the sanctity of life, we will see the importance of affirming this principle across the board.

Malcolm Muggeridge, the English writer, goes right to the heart of the matter: “Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other.” The sanctity of innocent human life is a principle that Congress should proclaim at every opportunity.

LIBERTY.

“A Time for Choosing,” October 27, 1964:

…I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I recently have seen fit to follow another course. I believe that the issues confronting us cross party lines. Now, one side in this campaign has been telling us that the issues of this election are the maintenance of peace and prosperity. The line has been used, “We’ve never had it so good.”

But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn’t something on which we can base our hopes for the future. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. Today, 37 cents out of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector’s share, and yet our government continues to spend 17 million dollars a day more than the government takes in. We haven’t balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. We’ve raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations of the world. We have 15 billion dollars in gold in our treasury; we don’t own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims are 27.3 billion dollars. And we’ve just had announced that the dollar of 1939 will now purchase 45 cents in its total value.

As for the peace that we would preserve, I wonder who among us would like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in South Vietnam and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace? There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We’re at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it’s been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well I think it’s time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.

Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, “We don’t know how lucky we are.” And the Cuban stopped and said, “How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to.” And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there’s no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.

And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man.

This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.

Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session With the Students and Faculty at Moscow State University, 1988:

[P]rogress is not foreordained. The key is freedom — freedom of thought, freedom of information, freedom of communication. The renowned scientist, scholar, and founding father of this university, Mikhail Lomonosov, knew that. “It is common knowledge,” he said, “that the achievements of science are considerable and rapid, particularly once the yoke of slavery is cast off and replaced by the freedom of philosophy.” You know, one of the first contacts between your country and mine took place between Russian and American explorers. The Americans were members of Cook’s last voyage on an expedition searching for an Arctic passage; on the island of Unalaska, they came upon the Russians, who took them in, and together with the native inhabitants, held a prayer service on the ice.

The explorers of the modern era are the entrepreneurs, men with vision, with the courage to take risks and faith enough to brave the unknown. These entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States. They are the prime movers of the technological revolution. In fact, one of the largest personal computer firms in the United States was started by two college students, no older than you, in the garage behind their home. Some people, even in my own country, look at the riot of experiment that is the free market and see only waste. What of all the entrepreneurs that fail? Well, many do, particularly the successful ones; often several times. And if you ask them the secret of their success, they’ll tell you it’s all that they learned in their struggles along the way; yes, it’s what they learned from failing. Like an athlete in competition or a scholar in pursuit of the truth, experience is the greatest teacher.

And that’s why it’s so hard for government planners, no matter how sophisticated, to ever substitute for millions of individuals working night and day to make their dreams come true.

…We Americans make no secret of our belief in freedom. In fact, it’s something of a national pastime. Every 4 years the American people choose a new President, and 1988 is one of those years. At one point there were 13 major candidates running in the two major parties, not to mention all the others, including the Socialist and Libertarian candidates — all trying to get my job. About 1,000 local television stations, 8,500 radio stations, and 1,700 daily newspapers — each one an independent, private enterprise, fiercely independent of the Government — report on the candidates, grill them in interviews, and bring them together for debates. In the end, the people vote; they decide who will be the next President.But freedom doesn’t begin or end with elections.

Go to any American town, to take just an example, and you’ll see dozens of churches, representing many different beliefs — in many places, synagogues and mosques — and you’ll see families of every conceivable nationality worshiping together. Go into any schoolroom, and there you will see children being taught the Declaration of Independence, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights — among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — that no government can justly deny; the guarantees in their Constitution for freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion.

…But freedom is more even than this. Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuing revolution of the marketplace. It is the understanding that allows us to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions. It is the right to put forth an idea, scoffed at by the experts, and watch it catch fire among the people. It is the right to dream — to follow your dream or stick to your conscience, even if you’re the only one in a sea of doubters. Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority or government has a monopoly on the truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious, that every one of us put on this world has been put there for a reason and has something to offer…

***

More remembrances:

From Young America’s Foundation…

On the 100th anniversary of President Reagan’s birth, celebrate a great leader and watch Young America’s Foundation’s inaugural film project, “Still Point in a Turning World: Ronald Reagan and his Ranch,” produced and directed by Stephen K. Bannon (“In the Face of Evil” and “Generation Zero”). As the current administration continues its assault on our freedoms, watch President Reagan’s ideas come to life at his beloved Western White House, Rancho del Cielo. Ronald Reagan’s ideas and lasting accomplishments launched decades of unprecedented prosperity and advanced freedom worldwide. Today, we need his ideas and his vision more than ever. Join Young America’s Foundation as we say “Happy Birthday” and “Thank you, Mr. President.”

*

The official Ronald Reagan Centennial Celebration page is here. A sampling of the events that have taken place over the past two years leading up to President Reagan’s 100th birthday — most of them privately funded:

Ronald Reagan admirers wanted to go all out to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the former president’s birth on Feb. 6 — a fighter jet flyover, a 21-gun salute and a Beach Boys performance are among the commemorations. But the Great Communicator’s centennial birthday conflicts with another great American mega-event: Super Bowl Sunday.

Yet Reaganites, true to the Gipper’s attitude, saw an opportunity.

Just before kickoff, a tribute to Reagan will be displayed on the massive Jumbotron at Cowboys Stadium in Texas, perhaps fitting for this larger-than-life persona.

It’s one of the scores of centennial events planned through the year for Reagan — from his birthplace in Tampico, Ill. to his final resting place in Simi Valley, Calif. — in a celebration that has taken on greater significance after Republican gains in Congress…

Congress created a bipartisan Reagan Centennial Commission to help plan events, but no federal funding was provided. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., didn’t believe such spending would be very Reagan-like. Instead, many celebrations are privately funded.

“The centennial celebration is about more than just one day and one man,” said John Heubusch, the Reagan foundation’s executive director. “It’s a yearlong historic occasion for people to remember an extraordinary man who restored pride in America and spread freedom throughout the world.”

Events range from film showings, essay contests and lectures about Reagan to dinners and musical tributes. Reagan’s boyhood home of Dixon, Ill., will premiere a 25-minute musical composition, “Reagan of Illinois.”

*

Here are the Christian Science Monitor’s “Top 10 defining Reagan moments.”

***

And watch the Reagan/Obama debate on YouTube:

Morning in America can’t come again soon enough.

After Obama won the election in 2008, Time Magazine, noticing that “New Deal II: This Time It’s Personal” was about to be released nationally, rode the wave:

What a difference two years, some horrendously expensive spending (sorry: “targeted investment”) shams and pork orgies accompanied by the inevitable high unemployment, a sputtering economy and a $14 trillion-and-rising-fast debt can make.

The cover of an upcoming issue — for which a better title would be “Extreme Makeover: Presidential Edition” — does a complete 180:

I haven’t seen such a forced, phony and laughable media stunt since the Liza Minnelli/David Gest marriage.

Mark Finkelstein at Newsbusters catches the meaning of the shift from FDR to Reagan:

The bigger point is how the cover reflects the realization by some the more sentient precincts of the liberal media that Obama’s big government project has failed.

Here’s a quick comparison of the two men, just so we can see the similarities that naturally draw Obama to Reagan:

Reagan: “A troubled and afflicted mankind looks to us, pleading for us to keep our rendezvous with destiny.”

Obama: “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States.”

Reagan: “If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”

Obama: “For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus—and non-believers.”

Reagan: “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

Obama: “It is only government that can break the vicious cycle where lost jobs lead to people spending less money which leads to even more layoffs.”

Reagan: “Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.”

Obama: “Just as we stood for freedom in the 20th century, we must stand together for the right of people everywhere to live free from fear in the 21st century. And as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act.

Uncanny resemblance. No wonder Obama hearts Reagan so much.

(h/t Newsbusters)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

It’s safe to assume that Michael Reagan has a slight disagreement with Ron Reagan Jr’s “dad had Alzheimers while he was president” allegation in his book:

Reagan Jr’s book suggests — even though the myth has been debunked for years — that President Reagan had Alzheimer’s during his presidency, citing in part some verbal fumbling during a 1984 debate with Walter Mondale. Sure, maybe if Reagan hadn’t slipped a little during that debate he’d have won all 50 states.

Reagan Jr’s claim that his father was stricken with Alzheimers by 1986 would mean that the president was in the throes of the disease when he delivered the famous Brandenburg Speech in 1987:

Moe Lane adds:

Decide for yourself whether or not that is a man with Alzheimer’s – but never forget this. Before they hated Sarah Palin, or Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld, or Condoleeza Rice, or George W Bush, the Left hated Ronald Wilson Reagan. They hated and feared him – and not least for the way that he destroyed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in eight short years. It’s not even that he did it; it’s that he did it so apparently effortlessly. Reagan made his opponents look like chumps – which they were; I was on the other side during that decade, so I have some familiarity with the type – and he will not be forgiven for that until after his last opponent is dead in his bed of old age.

Meanwhile, plans in DC are continuing to honor the 100th birthday of a great president, relegating claims like the Alzheimer’s-in-office myth to the smearheap of history where they belong.

Some people are asking for bipartisanship? They’ve got it:

In less than a month President Ronald Reagan would have celebrated his 100th birthday and a tight-knit group, consisting of many Democrats, is stepping up to try to throw the Republican “Gipper” the biggest birthday bash ever.

At the helm of the group’s congressional and White House efforts is Michele Woodward, a former staffer of Reagan’s who serves as the executive director of the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission, which President Barack Obama formed 18 months ago.

In the upper chamber Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Jim Webb (D-Va.) have been extremely instrumental in crafting the events of the Feb. 6 centennial celebrations, said Woodward, adding that they are in the process of drafting a “dear colleague” letter, which will ask members to make floor statements in honor of Reagan on Feb. 3.

Probably not the kind of bipartisanship the left had in mind, but hey, it’s a start… right?

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Yesterday, the New York Times, as a Christmas gift to those of us who enjoy laughing until pumpkin pie and egg nog shoots out our noses, published a piece about how President Obama has a natural penchant for humility:

“I think it speaks volumes about the man’s temperament,” said Robert Dallek, the presidential historian. “He doesn’t crave the spotlight the way some of these other presidents have. They needed to be constantly in the eye of the public; it propelled them into politics in the first place. Obama is less that way; he is more of a self-contained person, someone who can genuinely spend time by himself with his family.”

President Obama doesn’t crave the spotlight — as anybody who has ever watched the Daily Show, The View, Monday Night Football, Iron Chefs, Rachel Ray, Mythbusters, Oprah, Letterman, Leno, Conan O’Brien, countless network news programs, George Lopez, the Teen Choice Awards, the Superbowl, the Final Four and others can confirm. As a matter of fact, Obama was given the title of “The Everywhere President” specifically due to his wont of avoiding the spotlight.

Fortunately, a laughable statement such as “he doesn’t crave the spotlight” isn’t served without the talking-points chaser the White House shoved in every press pool reporter’s Christmas stocking.

Obama is reading a biography about Ronald Reagan while on vacation. How do we know this? Because it’s been trumpeted by the White House so hard that you’d think Dizzy Gillespie was the new Press Secretary. So naturally, in the very next paragraph of the same column, we can see that the press is starting to run with the coming year’s planned image makeover. President Obama doesn’t like to make things “all about him,” just like, guess who? Ronald Reagan:

He is not the first. Ronald Reagan played host to the queen of England at his mountaintop ranch in Santa Barbara, Calif., but he rarely invited members of his own cabinet there. He regarded it as “his and Nancy’s special place,” said Kenneth M. Duberstein, his former chief of staff, and he resented the photographers with their long lenses who angled for a shot of him on horseback.

“It bothered Reagan that he couldn’t just go off camera for a while,” Mr. Duberstein said.

Ten bucks says Obama has a jar of jelly beans on his desk by mid-January.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

I thought for sure Oliver Stone would be the first to bring a film about Ronald Reagan to the big screen, but the fact that he’s not doesn’t mean the movie might not be Stone-esque in its approach to the movie:

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – The story of Ronald Reagan’s life — from boyhood to Hollywood actor to leader of the free world — is about to spill out on the big screen in a way quite different from the miniseries that caused such a stir seven years ago.

The feature film, titled “Reagan” and sporting a $30 million production budget, is set for release late next year and will be based on two best-selling biographies of the 40th U.S. president by Paul Kengor: “The Crusader” and “God and Ronald Reagan.”

Jonas McCord, who is not a Reagan fan, wrote the script. “I was of the opinion that at best he was a bad actor and at worst a clown,” McCord said.

But maybe there’s hope after all — the movie’s producer takes a more positive tone:

Hollywood’s last attempt to depict Reagan was the 2003 miniseries “The Reagans,” which starred James Brolin. It was supposed to air on CBS until a controversy erupted over alleged left-wing bias and it was relegated to sibling premium cable outlet Showtime. It was seen by 1.2 million people.

“Only in Hollywood could you make an insulting, condescending movie about a much-loved historical figure, hire an actor who loathes the man, watch it flop and then somehow conclude that Americans don’t want to see a movie about him,” said producer Mark Joseph, who optioned the books four years ago.

As someone who was and is a huge admirer of Ronald Reagan, I’ll remain in cringe-mode indefinitely. Hollywood often manages to find a way to tarnish the memory of people they liked, let alone those they hold in lower esteem.

Obligatory: A partial casting call:

Robert Duvall as Ronald Reagan
Calista Flockhart as Nancy Reagan
Tommy Tune as Ron Reagan Jr.
Alanis Morissette as Patti Davis Reagan
Kate Beckinsale as Jane Wyman
Tom Hanks as Alexander Haig
Ed Asner as Mikhail Gorbachev
Betty White as Margaret Thatcher
Rosie O’Donnell as John Hinckley Jr.
Jodie Foster as Jodie Foster

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Read ‘em. Savor ‘em. Live ‘em.

Brand ‘em on your foreheads, Republican politicians.

(Hat tip: Lisa)

I can think of a lot of words. “Ghost” is not the first that comes to mind.

Anyway, how are you all feeling this morning? Consider this a “safe space” (to borrow the P.C. campus term) to vent without being accused of suffering derangement syndrome, dyspepsia, or other maladies.

And here’s a bit of Mark Levin to chew on.

***

Update 11:40am Eastern. Segment’s over. There was no time to rebut Linda Chavez and Jon Scott. So I’ll say it here:

To call a GOP candidate who sneers at profits and denigrates businessmen and greedy corporations and crusades for a liberal, global warming agenda the best Reaganite heir is simply self-delusional.

To cite Reagan’s illegal alien amnesty, without noting that he stated firmly that a nation without borders is not a nation, is disingenuous.

And to omit the fact that John McCain has a Hispanic outreach staffer who believes in “Mexico First” and the eradication of our borders–not to mention a national campaign finance co-chair who poured billions to fight against English instruction in the public schools–is dishonest.

***

CPAC: It’s the must-attend event for grass-roots conservatives. There’s much at stake for the GOP presidential candidates. And it all begins Thursday at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C.The schedule is here. All four GOP contendersare coming, as well as President Bush and VP Cheney. Online registration is closed, but there will be on-site registration throughout the conference.

Hot Air will be on Bloggers’ Row.

I’ll be down to cover the candidates’ speeches and will be speaking at the Thomas Phillips Student Luncheon (it’s a closed event for Young America’s Foundation CPAC attendees) on Friday at noon. After that, I’ll be signing calendars for the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute (open to all) also on Friday at 3:00pm.

CPAC always produces memorable moments. This year’s conference promises to be especially historic. Stay tuned.

Here are the key sessions:

THURSDAY:

11:00
Vice President Dick Cheney
Regency Ballroom

12:30 Hon. Mitt Romney – Regency Ballroom
Introduction: Al Cardenas, American Conservative Union Board of Directors

3:00 Sen. John McCain (AZ) – Regency Ballroom
Updated…Introduction: Tom Coburn

4:30
Rep. Ron Paul (TX)
Regency Ballroom
Introduction: Hon. Bob Barr, Liberty Strategies, LLC

FRIDAY:

10:20
President George W. Bush
Regency Ballroom

SATURDAY:

9:00 Hon. Mike Huckabee – Regency Ballroom (invited)
Introduction: TBD

2:00PM Straw poll.

***

Human Events reports that McCain plans to use a video of Ronald Reagan to rally conservatives. This does not promise to go over well.

Speaking of Reagan, today is his birthday.

He is sorely, sorely missed.

Here’s a flashback from one of his 17 appearances at CPAC:

We must ask ourselves tonight how we can forge and wield a popular majority from one end of this country to the other, a majority united on basic, positive goals with a platform broad enough and deep enough to endure long into the future, far beyond the lifespan of any single issue or personality.

We must reach out and appeal to the patriotic and fundamental ideals of average Americans who do not consider themselves “movement” people, but who respond to the same American ideals that we do. I’m not talking about some vague notion of an abstract, amorphous American mainstream. I’m talking about ” Main Street ” Americans in their millions. They come in all sizes, shapes and colors—blue-collar workers, blacks, Hispanics, shopkeepers, scholars, service people, housewives, and professional men and women. They are the backbone of America, and we can’t move America without moving their hearts and minds as well.

Fellow Americans, our duty is before us tonight. Let us go forward, determined to serve selflessly a vision of man with God, government for people, and humanity at peace. For it is now our task to tend and preserve, through the darkest and coldest nights, that “sacred fire of liberty” that President Washington spoke of two centuries ago, a fire that tonight remains a beacon to all the oppressed of the world, shining forth from this kindly, pleasant, greening land we call America.

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The WSJ asks: “Will McCain make nice?”

Conservatives say Sen. McCain must offer a speech that lays out a conservative philosophy on everything from tax cuts to the appointment of judges. Conservatives aren’t likely to forgive him for leading the push for campaign-finance laws and a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.

But Sen. McCain shares conservatives’ ideas on the Iraq war and abortion, which are intensely important to the Republican base. A strong statement on spending — something that “makes it explicit he’s not going to go along” with President Bush’s $3.1 trillion 2009 budget — also would be popular, Mr. Regnery says.

Sen. McCain’s problem is that he owes much of his early-primary success to independents and moderate Republicans, and he will be dependent on those voters again if he is the party’s nominee. In early exit polls in New York yesterday, 46% of Republicans who described themselves as conservatives gave their votes to Sen. McCain, while 61% who called themselves moderate favored the senator.

So far, those moderate voters haven’t held Sen. McCain’s conservative views against him. In the early New York exit polls, 56% of voters who said abortion should be legal and 45% who said the Iraq war is the country’s biggest problem voted for Sen. McCain.

Sen. McCain’s election chances would plummet if those moderate and liberal voters switch to the Democratic nominee in November. But they also would be sorely damaged if conservative activists stay home.

Charles Hurt at the NYPost spotlights “suicide voters” on the Right.

Glenn Reynolds continues to disparage those who strongly disagree with McCain as “Kossack-like.”

Guess he wouldn’t approve of the “Dear John” letter from passionate Florida Cuban-American Republican blogger George Moneo at Babalu Blog.

… I appreciate all the references to Reagan’s efforts to advance his agenda, which did involve making compromises with a Democrat House and, throughout most of his presidency, a Democrat Congress. And if John McCain showed this kind of temperament and vision in his political career, I don’t think most who object to his candidacy during the primaries would be objecting to it today. I think we would be enthusiastically supporting him.

Painting Reagan as a tax-and-spend Republican, who basically went along with Washington and appointed a bunch of moderates to the Supreme Court, in an apparent attempt to build up McCain’s conservative and leadership credentials and mollify his critics, has the opposite effect mostly because it is inaccurate. It reminds me of Bill Clinton’s supporters using Thomas Jefferson’s alleged adultery to explain the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Reagan challenged his party from the Right. He sought the Republican nomination in 1968 against Richard Nixon and lost. He sought the nomination against Gerald Ford in 1976 and lost. He fought the Republican establishment in 1980 as well, including Bob Dole, Howard Baker, and George H. W. Bush, and won. McCain has challenged his party from the Left. I don’t know how many more times I and others have to lay out his record to prove the point. To put a fine point on it, when he had to, Reagan sought compromise from a different set of beliefs and principles than McCain. It does a great disservice to historical accuracy and the current debate to continue to urge otherwise.

Let me be more specific, rather than spar in generalities. Reagan would never have used the phrase “manage for profit” as a zinger to put down a Republican opponent. Reagan believed in managing for profit because he believed in free enterprise. That doesn’t mean he didn’t agree to certain tax increases (after fighting for and winning the most massive tax cuts in modern American history), which were incidentally to be accompanied by even greater spending cuts. McCain believes the oil companies are evil, and said it during one of the debates. Among his first acts as president, Reagan decontrolled the prices of natural gas and crude oil with the stroke of his pen because, as he understood, profit funds research and exploration. Reagan had a respect for and comprehension of private property rights and markets that McCain does not. There never would have been a Reagan-Lieberman bill, in which the federal government’s power over the private sector would have trumped the New Deal.

Reagan opposed limits on political speech. The Reagan administration ended the Fairness Doctrine and the media ownership rules, which helped create the alternative media that McCain despises. Reagan’s reverence for the Constitution would never have allowed him to support, let alone add his name to, something like McCain-Feingold…

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Related:

Reagan vs. McCain on profits, business, and the free market
The enviro-nitwit-ization of the GOP

Class warrior John McCain Edwards at last night’s GOP debate held at the Reagan Library (transcript):

I think that we’ve got to return to the principle that you don’t lend money that can’t pay it back. I think that there’s some greedy people on Wall Street that perhaps need to be punished.

HOOK: I want to start with Senator McCain.

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about the importance of leadership and management experience. What makes you more qualified than Mitt Romney, a successful CEO and businessman, to manage our economy?

MCCAIN: Because I know how to lead. I know how to lead.

I led the largest squadron in the United States Navy. And I did it out of patriotism, not for profit.

COOPER: I’m going to ask you all for follow-ups on this, but, Senator McCain, I just want to give you an opportunity to follow up on that. Is Governor Romney ready to be a military commander?

MCCAIN: Oh, I’m sure that, as I say, he’s a fine man. And I think he managed companies, and he bought, and he sold, and sometimes people lost their jobs. That’s the nature of that business.

Ronald Reagan, “What Ever Happened to Free Enterprise,” Ludwig Von Mises Memorial Lecture at Hillsdale College, November 1977:

Political demagogues aided by spokesmen for a variety of causes, some worthy in themselves but questionable as to whether they’re a proper concern of government, have created a political and economic mythology widely believed by too many people. This is why we need the communications. This, more than anything else, has increased government’s ability to interfere, as it does, in the marketplace. “Profit” is a dirty word, blamed for most of our social ills. In the interest of something called “consumerism,” free enterprise is becoming far less free. Property rights are being reduced and even eliminated in the name of environmental protection. It is time that a voice be raised on behalf of the 73 million, pointing out that profit, property rights, and freedom are inseparable and you cannot have the third unless you continue to be entitled to have the first two.

Ronald Reagan, radio address, April 1979, via the Acton Institute:

Our free mkt. system is usually termed capitalism and by that definition capitalism has hardly been around long enough to deserve all the evil for which it is being held responsible.

Most of us aren’t really conscious of how recently the capitalist system came into being. Possibly we look back & think of the extravagant luxury of kings & emperors & see that as capitalism. We have a modern counterpart today in the rulers of Marxist nations. The ruling hierarchy of the Soviet U. live on a scale more akin to royalty than do the heads of capitalist countries.

Maybe our trouble is caused by the term capitalist itself. Actually all systems are capitalist. It’s just a matter of who owns & controls the capital–ancient king, dictator or private individual. We should properly be looking at the contrast between a free mkt. system where individuals have the right to live like kings if they have the ability to earn that right and govt. control of the mkt. system such as we find today in socialist nations.

We have a very visible example of the contrast between the free mkt. & govt. ownership in a household necessity we take for granted. The invention of Alexander Graham Bell–the telephone offers us irrefutable proof of the superiority of the free mkt.

As recently as 1880 there were only 34,000 miles of telephone wires on the whole N. American Continent. There were dozens & dozens of small telephone companies using several different kinds of equipment and there was no inter-connection between these different companies. The same situation prevailed in all the other so called advanced nations.

If someone had openly advanced a plan to put a phone in every home, on every farm, in every hamlet & city and hook them all together I’m sure someone would have said, “only govt. has the resources to do that.”

Now strangely enough in most other countries govt. did take over the telephone system and to this very day the telephones in a great many countries are part of the postal system. In America the govt. wasn’t bulldozing it’s way into the free mkt. place as it is today. For that we can be grateful. The scattered, competing phone companies were left to the magic of the mkt. place. And that magic worked as it always does.

We take the phone so much for granted it’s hard to realize things weren’t always this way. We can dial directly to any point in the country and to a great many outside the country.

With no intention of insulting anyone it I have to say it only takes a few days trip in many of those other countries to where the telephone is a govt. service to realize there is a difference. A long distance call there can be quite an adventure–so can getting a phone installed.

But here we have them in our cars if we like, in private or corporation owned executive planes & on boats. We bounce long distance calls off privately owned satellites and use telephone lines for network radio & remote broadcasts of sporting & special events.

And all of this came about because private individuals wanting to make a profit for themselves kept thinking of better services to offer, confident that we’d want that better service.

This is RR Thanks for listening.

Reagan in His own Hand, The Free Press p. 228,229.

And attributed to Reagan:

“The best minds are not in government; if they were, business would steal them away.”

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Related…

Daniel Casse: Romney blew it.