If you believe Newsweek magazine — something that usually requires a serious suspension of disbelief — the Reagan Era is dead. Politico also chimed in, proclaiming the death of the Reagan Revolution.
Newsweek doesn’t go on to tell you who killed the Reagan Era, so I will. It was the Republican Party that demolished the shining city on the hill my father built. The Republican Party is 100 percent responsible for the end of the Reagan Revolution.
They forgot who he was; and having forgotten who he was, they stopped following in his footsteps — footsteps that should have led to smaller, less intrusive government and restrained government spending. They are the ones who began to undermine the sturdy foundation my father built.
By the way, the same thing happened to Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain. Her own party was responsible for undermining all the great advances she made toward dismantling the socialist welfare state that had made England an economic basket case. It happened because once she was out of power, her party weakened.
At their prime, Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were strong, but when they no longer were in power, their followers turned into weak-kneed office seekers.
Being weak ,they were easily led astray and went in other directions, falling prey to the lure of big government, big spending and big-deficit politics.
The end of the Reagan Era was brought to us by the Republican Party, which had thrived under his leadership and is now in danger of becoming a minor player in the nation’s politics and a spectator at the birth of a socialist America doomed to follow the path to ruin of every failed state that has embraced the Marxist creed.
Can the Reagan Era be resurrected? It can, but only by the party that was responsible for its death. Republicans killed it, and it’s up to Republicans to revive it. If America is to survive the coming debacle under an ultra-left-wing Barack Obama administration drenched in the welfare-state philosophies of Karl Marx, only a reborn Republican Party will be capable of bringing our nation back from the brink of destruction.
Unless John McCain understands what is at stake here, Nov. 5 is going to resemble the smoking rubble of Dresden, Germany, in the wake of the Allied firebombing of that city. The Republican Party is going to be in shambles because it abandoned the trail leading to that shining city on the hill to itself become a quasi-left-wing organization that looks at the Democrats’ welfare programs and says, “Me too.”
Republicans destroyed the party from within. They are the ones to blame. Not the left-wing media, not left-wing academia, not the Democratic Party, but the Grand Old Party itself — which is no longer grand. Just old and scared silly.
Ronald Reagan had the same media, the same left-wing academia and the same Democratic Party that we have today. But when they attacked him, he fought back like a tiger. He found the fight invigorating, and found his strength and fortitude under fire.
Today, when Republicans are attacked, they tremble and run for cover. And then they give in and begin to mumble, “Me too.”
I’ve heard people say my father would have supported the Wall Street bailout. My answer to that is: “Balderdash!” Ronald Reagan would never have supported a bailout because under his leadership, there never would have been a need for one. He never would have allowed the double-dealing and sheer criminality that brought about our current financial crisis.
In a Ronald Reagan administration, the Chris Doddses and Barney Frankses — who bled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac dry — wouldn’t be running congressional committees, they’d be fending off federal prosecutors.
But let’s not have any more talk about the end of the Reagan Era. It’s time to refire the jets and move forward.
Let’s win another one for the Gipper.
Michael Reagan, the elder son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is heard on more than 200 talk radio stations nationally as part of the Radio America Network. Look for Mike’s newest book, “Twice Adopted,” at Reagan.com. E-mail comments to [email protected].
