Reagan would Have Voted for Ron Paul

says some goof I never heard of before today over at Townhall.com.

I'm telling you, in between Hugh Hewitt's frequent tongue-bathing of Mitt Romney, and now Matt (who?) Towery smearing the legacy of the 20th Century's greatest President to push a Bircher kook, I'm beginning to objectively think that anyone associated with Townhall can't be taken seriously as a legitimate pundit.

But that's just me.

What, you may ask, gives Mr. Towery the ability to bequeath the mantle of "REAGAN" upon Mr. Paul? Why this....

On Christmas Day, I glanced at the memorabilia from my years in politics. The photos and notes from Newt Gingrich. Candid shots of me with the likes of Jimmy Carter and of the brilliant mastermind of his presidential victory, Hamilton Jordan. Next were shots of me posing with Bill Clinton and then with both President Bushes.

And oh yes, here was a young U.S. Senate aide Matt Towery with one Ronald Reagan.

That's it. Read the rest of the article. He basis his entire judgment on the fact he once posed for a photo with Pres. Reagan.

Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Towery. I was once a young Senate aide too. And, like you, I have a photo with the former President.

Which gives me the same degree of authority to offer you a few words of advice: put down the crack pipe, son.

More Towery inanity after the jump.

UPDATE Since Towery mentions Reagan's speeches in 1964, I have posted a YouTube clip of Reagan's famous "A Time for Choosing" at the end of the entry. As DrewM so succintly IM'd "No way Paul gives this speech."

I tend to agree. I think he would have called Reagan's 1964 speech an invitation to warmongering.

Reagan was once an Iowan. He once broadcast University of Iowa football games, and he later was "discovered" by Hollywood when living in Des Moines.

This paragraph has nothing to do with the article. It's just gratuitously thrown in there, I suppose in an attempt to draw the attention of Iowa caucus goers for the benefit of Mr. Paul.

You know who else was once an Iowan before he gained fame in Hollywood? Tom Arnold. Oh, Iowa...the gift that just keeps giving.

I'm just sayin'...If I were a betting man, I'd bet you would find a Tom Arnold contribution to the Paul campaign before you would have ever found a Reagan contribution.

And I can say that with authority: I once had my picture taken with Arnold too.

Toe-headed Towery's argument does get a little more substantive however. Here he is trying to be all smart like:

It is my personal belief that if Reagan were alive and living in Iowa today, and he had to choose among the Republican presidential candidates, that he would likely choose the man the GOP establishment and national media have written off -- Congressman Ron Paul.

Whoops. I spoke to soon. I think Miss South Carolina personally believes that she wrote that sentence.

Here is where he gets all smart like:

To begin with, there is little doubt that for at least foreign policy, Reagan was basically a non-interventionist. He bragged about the fact that the United States did not occupy foreign countries. He stressed in virtually every speech about the "Evil Empire" of the Soviet Union that they must be brought down, but not by use of force or war. When provoked by Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi, the Osama bin Laden of the 1980s, Reagan used strategic bombing next to the quarters in which al-Qaddafi was sleeping to bring the brash "terrorist" to his knees.

Even the vicious murder of more than 200 troops in Lebanon did not provoke invasion or war. Instead, Reagan removed U.S. presence there in order to cool down an ultra-hot situation.

Oh yes, we did invade Grenada. More a military exercise than a true battle.

Wow...thanks for the history lesson Tow-head. You seem to have forgotten about a little event that many of us like to call.....WINNING THE COLD WAR.

You see, Mr. Towery, winning the Cold War required lavish defense spending. It required basing American Missiles in European countries. It required a permanent basing of US Troops around the world. It required intervening in countries, like Afghanistan, to help the Mujahadeen bleed the Soviet army.

It also required fighting the spread of Marxist-Leninist ideology in our own backyard. It required providing arms to the Contras as they took on the Sandanistas.

And it required standing arm in arm with the likes of Margaret Thatcher to let the Russkies know we would kick their ass given the slightest provocation.

Can you credibly pretend that your boy Paul would do any of the above?

No. He is an isolationist who wishes to retreat behind the bunker of "Fortress USA". He's already called for pulling our troops out of Germany and Korea. He wants to cut-and-RON from Iraq. He fears the military-industrial complex, and likely would not have funded the Reagan military buildup, nor the deployment of missiles abroad. He would not have intervened in Nicaraugua (perhaps terming it merely a "civil war") unless Congress forced him to do so.

To borrow a line from Ace, your analysis of Reagan's foreign policy, when not blatantly omitting those facts not helpful to your case, reveals you to be no more than a goof.

But foreign policy isn't all a President can be judged on. How about domestic policy?

As for domestic policy, again Reagan's philosophy seems closer to that of Paul's than any other Republican candidate today. Reagan constantly railed against big government. In speech after speech, he emphasized the need to adhere to the Constitution, and to respect the powers of the individual states. Sound familiar?

As for some of Dr. Paul's more far-fetched positions, they may be "out there," but it wasn't hard for me to find quotes from Reagan that reflected nearly the same sentiments. For example, Paul's concerns about a monetary system based on something closer and closer to worthless paper was similarly expressed by Reagan as early as 1964 when he stumped for Barry Goldwater for president.

In a speech that year, Reagan expressed concerns about America losing its monetary independence. And, eerily, he alluded to fears about foreign nations owning American currency.

It may not have been hard for Mr. Towery to find any quotes. A shame he didn't include them. Nevertheless, is "railing against big government" the way Reagan did the same thing as "railing against big government" in a Paulian fashion?

I don't think so. I don't remember Reagan, an economist by education, ever calling for the abolition of the Federal Reserve system. Reagan, to the best of my recollection, wasn't a gold-bug using the power of the Presidency to tell people to eschew their worthless "paper" money. Reagan didn't believe the Office of the Presidency was constrained to act simply by issuing "letters of marque and reprisal".

It's easy to look at what Reagan said in 1964 and compare them to how he governed in 1980-1988. I wonder why you chose not to do that, Mr. Towery.

Oh...no I don't.

Which brings us to this point. (See how neatly I led into this...I should be paid for this insightful commentary.)

What Paul lacks is Reagan's movie-star looks, and the credibility that comes with having been governor of California. Even without those attributes, Paul has managed to become the first Republican candidate I've seen since 1980 that can draw huge crowds so devoted to their candidate that they seem almost cult-like in their zeal. Believe it or not, that's what we thought of the Reagan crowds that gathered early in his bid for president in 1980.

The fact is that Reagan tamed both his rhetoric and the implementation of his agenda to meet the realities of the presidency. My guess is that were Ron Paul to have such a chance, he would inevitably do the same.

Let's address the "cult like crowds". Reagan assembled a grand coalition of social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, libertarians, and "Reagan democrats." These were people who were being taxed too much, regulated too much, and who saw their conservative values increasingly disconnected from the countries pervasive Democratic Liberal Elites.

Paul's cult is made up of truthers, pot-legalizers, neo-nazis, gold-bugs, anti-iraq war leftists, anti-iraq war rightists, college kids, internet poll spammers, blimp-fetishizers, extras from "V for Vendetta" and the roadies for Phish.

Please. If you are going to build a "cult of personality" it helps, you know, to actually have one. Paul fails this test.

Mr. Towery, as one former Senate staffer with a picture taken with Pres. Reagan to another, I encourage you to rethink your ill-advised commentary. It belittles not only Pres. Reagan, but also all of us who cared about the movement the man started.

And, on a more personal note, it makes me feel cheapened to have to list "former Senate staffer with a photo with Reagan" on my resume. Like you, that's pretty much all I had going for me. And now it seems so...tainted.

A Time for Choosing:

Thanks to DrewM.

posted by Jack M. at 01:17 PM

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