{"id":57432,"date":"2016-02-06T09:37:34","date_gmt":"2016-02-06T15:37:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=57432"},"modified":"2016-02-06T09:38:59","modified_gmt":"2016-02-06T15:38:59","slug":"happy-reagans-birthday-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=57432","title":{"rendered":"Happy Reagan’s Birthday!"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s Ronald Reagan’s birthday. \u00a0He’d be 105 if he were alive today.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019ve been writing about Reagan \u2013 who, along with PJ O\u2019Rourke, Solzhenitzyn, Dostoevskii and Paul Johnson is the reason I\u2019m a conservative today \u2013 as long as this blog has been in existence, and long before. \u00a0 He was the first Republican I ever voted for – growing up in the left-leaning household I did, Reagan was utterly\u00a0trayf<\/em>.<\/p>\n

His eight years in the Presidency, like his two terms in California, were not perfect, and I don\u2019t beatify my presidents, even if they\u2019ve been out of office for two and a half decades.\u00a0 His last term wasn\u2019t as stellar as his first, and his last two years were very difficult.<\/p>\n

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Still and all, he was the greatest president of the second half of the 20th Century. \u00a0All it takes is one great accomplishment; he had two.<\/p>\n

He caused the implosion of Communism. \u00a0Let no liberal bobblehead tell you otherwise. \u00a0They’ll say the USSR fell because of Mikhail Gorbachev; they ignore (or, more likely, never dig beyond the left’s chanting points to learn) that Gorbachev only became Premier\u00a0as a reaction to Reagan<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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And he not only saved the economy (for a couple decades), but thanks to the end of the Cold War, he ushered in the greatest period of unmitigated prosperity in history; Bill Clinton cashed the “peace dividend” (and the Gingrich congress prevented him from squandering it), to the benefit of everyone in the world who wasn’t living in complete tyranny.<\/p>\n

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Some hamsters say “Reagan could never get nominated today!” \u00a0 \u00a0It’s possible. \u00a0I have a copy of a George Will book from the middle of Reagan’s second term that hammers the President’s departures from conservative orthodoxy; I can imagine what today’s Mark Levins and Laura Ingrahams would say and do.<\/p>\n

But on the other hand, listen to “A Time For Choosing”, his 1964 speech supporting Barry Goldwater, where he “came out” as a conservative. \u00a0Tell me that wouldn’t fit in at a Tea party meeting:<\/p>\n