a clown car full of millionaires: the 2016 presidential primary thread

Reagan's first term accomplishments – first year really – set the state for the madness we heard last night. We lower deficits by lowering tax rates? Sure! Increase the Defense Department's budget by 200 percent? No problem. Lie detector tests in federal offices? Why not?

Yeah, but before he got elected, was there even a vibe that he would not be your usual president and that, in fact, would be quite destructive and/or counter-productive?

I'm really not up on this. Did he run explicitly promising to, say, cut the deficit by lowering taxes or doubling the defense budget?

He was even scarier during the Carter interregnum – so scary that he seemed unelectable.

As I recall it, Reagan was viewed through the lens of his then-recent stint as California governor, so it was already apparent that he was a reactionary who pandered to hatred of the progressive left, but his governorship wasn't seen as apocalyptic for California, so the fears weren't as visceral as they would be if one of the current crazies got the republican nomination.

Reagan wrought most of his destruction through filling cabinet posts and sub-cabinet posts with horrifying conservatives like Meese, Casey and Watt. Hundreds of these 'movement conservatives' from the far right Goldwater wing overflowed his administration. That was how he accomplished so much damage while taking a nap every afternoon.

I feel like this really only kicked into high gear in the lead-up to 2012?

Tea Party began 2009, source of a lot of incompetent idiots. Wiki:

An October 2010 Washington Post canvass of 647 local Tea Party organizers asked "which national figure best represents your groups?" and got the following responses: no one 34%, Sarah Palin 14%, Glenn Beck 7%, Jim DeMint 6%, Ron Paul 6%, Michele Bachmann 4%.

I like the idea that "no one" represents their interests, maybe the infatuation with outsiders like Herman Cain and Ben Carson?

http://www.theoi.com/image/L8.3Polyphemos.jpg

Every Republican who has come forward so far seems to be fucking insane except maybe Kasich, with whom I profoundly disagree and would not vote for, and mmmmmmmmaybe Rubio on a good day if I don't listen to what he is actually saying?

― I Am Curious (Dolezal) (DJP), Thursday, October 29, 2015 4:45 PM (2 hours ago)

i actually feel bad for kasich when i see him sharing a stage with all those unpleasant creeps and smirking lunatics, it makes me feel more sympathetic toward him than maybe i should be.

essential reading, Josh:

http://d28hgpri8am2if.cloudfront.net/book_images/onix/cvr9781476782423/the-invisible-bridge-9781476782423_hr.jpg

reagan was extremely good at pandering to the right and the center so well that he completely marginalized the democratic party, i remember even as a kid just how powerless the dems seemed, so much so that clinton getting elected in '92 felt unreal.

That Carson tweet is very tuned in to the evangelical mindset, but without a doubt it is not original with him or his staff. It's the kind of thing you see on reader boards outside churches.

― Aimless, Thursday, October 29, 2015 1:54 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Should ask him if he'd let just any schmuck walk into the OR and perform a hemispherectomy.

Don't anyone be fooled by Kasich, if he could get away with it he'd be Scott Walker, but his attempt at pulling the same crap on unions blew up right in his face.

Tea Party started as a movement against TARP, when George Bush was still in office. I didn't even mind them back then. The more you call a group of people 'crazy' and 'lunatics' the more they'll end up being that, or something.

'incompetent idiots' etc.

reagan was extremely good at pandering to the right and the center so well that he completely marginalized the democratic party, i remember even as a kid just how powerless the dems seemed, so much so that clinton getting elected in '92 felt unreal.

OTM. Reagan's favorite president was FDR, and by dumping Nixonian growling for the smile and being lucky to get a working majority in Congress through '82 he had a similarly displacing effect on the opposition.

My state offered up Michele Bachmann, so I stand by my namecalling. (xpost)

xp Josh, it's a great question. I was 14 at the time and not exactly swimming in a US left milieu (unless exposure to hardcover, just a few years later, counts), but my sense is that although Reagan and Co. were less outright loony and ridiculous than the current crop, they were if anything (and particularly in Reagan's case) viewed as more dangerous, even in an apocalyptic sense, than the current crop of clowns. The nuclear war specter loomed large, Reagan ran on the promise to dismantle welfare if not the entire New Deal edifice, and soon enough... Central America, etc etc.

Reagan seemed like an avuncular and basically innocuous grandpa stand-in as seen through my prepubescent eyes. Not unlike Bill Cosby.

Central America was a fucking abattoir, thanks to Reagan.

Then Dubya came in to acclimate us to the idea of buffoonery as a viable political quality... and here we are...

xp Old Lunch: no doubt that's how Reagan came across to many. I always viewed him from the perspective of having left Chile in wake of the coup, so to me he was just another cackling, torture-sponsoring imperialist, made more sinister still by that saccharine grandpa routine.

I guess that is something that's worth a reminder, the spectre of nuclear apocalypse (how soon we forget!). It's actually something I've found compelling watching "The Americans." Obviously it's fiction, and told in hindsight, but their Russian spy characters watch Reagan on TV and see an actual madman that wants to murder their children and would rather destroy the world with nukes then let the Commies win. And then I think of all sorts of stuff, like Prince songs ("Mommy, why does everybody have a bomb?") or "Bonzo Goes the Washington."

Though of course it was a different world then. Intriguing that none of the rightwing nuts are really talking much about rogue nukes, terrorism, etc., and even then it seems largely only when asked. They harp on ISIS a bit, but they're not really coherent in their objectives/objections. So these current loons, it's I suppose some solace that I can't imagine them blowing up the world, just undermining everything that makes this country what it is, economically, socially, legally ...

GWB did not have to blow up the world to kill a whole shit-ton of people though, worth bearing in mind.

That book cover is fantastic - Reagan looks like he's about to go full-on Gene Kelly.

he did politically

As a kid in Santa Cruz, I was pretty apocalyptic about Reagan becoming president.

the left has such a reputation for being fractious and disagreeable that it's worth applauding when they take a more subtle approach:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CSgzfjIW4AAdzdu.jpg

inexplicably managed to read that as a "DOC HOLLYWOOD"

GWB did not have to blow up the world to kill a whole shit-ton of people though, worth bearing in mind.

But no one thought he had it in him.

what a terrible drawing

xxp

but she's a lesbian, remember

what's that 6th squidfinger she has?

that's just a glimpse of her massive forearm

inexplicably managed to read that as a "DOC HOLLYWOOD"

I knew what it said and still read it once as 'DEG HEYWOOD' and 'DOC HENNESSY'

In 1980, I knew that my parents opposed Reagan and he was not in tune with our family's politics - but no one in my orbit seriously thought he was a threat to the existence of democracy, peace, love, joy, etc. He was handed a victory on the hostages, at least partly to make Carter look ineffectual by contrast, and to some extent it worked.

By 1984 the picture had changed somewhat. He was no longer a cartoonish figure but actually represented heightened prospects for nuclear war.

I don't remember us talking much about his domestic policy, or whether he was good or bad for the downtrodden. In my family, knee-jerk liberal Democratic politics were assumed with the certainty of sports loyalty - you don't really need to know WHY we root for the Cardinals, we just do.

I'm in the middle of reading Thomas Mallon's new historical novel Finale, set in the weeks during and after the Reykjavik summit, and it's fascianting reading about events that shook the world for a little while: the Daniloff spy trade, Congress overriding his veto on South Africa, Hasenfus' plane going down in Central America. Meanwhile the Beltway commentariat thought Reagan was going to Iceland as a bluff! No one thought anything would emerge from it.

Christopher Hitchens and Jimmy Carter appear in this novel. I don't know what to think. Mallon loves Gore Vidal's fiction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_yxGsWHx9o

in 1980 i couldn't believe america elected someone who had the same name as ronald mcdonald president. i was pretty young.

I hated him because my mom's family is american indian and we always had a political cartoon on the refrigerator that had a quote from him about treaties (which I now can't remember). I remember that when he won I went and wrote "SUCKS" underneath his name on that cartoon. Inexplicably my mom is now a republican. I spent the entirety of the 80's assuming I'd die in a nuclear holocaust.

xp Josh, it's a great question. I was 14 at the time and not exactly swimming in a US left milieu (unless exposure to hardcover, just a few years later, counts)....

btw "hardcover" above was unintentional auto-complete. I meant "hardcore"

https://thebrandrackley.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/hardcore122.png

looool

lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU05TbCAxQM

The night Reagan won I was sleeping over at my friends house and his mom came down sobbing and apologized to us both that we were going to die in a nuclear war because adults were idiots while frantically hugging us so yeah, some people def saw him as a threat.

Thanks jjj, I am now homesick

I have no memory of how the adults around me reacted to Reagan, but my earliest political memory is being in a roomful of cheering hippies while Nixon resigned on TV (I was 8). I was 14 when Reagan came in. I think most adults around me at the time saw it as a step backwards to the Nixon years, but not a potential catastrophe.

Within the first year Reagan cut all the CETA funding and totally screwed up my stepfather's job (director of a non-profit that found employment for alter-abled people). Then I got it, I think we all did.

My parents and our neighbors weren't thrilled about Reagan. I remember the morning after, asking the next-door neighbor mom if Reagan won, and she shrugged and bunched up her face. "Yeah," in the same way you'd answer affirmative if someone asked if it was still sleeting outside. Carter Country was over.

Miss the days when the president would have summits in places like Iceland or Malta. Kinda like when my parents would meet up at the Conway McDonald's to hand me and my sister over for the weekend.

I read the book about Poppy's meeting with Gorbachev in Malta. The waters were so choppy that the summit was delayed hours because the captains couldn't align their ships close enough without tossing someone overboard, and both men wanted Churchilian moments of bravey.