At the South Carolina GOP Forum on January 14, conservatism shined as Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, and even former candidate Jon Huntsman, talked about shrinking the size of government, reducing taxes, repealing Obamacare, repealing Dodd-Frank, and eliminating the EPA’s regulatory overreach.

Yet during the event, moderated by FOX NEWS’ Mike Huckabee, the most memorable moment came from Gov. Perry, who asked the pertinent question: “Are you better off now than you were four [trillion dollars] ago?” The question was timely, and it not only harkened back to Ronald Reagan’s great 1980 campaign, but drew much needed attention to the hole Obama has dug for himself as well.

One week before voting took place in the contest between Reagan and Jimmy Carter, the Great Communicator looked into the camera and posed the following question to the American people: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” It proved to be a powerful question, because Americans as a whole weren’t better off. In fact, they were far worse off thanks to Carter and his economy-crushing policies.

Reagan followed that question with a series of others:

Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we’re as strong as we were four years ago?

On Saturday, Perry’s question was basically a synopsis of all these questions put together. And by including the dollar amount ($4 trillion) it makes the point that should stick with all voters as they head to the voting booth later this year. Namely, are you better off now that Obama has spent us into oblivion or were you better off before?

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It’s simply hard to imagine this passes for a Presidency.  At what point does he become simply too much for the senses?  Sure we have had some interesting and bad Presidents before – recently in fact.  Nixon changed our view of the Presidency for the worse.  Carter was beyond ineffectual.  Bush 41 broke a huge promise. Clinton wagged his finger while lying – and a bit more than that.  But this President is truly something and it’s not just the facts that are bad – it’s his excuses and manners that make this Presidency so incredibly bad.

Let us count the ways:

A.  The Economics.

This list is well known by now – but that doesn’t mean it is highlighted by the Media as it would be of a Republican was president.

1. Unemployment at 9% for a historically long time.  According to Obama he inherited this mess and blames President Bush and ATMs.  Yes Obama believes automation, like ATMs, is to blame – as if such automations like automobiles (accounting for nearly 20% of our economy) and computers (creating employers like EBAY and Microsoft)  are the cause of our unemployment.  Beyond that, Obama joked that he was wrong about “shovel ready” projects, created the “Saved” jobs category out of thin air, and claimed that the stimulus bill would prevent unemployment from going above 8%.  What’s missing, of course, is a plan to lower unemployment – let alone actually lower unemployment.
2. Gas Prices.  They are currently 85% higher than when he took office.  He shut down our Gulf oil production for ideological not actual reasons and delayed a Canadian pipeline for political reasons.  When Bush 43 saw high gas prices, the Media told him to go his friends in the Middle East to ask them to raise production.  Since Obama wanted $5 gasoline all along, he has no plan to lower energy prices and the Media doesn’t harp on the issue.  Meanwhile the economy is hurt badly because of the higher costs of energy that reduce purchasing power and hurt employers everywhere.
3. Foreclosure/Home Mortgage Crisis.  This is the one part of the economy that actually is in a crisis that is “the worst since the Great Depression” – a phrase Obama is fond of overusing.  Obama has continued the policy of bailing out the Banks for foreclosure related losses, encouraged Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailouts instead of reforming them and now he has sued the very Banks he bailed out because of their foreclosure practices – and no, there is no plan in sight let alone true relief.
4. The Deficit.  It has quadrupled under Obama.  Yet he says inherited it – and rather than change it, spending has actually gone up each of this 3 years.  Obama’s solution: have other people come up with a plan – he was traveling or on vacation. When it failed, he said he knew it would fail.  So Chris Christie rightfully asks:  What are we paying Obama for?

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While Obama tours the country promoting his personal donation plan, the Republican Presidential hopefuls are in a pitched battle for the nomination and arguing which tax simplification plan is best. Threatened with the possibility of rate cuts, the Media and politicians trot out the usual suspects of lies about tax hikes and tax cuts.  This is a battle Republicans must win and, to do so, they need to expose those lies.

Keep in mind that the battle between those who create wealth and those that want to redistribute it, mainly politicians, is as old as civilization itself.  We read of tax battles and even reform in every age, like Urukagina’s tax reductions in Babylonia/Sumer in 2350 BC.  Equally venerable are the constant set of demagogic lies by those against tax cuts and simplification.  It is important to note that politicians like complicated tax codes and high tax rates because they control those rates and dispense the loopholes and regulations that complicate the tax code.  Tax simplification means they lose power.  As a result, resistance to tax reform is more often the rule than reform. As for the lies, they abound, so let’s consider just a few:

Lie # 1: Tax cuts cause deficits/Tax hikes balance the budget.  The Media and the Left often say that the Reagan and Bush tax cuts led to deficits while Clinton’s tax hikes led to a balanced budget. In truth, according to the IRS, federal tax revenues rose dramatically after the overall Reagan tax cuts/reforms (98%) and the Bush tax cuts (a record $700+ billion). This is just as they did after the Harding/Coolidge cuts (61% revenue increase) and after the Kennedy/Johnson cuts (62% revenue increase).  Those are the four major income tax reductions we have had since the inception of the income tax in 1913 and every time revenues rose after they were in place – every time.

So did the tax rate cut cause a deficit? The lie, of course, is to blame the revenue gathering mechanism (tax code/rate cut) instead of the revenue spending mechanism, i.e. Congress/Presidents.  The spenders kept spending – often at an accelerated rate when they saw the new revenues.  Thus, the fault for continuing deficits lies not with tax rate cuts, which produced higher revenues, but with politicians who spent too much.

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In the abysmal economic climate America presently finds itself in, almost no one is immune from unemployment, because joblessness threatens everyone. While Barack Obama duffs around on the golf course, one can’t help but wonder if he fully grasps the fact that, thanks to his own incompetency, the potential to be dismissed from his highly sought-after job is more than a distinct possibility. Except for “saving and creating” jobs for the slew of workers needed to staff the Department of Labor’s unemployment division, Obama continues to singlehandedly undermine both the economy and job creation. Wherever he goes, crowds are waving layoff notices in lieu of the typical “Yes we can” banners Barack Obama is more used to seeing.

If America is the employer, and if polls are the equivalent of a job evaluation, Obama is definitely on probation. In fact, Obama’s discharge papers are already filled out and tacked to the White House door. Rather than respond to the threat by working toward winning the title of “Employee of the Month,” the President is doing everything one should never do when unemployment is a looming likelihood.

Knocking around on the beach when he should have forgone the down time and chosen to stay on the job, the president doesn’t seem to be concerned that within the next year he might find himself in line with unemployed Americans who are stimulating the economy by collecting  jobless benefits.

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From James Pethokoukis in Reuters:

And it may be about to get a whole lot worse for the Obama 2012 campaign. The White House’s worst-case scenario for the economy on Election Day next year has become Wall Street’s baseline scenario. After looking at a string of weak economic reports and Europe’s growing fear of debt meltdown and contagion, JPMorgan – led by Obama pal Jamie Dimon – has just come out with a politically poisonous forecast.

The megabank now thinks the economy won’t grow much faster over the next 12 months than it did during the first half of this year — and that’s assuming Europe doesn’t go all pear shaped. It sees GDP growth at just 1.5 percent this year, 1.3 percent next year with unemployment at … 9.5 percent heading into the final days of the election season. “The risks of recession are clearly elevated,” the bank said. Here’s its reasoning:

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My favorite contributor over at Black Entertainment Television wrote a piece on President Obama’s eroding support among African Americans –specifically on his dismal handling of the economy. According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll, Obama’s African American support has dropped from 77%, to just over half supporting his stewardship of the economy. What a difference just two and a half years can make! When the president was elected, the exuberance among African Americans was infectious, joyous, and a bit overly optimistic as this clip from the day after the election shows:

Liberals and African Americans still clinging to “hope and change” cite in the president’s defense that he inherited a terrible economy from President Bush and that Obama can’t be expected to turn the economy around in only two and half years. It’s almost a plausible argument – until you start comparing this presidency and economy with the economy our 40^th President inherited from Jimmy Carter in 1981.

When Ronald Reagan was inaugurated in 1981, interest rates were at 21%, inflation was at a wrenching 13.5%, and unemployment was at 7%. In contrast, when President Obama was inaugurated in 2009, interest rates were at a historically low 3.25%, inflation stood at 4.2%, and unemployment was at 7.8%. The misery index (the addition of inflation and unemployment numbers) when Reagan entered office was 20.5%, for Mr. Obama, 12.8%. Currently under President Obama, inflation is 2.7% and unemployment is at 9.2% and climbing with many economists believing it’s really 16% giving Obama a real misery index of 18.7%. Even the liberal Washington Post suggests that President Obama has had enough time to jump start the economy:

The economy rebounded significantly during Reagan’s third and fourth years in office. The unemployment rate declined, although not spectacularly. It was still at 8.3 percent in December 1983 and at 7.5 percent in August 1984 as the general election campaign was entering its final months.

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When Ronald Reagan ran for President in 1980, it was said of him that he was not the “sharpest knife in the drawer.” The old joke went that in his role in the 1951 role in Bedtime for Bonzo, the chimp that played Bonzo was smarter than the presidential hopeful.

It’s true that President Reagan, for all his charm, may not have been a rocket scientist. However, what he did have – and what many politicians today lack – were defined morals, principles, and ethics. More importantly, he relied on those assets to guide him through many troubling times as President.

In 1981 when Reagan took office this country was in dire straits economically. Stagflation that resulted from Jimmy Carter’s pursuit of altruistic ideals had led to high unemployment, an energy crisis that culminated in gas lines, and awful prospects for future economic growth. Sound familiar?

Among Reagan’s actions as President that re-energized this country economically were tax cuts, deregulation, and interest rate hikes to kill inflation. All things considered, these policies worked phenomenally well, and the US entered a 20-year period of growth led by a manufacturing resurgence.

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It seems as if everything is finally beginning to add up. According to several dozen interviews conducted by Politico, Americans of the Jewish faith are finally waking up to the fact that Barack Obama is not a friend of Israel. And the best efforts of Democratic spin-masters isn’t going to change the truth.

David Ainsman really began to get worried about President Barack Obama’s standing with his fellow Jewish Democrats when a recent dinner with his wife and two other couples — all Obama voters in 2008 — nearly turned into a screaming match.

Ainsman, a prominent Democratic lawyer and Pittsburgh Jewish community leader, was trying to explain that Obama had just been offering Israel a bit of “tough love” in his May 19 speech on the Arab Spring. His friends disagreed — to say the least.

One said he had the sense that Obama “took the opportunity to throw Israel under the bus.” Another, who swore he wasn’t getting his information from the mutually despised Fox News, admitted he’d lost faith in the president.

But its not just this particular speech, it seems as if it is a cumulative effect of all of the times Obama has thrown Israel and its leaders under the bus since he was elected President.

“It’s less something specific than that these incidents keep on coming,” said Ainsman.

Ainsman is correct Obama’s “war on Israel” began just a few days after inauguration and continued through his first year and even through today. For example, these are only some of the articles I wrote about Obama and Israel during his first months in office, and all this happened prior to his getting involved in the Israeli/Palestinian issue.

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Unions have never represented a majority of the American workforce. However, to listen to today’s union bosses, one might be led to believe that they did. Ever since their peak, in 1945, when unions represented a total of 35.5 percent of the workforce unions in the private-sector have been on an almost steady decline. The common fallacy is that the union decline is due to the Reagan Era. That, however, is a false narrative.

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On December 27, 2010, Alfred E. Kahn died. He was 93 years old. You might not know who Alfred Kahn was, but if you are an air traveler or work in the airline industry, you have been affected by his work. In fact, most likely, the vast majority of Americans have benefited by Kahn’s work without knowing who to thank. Alfred Kahn was a Cornell University economist and, according to the New York Times, “best known as the chief architect and promoter of deregulating the nation’s airlines.” More importantly, Alfred E. Kahn worked for President Jimmy Carter.

Kahn’s work in deregulating the airline industry during the Carter administration was an economic boon to tens of millions of middle-class Americans who, due to lower costs, were suddenly able to travel by air, rather than by car, rail or bus. Deregulation also lowered the costs for companies, as the increasing competition made business travel more affordable. By largely getting rid of bureaucratic inefficiencies and increasing competition, according to a Heritage Foundation study, prices fell 40% for travelers within the first 20 years of airline deregulation giving more and more of the American public the ability to fly affordably. Airline routes, instead of taking up to eight years to be approved (or disallowed altogether) under the old Civil Aeronautics Board were established much more quickly; and, perhaps most importantly, under deregulation, air travel became safer.

However beneficial Kahn’s work has been to the American flying public, it is only one of several keys to unlocking one of the biggest fallacies ever foisted on the American public. That fallacy is that the policies of Ronald Reagan are the primary cause of the fall of private-sector unions. The fact of the matter is, they are not. Reagan’s policies are not what has busted unions over the last 30 years. In fact, it is the work of Democrat Jimmy Carter and his deregulators that has had a far more detrimental impact on unions than Reagan ever did. In addition, it is also why, regardless of the efforts of union bosses and their Democrat stooges in Washington, despite a potential temporary upswing, no amount tinkering with the National Labor Relations Act will enable private-sector unions to regain their footing in a 21st Century economy.

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We are all supposed to sacrifice, right?  Well, not all of us:

The tennis court at former President Jimmy Carter‘s private home is swept twice a day, his pool is cleaned daily and his grass cut, his flower beds weeded and his windows washed on a regular basis — all at taxpayers’ expense.

Under an arrangement with the National Park Service, taxpayers are responsible for the exterior of Mr. Carter‘s home in Plains, Ga. — to the tune of $67,841 last year alone. In exchange, the government obtains the right to add the home to the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site when he and his wife pass away.

Other presidents have had similar life estate agreements calling for their properties to be turned over after their deaths, but to have taxpayers footing the bill for upkeep and maintenance of the Carters’ property appears to be unique, and it’s drawing fire at a time of tight federal budgets.

Who knew the character Archie Bunker had it so right.

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Will the 400 leftist rabbis refute this?

This was some sick stuff. Anti-Semitism is alive and well at Media Matters.

Media Matters blamed the Egyptian crisis today on the US Jewish lobby and media-owning Jews.
Yid With Lid reported this from Media Matters.

If one needs additional proof that the “pro-Israel” lobby and the policies it dictates to US policymakers are bad for both the U.S. and Israel, look no further than what is happening in Egypt.

The regime that the Israeli government and its U.S. lobby have depended upon to enforce the status quo is going down. It is not clear when, but it’s going to be soon, much sooner than anyone ever anticipated. And you can be sure that any democratic government that takes Mubarak’s place is not going to play the role of America’s (let alone Israel’s) enforcer in the Middle East.

Hopefully, the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty will survive — thousands of lives on both sides have been saved by President Carter’s Camp David Treaty — but there are no guarantees. Far from it.

Of course, no one would even be worried about the peace treaty if the Israelis had agreed to implement the critical second part of the Camp David Accords.
That was the part that would have ended the occupation. But the Israelis chose to ignore it and the lobby and the ever-faithful Congress blocked Carter’s efforts to push it through.

Write Media Matters here and demand that they retract this awful anti-Semitic attack against American Jews.

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Ten years from now university economists will analyze Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s recent presentation to the U.S. Senate Budget Committee as the successful turning point in American economic policy from a focus on demand side consumption spending to supply side production investment.

As Bernanke clearly stated:

“We need to think about making investments for the future as opposed to simply spending our seed corn on current needs. So thinking about government programs, we should ask the question, will this provide benefits in the future.” …

“On the tax side, I don’t think it’s really very controversial among economists that rising rates, combined with a multiplication of exemptions, deductions, credits and so on, leads to a tax code which is very complex and can distort economic decisions.”

For the last decade our nation’s economy grew at an above average rate of 3.8% rate, tax revenue grew at the average rate of 2.5%; but government spending exploded at 13.7% growth rate. Fed Chairman Bernanke’s new found appreciation for getting government out of the way of the private sector only comes after America’s government debt burden has reached a Greek like 127% of our economy. With gold soaring, unemployment at record highs and serious efforts underway to eliminate the dollar as the world’s reserve currency; the US is clearly in trouble. To put the debt in personal terms, the US government debt burden equals $103,692.20 for every working American.

The Chairman’s rejection of bailouts nullified the intensive lobbying efforts by California and other state and local municipalities for a Federal debt guarantee. Having run-up over $3.5 trillion of municipal bond and pension obligation debts in the last decade, state and local governments are now facing widespread defaults. Newly inaugurated California Governor Jerry Brown, who many blame for passing legislation 30 years ago that permitted the Golden State to become the perennial poster child of deficit spending, just announced a six month moratorium on all state borrowing.

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Phase one for restoring the republic is over: the House is now in Republican hands, thereby assuring nothing radical will sail through the Congress in the next two years (although it would be wise to be on the alert for unconstitutional executive orders intended to accomplish that purpose). If the electorate remains informed and stays on task, 2012 will see the Senate flip as well since the majority of seats up for reelection are currently in Democrat hands.

Phase two may be more difficult. How likely is it that an incumbent president will be stripped of his position? What will it take? Some say it’s a very difficult task, yet it has occurred rather often. Under what circumstances? A short survey of twentieth-century presidential politics may offer some clues as to the feasibility that Barack Obama will be a one-termer.

We can begin with William Howard Taft, Republican winner of the 1908 election as the handpicked successor to Theodore Roosevelt.

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A bit less than a year ago, I posted piece entitled Is Barack Obama a One-Trick Pony? I raised this question with an eye to three thumbsuckers that had recently appeared – one on Politico by veteran commentator Elizabeth Drew; another, entitled Amateur Hour at the White House, written by Leslie Gelb for The Daily Beast; and a third, drawing on the remarks of these two well-known Democratic scribes, published in The Wall Street Journal by Peggy Noonan.

Noonan had two things to say – first, that no one among her liberal acquaintances really loved Barack Obama the way so many Democrats had loved Bill Clinton; and, second, that the Democrats were wrong to think that passing his healthcare reform would help him. In her view, the passage of “such a poor piece of legislation” would, in fact, do him almost irreparable harm. Moreover, she added, “There is the growing perception of incompetence, of the inability to run the machine of government. This, with Americans, is worse than Obama’s rebranding as a leader who governs from the left. Americans demand baseline competence. If he comes to be seen as Jimmy Carter was, that the job was bigger than the man, that will be the end.”

To this, I added, “The Democrats are getting what they asked for.”

In 2004, they tried a trick. If we nominate a man who won the Purple Heart in Vietnam, they thought, we will win. Never mind that John Kerry disgraced himself in the aftermath of his service in Vietnam, making unjust charges against his brothers-in-arms and resolutely thereafter refusing to apologize to those whom he had slandered. Never mind that he had no executive experience. Never mind that, as a US Senator, he was – to say the least – undistinguished. They wanted to win; and they gave not a thought to what sort of President he might be.

In 2008, the Democrats did the same thing. They had on their hands an inexperienced, recently minted US Senator from Illinois who was – as Joe Biden put it in a candid remark that typifies his propensity for speaking his mind without first thinking about the consequences – “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” Never mind, they thought, Obama’s long-standing connections with William Ayers, the unrepentant mastermind of a domestic terrorist bombing campaign in the 1970s. Never mind Obama’s close association with the racist demagogue Jeremiah Wright. Never mind his lack of executive experience, his unfamiliarity with the private sector, and his ignorance of the ways of Washington. With the help of the pliable press, he could be sold – and the Americans would congratulate themselves on their lack of racial prejudice if they voted for him.

“Now,” I then wrote, “comes the reckoning. That is one problem. The other is that Obama’s one trick cannot often be played. As we have seen over the last few months, as he has tried to play this trick over and over and over again, the more we see of him, the less we are impressed. Franklin Delano Roosevelt never held his fireside chats more than three times a year. How many times has Obama demanded airtime from the networks in the last ten months? I shudder to think.” And to this, I added,

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So President Obama decided to engage in some high-profile symbolism and re-install solar panels on the White House roof (what, no windmill?), a la Jimmy Carter, and in an embarrassing reversal. Although the clumsiness of an obvious political- and panic-driven pander has caused heartburn on the Left, in a related reversal, Obama also used his weekly address to revive the risible and previously ditched claim that Germany is proof of a state successfully centrally planning the ‘green economy’.

Not to leave their man in Washington hanging, if by sheer coincidence, Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology bought a full page ad in the weekend Wall Street Journal to further promote Obama’s plan of the U.S. adopting economically painful, environmentally meaningless ‘green economy’ laws designed to increase your electricity (and other energy) costs.

It’s almost like they are telling us to watch out for the lame-duck session.

Clumsy and unseemly though it may be, there’s also the little problem with a lack of accuracy.

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So with the news today reflecting the recycling-mania of the very same peoples’ republic I voted against with my feet just a few years ago — installing “tracking chips” in recycling bins (now in Cool Ranch flavor!) to assist the Green Police — I see another, written example of the environmentalist’s fetish. (Of course, when I lived in Alexandria, I had Greenpeace tracking my garbage already, removing it every Sunday night. Think of the possibilities with this scheme had I not moved.)

Anyway, coincidentally the Washington Post runs this cute item in the center of its opinion page by environmental scold Bill McKibben. Its on-line title is something less risible than in my print edition, tossed at the gym earlier, which was “Solar’s Shining Moment at the White House” or something very close to that. Fittingly, it is accompanied by a photo of Jimmy Carter.

Noting that the solar panels that Carter had installed during his one term (Obama, you might better hurry), McKibben tells a whopper when he says that the contraption provided cheap power. That must be why that industry wouldn’t exist without federal subsidies more than 100 times those granted oil and gas, per unit of energy produced. And now demands a law mandating that people buy their stuff (McKibben does implicitly admit all of this with his citation of failed climate legislation being the hurdle to our miracle power becoming reality…). Such are the perils of prosperity, we are to believe. Or, possibly, be distracted from.

Regardless, the underlying argument, that now is the time for symbolic gestures (and mandates and more subsidies) because solar can be the miracle breakthrough technology solving our energy needs shows a deep commitment to recycling.

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A year ago, in a blogpost entitled The Great Awakening, I argued that conservatives “should be grateful to Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Rahm Emanuel.” After all, I wrote, they had unmasked “the Democratic Party as a conspiracy on the part of a would-be aristocracy of do-gooders hostile to the very idea of self-government in the United States,” and they had done so by making “the tyrannical propensities inherent within the progressive impulse visible to anyone who cares to take notice.” This is a theme to which I have returned repeatedly in a series of posts – some of them linked here, others archived here and here, and the most recent found here – arguing that, with the proper leadership, the Republican Party could seize this occasion and effect a political realignment.

The heart of the matter is simple. What Franklin Delano Roosevelt falsely claimed in 1936 is now demonstrably true: “A small group” of individuals – lead by our current President, his Chief of Staff, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the Majority Leader in the United States Senate – really is intent on concentrating “into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor – other people’s lives.” If they wish to effect a realignment, all that the Republicans have to do is to complete the task of unmasking begun by Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and Emanuel and make it clear that they really do intend to repeal Obamacare, to balance the federal budget without enacting permanent tax increases, to roll back the scope and size of the administrative state, and to restore within these United States limited, constitutional government.

They face two great obstacles. First, as I argued last year in my book Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift, the administrative state has been growing for almost a century now, and it has become entrenched. Moreover, its growth has been fueled not only by the ambitions of a self-styled progressive elite proclaiming its expertise and its desire to manage our lives for us. It has also been supported by the political psychology to which – the baron de Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Alexis de Tocqueville contended – commercial, liberal, democratic societies, such as our own, generally give rise. Put simply, men in liberal democracies tend to fall prey to what these thinkers call inquiétude, and under the influence of this uneasiness – this vague, unfocused fear lacking a defined object – they are apt, especially in times of economic distress, to be willing to trade independence for a promise of security. The Americans whom Tocqueville met in the early 1830s had the resources, institutional and moral, with which to resist this propensity. But we can no longer boast that, in the United States, local self-government is vigorous, private associations do much of what was allocated to government in Europe, the Christian religion provides us with a moral anchor, and marital fidelity and family solidarity afford us a haven from the upheavals that typify life in a dynamic, commercial society.

Second, no one really trusts the Republicans in Congress.

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You had to live through it to recognize the metamorphosis. During those early days of June 2004, as the nation mourned the passing of Ronald Reagan, you would have never known he had been ridiculed and treated with disdain for most of his political career—not only by Democrats but by establishment Republicans. Frankly, I was stunned by the display of love and gratitude in 2004.

As the Reagan motorcade drove toward the Reagan Library for the final tribute, ordinary citizens along the route were paying their final tributes as well. It was an amazing moment.

But it was not always so.

When Reagan first ran for California governor in 1966, a lot of people, both Democrat and Republican, treated his candidacy as a joke. First, he had to get the nomination. Establishment Republican George Christopher, a former mayor of San Francisco, painted Reagan as a right-wing extremist and racial bigot. Having overcome that hurdle, he had to face governor Edmund “Pat” Brown, who was running for reelection and expected an easy triumph over the “B” actor.

One of Brown’s ploys was an infamous commercial he ran during the campaign in which he told a group of small children, “I’m running against an actor, and you know who killed Abe Lincoln, don’t you?” It didn’t work.

After two terms as California governor, Reagan took on Gerald Ford for the presidency in 1976. The entire Republican establishment opposed him. Ford was the sitting president, having achieved that position only by Senate appointment as vice president after Spiro Agnew resigned and then after Nixon was forced out of office by Watergate. He was not exactly the people’s choice. Again, the big guns came out to declare the challenger an extremist. It was an uphill battle, one that Reagan lost that year, only to claim the nomination four years later, this time defeating the establishment candidate George Bush.

Democrats in the 1980 campaign depicted Reagan as an idiot, a grade “B” movie actor who had starred with a chimpanzee, of all things.

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