Rare rou rying ro rake re riss? Re ron’t ralk rike rat!

You didn’t really answer my question with anything specific about what made Reagan 10x better than all the Presidents in the 20th Century. Based on your style of arguing I can say anyone is the greatest thing ever and then just spew random venom over the rest of the field and call that good? With that then I say that Sen. Larry Craig was the greatest Senator in World History because he tapped his toes very well and all the rest of them were just posers. Is that how it works?

I try to stay out of partisan arguments because history ebbs and flows, but I will personally hate Reagan for a very long time because his inclusion of the Christian Coalition’s ideals as part of the Republican platform was a cynical use of religion to get votes and a violation of the principles of the US Constitution.

As for the rest of your diatribe:
illegal alien nannies- There have been so many of these scandals on both sides of the aisle it amazes me you brought this up. My favorite of recent memory is incumbent and outgoing Governor Jim Gibbons (R) of Nevada, who in addition to a nanny scandal, plagiarized a copyrighted speech, and is facing both sexual assault charges and is being investigated for bribery.

Income Tax- Again, there are so many on both sides here:
Charles Rangel (D-NY) seems the most obvious, but you might also be referring to Ted Stevens Senator (R-AK) convicted on seven counts of bribery and tax evasion October 27, 2008 just prior to the election.

Past Drug Use- I think Obama admitted to it, and said he inhaled, “that was the point” he said. Clinton admitted to it, but didn’t inhale. Bush sidestepped the issue but there are so many rumors of his love of cocaine in the 1980s it seems like there is too much smoke for there not to be a fire there. Anyway, of the last three Presidents, he’s the only one that didn’t address this so I’m not sure what you mean.

Ok, so looking at your list, I could go on and on and on pointing to the foibles of both parties. Certainly we agree that many Politicians are scum in any party. I think the thing that you’re missing here is that a lot of people are especially offended by the fact that Republicans, due to their close ties with the Religious Right, tend to hold themselves up as purer of soul than Democrats. Their falls should be harder because they hold themselves up on a higher pedestal.

For example, if it turns out that Sarah Palin’s youngest child is actually her daughter’s child and there is a LOT of circumstantial evidence to suggest that this is the case, (and speaking of Birth Cerificates, go try to find Trig’s), it should effectively end her career because much of what she purports to be about is truth, justice, family values and all that.

For example again, I don’t think there’s a person alive who would say John Edwards isn’t a scumbag. I wouldn’t have voted for him before his scandal, and I hope someone slaps him if he runs for anything again (no doubt he will, humbled) and tries to run on “family values.” Newt Gingrich, who also had an affair while his wife was battling cancer, has popped back into the spotlight and is hinting at a presidential run. The whole Republican Party, thanks to your man Reagan, is about family values. If you cared about your party you would become active in it and make sure that scum like him do not run. It is an embarrassment of American complacency that we put up with such things.

If you want to beat the horse, here’s a list. It’s not authoritative because it’s wikipedia, but it gives you a pretty good idea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_scandals_of_the_United_States

As for the “it’s easy to be magna cum laude in Harvard Law” don’t be stupid. It’s a title given to less than 10% of the graduates, and those are some pretty smart people in the queue. So even if grades are inflated across the board, his were good. Law Review IS the harder of the two to achieve, actually. Your concerns over affirmative action in schools is, I believe, being heard by the Supreme Court, by the way, so your fears of educated negros or whatever your issue is will soon be decided.

The kicker here is that I’m a registered Republican, by the way.

Persephone,
By no means am I saying Reagan was any kind of libertarian, and yes, he gave lip service to a lot of conservative and libertarian ideas. What still puts him head and shoulders above the rest of the 20th century (except MAYBE Calvin Coolidge), is that he actually talked the talk of libertarianism and conservatism, even if he didn’t always walk the walk. That is still 10 times better than the rest of the 20th century presidents (except, again, for Cal) who were 100% empire building big government bastards who talked the talk and walked the walk of big government socialism and job-strangling overregulation.

Free Obama’s Grades,
Making magna cum laude at Harvard isn’t that hard once you are accepted. Harvard is notorious for grade inflation, something like 75% of the student body gets straight A’s cause the professors figure that if the student is at Harvard, they must deserve those grades, and if they don’t give them good grades, the student is more likely to sue them than study harder. Oh, and affirmative action at Harvard is a lot more than just an admission policy, it also applies to their grading policy too. A decade ago some Harvard students got in trouble because they illustrated this fact with a bake sale, scaling the prices of cookies based on the official Harvard rules for admission standards and grading based on race: Blacks paid $0.50 for a cookie, whites paid $1.00, and asians paid $1.10.
This isn’t me being racist, this is a fact about Harvard. You can’t be racist for stating facts.

So, even if he got in because of Affirmative Action (which I’m not saying he did) it looks like the program worked because uh, he did really well and then went on to be President. It’s the sort of stuff that becomes one of those old uplifting Disney movies.

Just sayin’

*really hard to do

Allow me to interject here…Reagan was not a deregulator or defender of small government. Like both Bushes, he only gave it lip service. And it’s simple to illustrate this. Under Reagan, spending rose 22 percent (adjusted for inflation) and the government debt tripled. So, really, he didn’t deregulate. He just regulated in favor of a different set of special interests, like all big government conservatives. When you change the rules of an unfree market, as opposed to actually creating economic liberty, you only create economic opportunities for the wealthy and politically connected, since they will ultimately write what those rules are.

So, Reagan may have been anti-union and took away a rule here and there, but ultimately, he only served corporate cronyism, which is the “free market” we have today. Likewise, Reagan was all for small government until an adult wanted to consume an intoxicating substance he didn’t think they should. So, he greatly inflated a massive and expensive war on drugs, which is a big government operation of police running around telling adults, “Don’t put that in your mouth!”

Reagan had no small government principles that guided his policies. When he wanted to eliminate individual choices he didn’t agree with, he expanded government as quickly as any liberal would. So, it’s not surprising that his policies preceded (though not necessarily directly or exclusively caused) the economic troubles and scandals of his time.

I can’t imagine why IntLibber or any small government proponent would defend him. But I and many small “l” libertarians do not, and never will.

@ IntLibber

Really? Obama’s grades? OMFG what will you want next, inseam? Television viewing habits age 8-12?
People screamed for his birth certificate and now they want his grades? This smacks of the “prove the negative assertion I make is wrong” crap that Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and the people who believe them pass off as intellectual debate, whose foolishness was highlighted by the case Beck v. Eiland-Hall over the website
GlennBeckRapedandMurderedaYoungGirlin1990.com

When you understand something besides “Gotcha!” politics, come back and try to sit at the grown-up table again.

Your affirmative action statement is just racist. While it’s too early in the discussion to invoke Godwin’s Law, I will guess that you would be great at making all the trains run on time.

When will this cycle of intelligent political debate end?