Sheeeeeesh!
Moved.
Well, the problem is there’s nothing substantial to hit. Why bring artillery to bear on a cloud?
Sarah Palin: Smoke Monster?
Well, they went through a couple bushes on the way.
Reagan was the forerunner of deficits don’t matter. he said it and governed that way cranking the dept up horribly. Bush/Cheney used Reagans philosophy as a guiding light in cranking up deficits. If that is a good grasp of economics, I don’t want to have a president with a bad grasp. Cut taxes and spend a pile of money is the path to destruction. Thank reagan for starting it and Bush for following it.
Are you actually saying he didn’t actually graduate from Harvard Law? Just how was this massive deception on the public accomplished?
I agree with basically your whole post, except this sentence.
I dispute the whole notion that liberals think Reagan was dumb. It’s clear that by the end of his life, and even by the end of his presidency, he was having some cognitive difficulties, but this isn’t a measure of intelligence. Almost everyone i hang out with is a liberal, and the vast majority of them are liberal academics, plenty of whom teach US history and politics. And not one of them thinks Reagan was dumb.
At least, on this occasion, ralph124c’s stupidity ended up in the Pit, where it belongs. Normally, he graces GQ with the same level of coherence and perspicacity, but it’s impossible to tell him what a moron he is over there.
I was thinking the same. None of my liberal friends thought he dumb either. Many of us didn’t like what he did for the non-wealthy of the country though.
We did nickname him “Rocket Ronnie” due to his fascination with star wars.
I work for a large oil company. Many of our liberals are closeted. Go figger! 
Ronald’s Ray-Gun.
Wow, with how quickly democrats forget what they said, somewhere around 2030 or so I’ll be reading about how no liberal claimed Bush was dumb…
godix, you just cannot rely on information you glean from Bill O’Riley and Sean Hannity and their ilk.
Fuck, I’m in the pit! fuck fuck fuck. I love it here!
Sorry, I get excited easily. Which reminds me, did I mention Ann Coulter?
Honestly, I’m not at all familiar with the “Reagan is dumb” meme. Never heard of it before this thread. “Reagan is senile” was certainly in heavy rotation, and perhaps even “Reagan is a fascist” by the more hyperbolic contingent.
Given that this was pre-Internet, is there any particular example of this idea that can be cited? It’s possible I was young, and then young and stoned, and missed it altogether.
That one too! 
He was easy to poke fun at. Actually, some of us eased up as he got worse.
I agree. Regardless of what one may think of Reagan or the merits of his policies, I can’t say that “stupid” is a valid criticism. For the record, I don’t think Palin is stupid by any stretch of the imagination either. I think she was woefully, catastrophically unprepared for the national stage in the 2008 election and paid for it dearly, but the particular mistakes she made are not mistakes she would make a second time - I would bet ten dollars she can now name any number of U.S. Supreme Court decisions she both agrees and disagrees with. She’s not a genius or a legal scholar and doesn’t pretend otherwise, she does far better by cannily playing to her own strengths as a rabble rouser for the party. Rather than stupidity, I think the real reason Palin inspires such strong feeling both pro and con is that she does indeed speak in platitudes and presents like a branded image. She’s not a statesman or a politician, she’s a “Mama Grizzly” (whatever that is), a triumph of style over substance, and people either hate her or love her for it.
Reagan *was *senile for at least a portion of his presidency, and he was clearly not a details guy. I don’t think he was intellectually incurious, just badly misguided in his curiosity (see Star Wars, astrologers, etc.).
He was entirely unburdened by empathy, and his moral compass pointed to all things jingoistic, but at least he believed something, even if it was, ya know, bad.
Sarah Palin believes in nothing other than self-promotion. She’s never had an idea other than “Let’s talk about me!” or a question other than “What do *you *think about me?” She’s the platonic ideal of narcisism. She’s not running for President, she’s running for United States Homecoming Queen.
I’m not a big fan of democrats. I think they’re wrong on a lot of issues. But this sort of attitude is exactly a demonstration of why I cannot even fathom siding with republicans anymore.
You people would want to see American burn if it meant that the liberals would be pissed off in the process. If you had any shred of dignity and honesty and concern for the country whose flag you wrap yourself up in, you’d be saying “I still support Republican ideals, but this woman represents the worst of us, I can’t support her”. I mean, for fucks sake, this board has some very intelligent conservative leaning folks, and despite this woman being the opposite of intellectual, curious people, you line up to support her because supporting your partisan tribe is more important than anything else.
But instead, your attitude is “Well, she pisses off liberals, so she must be good!” - This is why level headed people who would otherwise be sympathetic to the ideals that republicans supposedly stand for are disgusted and leaving. You are so rabidly partisan that you’ll support anyone, no matter how worthless, if she carries a little R next to her name.
Or, in your particular case, maybe you aren’t actually just knee-jerk supporting her in a partisan way, and you actually like what she is. Then you’re an asshole and an idiot, and not just a partisan hack.
Liberals aren’t scared of Palin because OMG HER BRILLIANT IDEAS WILL SHOW US ALL HOW WE’RE WRONG you fucking idiots. They’re scared because of people like you, who will vote for a fucking incurious simpleton who wants to join this church, who doesn’t know shit about anything and is proud of it. The scary thing is that people like you will support anyone who pisses off liberals, disregarding the reason she pisses off liberals is because she’s a hateful moron.
You disgust me.
Nowadays? I think it’s probably neck-and-neck.
Well there was the grief he got for saying that ketchup was a vegetable, that trees cause more pollution than cars, for saying that there was no word for freedom in Russian, and the fact that he actually believed in the Laffer curve. He was no genius and his “Jes’ folks” populism coupled with verbal slip ups (like “facts are stupid things”) made some conclude he really was dumb.
But he knew how to be an executive and how to play the part of populist president (including the ability to do improv). He had some good one liners, articulated a consistent optimistic vision of this country’s future, and delegated to effective underlings.
I am old enough to remember Ronald Reagan, and Palin is no Ronald Reagan.
“Reagan was Senile” is just a variation on ‘Reagan was dumb’ - it’s the backdoor to calling the man dumb in spite of his many obvious accomplishments.
Reagan was not diagnosed with Alzheimers for * six years* after he left the presidency. His doctors have all said that he was in full possession of his faculties on the day he left office. Reagan’s four summits with Mikhail Gorbachev all happened in his second term. He gave many of his most memorable speeches in his second term. He gave his famous Berlin Wall speech in the last year of his Presidency.
Those who think he was just a figurehead with powerful advisers forget that he ignored the advice of his advisors repeatedly in his dealings with the Soviet Union, and especially with Mikhail Gorbachev. He took a harder line with Gorbachev at first than his advisers wanted him to, and extracted far more in concessions than was expected. Later, he took a softer line with Gorbachev when his advisers were telling him to press even harder. He took a lot of criticism on the right for his new, cooperative stance when it became clear that Gorbachev really was trying to reform the Soviet Union. And Reagan was right, both times. All of this happened in his second term.
Alzheimer’s experts have poured over his speeches, interviews, and writing during and after his presidency, and have agreed that he showed no symptoms of Alzeimers at all for years after he left office. He wrote his autobiography after leaving office, in his own words. Symptoms started showing around 1992-1993, a year or two before he was formally diagnosed, and more than four years after leaving office. He gave the keynote address at the 1991 Republican National Convention, three years after leaving the presidency. He continued to give public speeches until 1994, six years after leaving office.
And yes, liberals did call him dumb at the time. They did it all the time. I have these facts committed to memory because I have had to defend the man’s intelligence constantly since 1980.
When Reagan left office he was not the same man he was at first. No president is. Reagan had an especially hard time of it - while he was in office he was shot, he had three operations for cancer, he had prostate surgery, and his hearing started failing him, requiring him to wear a hearing aid. This no doubt contributed to the ‘Reagan is senile’ rumors when he had to ask people to repeat themselves. But there is no doubt that he had his full mental faculties when he left office.