# Reagan vs. Romney **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [July 14, 2012, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-vs-romney/628236 "2012-07-14T18:43:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-vs-romney/628236/1 "2012-07-14T18:43:34Z")
Like the FDR vs. Obama thread I’m pitting the current candidates with the general hero of the American conservatives and liberals. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-vs-romney/628236/2 "2012-07-14T20:37:14Z")
Since “they both suck ass” was not an option, I did not vote. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-vs-romney/628236/3 "2012-07-14T20:38:18Z")
How many of these are you going to put out? Why not list all of them at the same time and be done with it? ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-vs-romney/628236/4 "2012-07-14T20:41:18Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > How many of these are you going to put out? Why not list all of them at the same time and be done with it? Just these two. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-vs-romney/628236/5 "2012-07-14T20:52:02Z")
Romney. He won’t develop a cult following, so his disastrous policies will have a more limited effect. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-vs-romney/628236/6 "2012-07-15T02:39:29Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Romney. He won’t develop a cult following, so his disastrous policies will have a more limited effect. Upon some thought, this. Both are scum, but Reagan is more dangerous scum. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-vs-romney/628236/7 "2012-07-15T07:47:08Z")
Romney beacause he is ineffective and thus would not be able to push through his agenda. Reagan was able to do a lot of harm in his 8 years. ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-vs-romney/628236/8 "2012-07-15T09:55:33Z")
Liberals? Neo-classical liberals, for whom wage labour and mandatory public prayer is tolerable. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-vs-romney/628236/9 "2012-07-15T22:56:36Z")
> [@gamerunknown](#): > > Liberals? Neo-classical liberals, for whom wage labour and mandatory public prayer is tolerable. Who supports the latter? And as far as I can see everybody who isn’t a Marxist or something supports wage labour. ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-vs-romney/628236/10 "2012-07-15T23:05:09Z")
Reagan is about 100 times more liberal than the republican party today, or how Mitt Romney is promising to be when he becomes president. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-vs-romney/628236/11 "2012-07-15T23:18:05Z")
Reagan, because he’s dead, [del]a[/del] the quality I find to be endearing in Republican presidents. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-vs-romney/628236/12 "2012-07-16T07:51:40Z")
I want to change my answer to **kaylasdad99’s**. If it can be dead Reagan then not only do I support it, I’m willing to change the name of National Airport to Dead Reagan National Airport. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-vs-romney/628236/13 "2012-07-16T08:37:26Z")
Wow, this group is incredible, not just in this thread, but perhaps the majority of Dopers (from my brief time here, so far). Is there anyone else out there who appreciated Ronald Reagan? (now, watch, we’ll likely get a lot of smart-ass comments) Anyway, Reagan. Clearly Reagan. In the 1970s, the USA was weak, people were not proud to be American, the economy was in a shambles, the USSR was a constant threat. Reagan fixed so many things. Was he perfect? Far from it, he made mistakes. But he left the Presidency with the country so much better off than when he entered. What these Reagan Naysayers don’t realize is that history has already judged Reagan to be among the greatest of the presidents, ever. So, naysayers may continue to bash him but they’re clearly in the world minority, though they may enjoy a small-town, local majority here on SDMB. And I thought SDMB was about fighting ignorance. Silly people. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 9:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-vs-romney/628236/14 "2012-07-16T09:47:09Z")
Can you provide some specifics on the Soviet threat to the US? Also, you do realize that Reagan pursued essentially the same policies as every president since Truman in regards to the USSR? The basic framework for the policy was drafted by George Kennan in the famous Long Telegram of 1948. I think any evaluation of Reagan’s legacy has to look at his record on terrorism: not only did he admit to trading arms for hostages; he also pulled out of Lebannon after the USMC barracks bombing. Osama bin Laden specifically mentioned the Lebannon pullout as the moment he realized that the US was a “paper tiger” (his words) and that they were vulnerable to further terrorist attacks. Also, the Reagan administration is partyly responsible for destabilizing the northern rim of Pakistan through its ill-advised arming of the Afghan resistance without sufficient attention paid to post-Soviet occupied Afghanistan (he won the war, but lost the peace). On the domestic side, he pit Americans against each other with not so sublte racist messaging (welfare queens) to the advantage of the Republican Party and the disadvantage of the country. He also ushered in our era of out of controlled spending with the tax cut and spend policies that have become the hallmark of the moderne Republican Party and have lead to our current economic woes (remember it was Clinton who created a budget surplus). Last but not least, he pointlessly invaded Grenada for his own short term political gains, which was aped on a much grander scale by W. Bush in Iraq. Other than that, Reagan was great. ---
**Author:** ![Namkcalb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c89c15/32.png) [@Namkcalb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Namkcalb)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-vs-romney/628236/15 "2012-07-16T13:35:55Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > How many of these are you going to put out? Why not list all of them at the same time and be done with it? He made two and I made two, it’s hardly flooding the forum ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-vs-romney/628236/16 "2012-07-16T19:31:58Z")
> [@Qin Shi Huangdi](#): > > Who supports the latter? [Reagan](http://www.ontheissues.org/Ronald_Reagan.htm#Education). > [@Qin Shi Huangdi](#): > > And as far as I can see everybody who isn’t a Marxist or something supports wage labour. > [@Chomsky](#): > > Thomas Jefferson, the leading Enlightenment figure in the United States, along with Benjamin Franklin, who took exactly the same view, argued that dependence will lead to “subservience and venality”, and will “suffocate[s] the germs of virtue”. And remember, by dependence he meant wage labor, which was considered an abomination under classical liberal principles. ---
**Author:** ![RetroVertigo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b38774/32.png) [@RetroVertigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RetroVertigo)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2012, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-vs-romney/628236/17 "2012-07-18T02:15:55Z")
> [@echo7tango](#): > > What these Reagan Naysayers don’t realize is that history has already judged Reagan to be among the greatest of the presidents, ever. [Snip] When did history do this? ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2012, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-vs-romney/628236/18 "2012-07-18T04:14:04Z")
> [@gamerunknown](#): > > [Reagan](http://www.ontheissues.org/Ronald_Reagan.htm#Education). The quotes on those issues imply that they were little more than gimmicks which Reagan halfhearted about. And Jefferson was a bit naive economically-he thought America would be a nation of small farmers rather than an industrialized country. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2012, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-vs-romney/628236/19 "2012-07-18T04:45:53Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > And Jefferson was a bit naive economically-he thought America would be a nation of small farmers rather than an industrialized country. Absolutely incorrect. Jefferson argued that America _should be_ a nation of farmers, not that it _would be_ one. [ > [@Thomas Jefferson](#): > > We never had an interior trade of any importance. Our exterior commerce has suffered very much from the beginning of the present contest. During this time we have manufactured within our families the most necessary articles of cloathing. Those of cotton will bear some comparison with the same kinds of manufacture in Europe; but those of wool, flax and hemp are very coarse, unsightly, and unpleasant: and such is our attachment to agriculture, and such our preference for foreign manufactures, that be it wise or unwise, our people will certainly return as soon as they can, to the raising raw materials, and exchanging them for finer manufactures than they are able to execute themselves. > > The political economists of Europe have established it as a principle that every state should endeavour to manufacture for itself: and this principle, like many others, we transfer to America, without calculating the difference of circumstance which should often produce a difference of result. In Europe the lands are either cultivated, or locked up against the cultivator. Manufacture must therefore be resorted to of necessity not of choice, to support the surplus of their people. But we have an immensity of land courting the industry of the husbandman. **Is it best then that all our citizens should be employed in its improvement, or that one half should be called off from that to exercise manufactures and handicraft arts for the other? Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a phaenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example. It is the mark set on those, who not looking up to heaven, to their own soil and industry, as does the husbandman, for their subsistance, depend for it on the casualties and caprice of customers. Dependance begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition. This, the natural progress and consequence of the arts, has sometimes perhaps been retarded by accidental circumstances: but, generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of the other classes of citizens bears in any state to that of its husbandmen, is the proportion of its unsound to its healthy parts, and is a good-enough barometer whereby to measure its degree of corruption. While we have land to labour then, let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at a work-bench, or twirling a distaff. Carpenters, masons, smiths, are wanting in husbandry: but, for the general operations of manufacture, let our work-shops remain in Europe. It is better to carry provisions and materials to workmen there, than bring them to the provisions and materials, and with them their manners and principles. The loss by the transportation of commodities across the Atlantic will be made up in happiness and permanence of government.** The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigour. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution. ]([http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-newnation/4478](http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-newnation/4478)) (bolding mine) There is a huge difference between writing about what you wish would happen and what you think will happen. Jefferson clearly saw a fork coming in the road, and was writing about what course he wished the new country would take, not writing predictively about what course he thought it would take. The tipoff is all the moralizing; one doesn’t really have to argue in favor of events that are inevitably going to happen, and offer arguments and reasons for others to support your ideas. ---
**Author:** ![DrumBum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e79b87/32.png) [@DrumBum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrumBum)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2012, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-vs-romney/628236/20 "2012-07-18T12:07:45Z")
I voted for Gov. Romney. I started university after Pres. Reagan was elected and while I wasn’t weak and I felt pretty good about being an American, I do recall how bad Pres. Reagan was then. My vote for Gov. Romney in this poll reflects the fact that I know very little about what sort of President he would be. That said, the metric used by **kaylasdad99** does set the bar pretty high and has merit. 😃 [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-vs-romney/628236.md?page=2)