Obama likens himself to "that wild-eyed, socialist, tax-hiking class warrior" Ronald Reagan

President Obama surrounded himself with wealthy taxpayers and invoked the name of Ronald Reagan Wednesday as he made another pitch for Congress to raise taxes on people with incomes of more than $1 million.

“It’s not that these folks are excited about paying more taxes,” Mr. Obama said of the eight executives who stood with him on a stage at the White House. “I have yet to meet people who just love to pay taxes.”


Not Even CBS News Buys It: Scott Pelley Scoffs at Obama Adopting Reagan as His Own



But the president again urged the Senate, in at least his 21st comments on the tax hike since last fall, to approve the so-called “Buffett rule” when lawmakers vote on Monday. The legislation would require people with income over $1 million to pay at least 30 percent in federal income taxes. It’s named for billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who says it’s not fair for him to pay a lower percentage of taxes than his secretary.

But Senate Minority Leader MItch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, said the president is wasting his time, and hurting the economic recovery to boot.

“With millions out of work, gas at nearly $4 a gallon, and the election still seven months away, Republicans are calling on the president to join us in support of the dozens of jobs and energy bills that have passed the House but are stalled in the Democrat-led Senate,” Mr. McConnell said. “We should be focused on jobs and energy legislation that can pass — not tax-hike show votes designed to fail.”

Mr. Obama, whose rationale for the tax hike has shifted from the need for deficit reduction to the need for tax fairness, cited both reasons and threw in the impact of the Buffett rule on economic growth Wednesday in trying to justify the tax increase.

“Right now we’ve got significant deficits that are going to have to be closed,” Mr. Obama said. “Right now we have significant needs if we want to continue to grow this economy. … That means we can’t afford to keep spending more money on tax cuts for wealthy Americans who don’t need them and weren’t even asking for them.”

The campaign of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, criticized the White House for not being able to keep its story straight on the justification for the tax hike.

“President Obama’s White House is still trying to re-write history on why they’re pushing a tax hike plan instead of trying to get the economy moving again,” said Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul. “Maybe that’s because after three years of failed economic policies, the only thing President Obama is able to do is distract from his failure to create jobs and economic growth.”

Mr. Obama derided Republicans for accusing him of trying to redistribute wealth, although he didn’t quite deny it.

“I want to emphasize, this is not simply an issue of redistributing wealth,” Mr. Obama said. “This is not just about fairness, this is about growth. It is also about making investments we need to succeed. And it’s about we as a country being willing to pay for those investments and closing our deficits.”

The legislation would raise about $47 billion over 10 years, while Mr. Obama’s annual budgets have been running deficits of more than $1 trillion. The president acknowledged that adopting the Buffett rule wouldn’t close deficits by itself, but said that’s no reason to reject it.

“The Buffett rule is something that will get us moving in the right direction,” he said.

Mr. Obama called on Republican lawmakers to drop their “reflexive” opposition to tax increases, and maintained that President Reagan supported a similar tax hike in 1985 by closing loopholes in the tax code.

“I’m not the first president to call for this idea that everybody’s got to do their fair share,” he said. “Some years ago, one of my predecessors traveled across the country, pushing for the same concept. That wild-eyed, socialist, tax-hiking class warrior was Ronald Reagan. He thought that in America, the wealthiest should pay their fair share.”

Story Continues →

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2012/04/12/not-even-cbs-news-buys-it-scott-pelley-scoffs-obama-adopting-reagan-his#ixzz1rqwGXrAW

Papers reveal Thatcher kept Reagan's doodles

CAMBRIDGE, England – Margaret Thatcher was so fascinated by U.S. President Ronald Reagan that she snatched and kept a page of his doodles from a G7 summit, the former British prime minister's newly released papers reveal.

The page of ink drawings is among personal papers from 1981 released Saturday by the Thatcher archive at Cambridge University.

Reagan left the piece of paper sitting on a table at the meeting near Ottawa, Canada, in July 1981. It is adorned with a scribbled eye, a man's muscular torso and several heads, including one that looks like a self portrait.


"She told me it was fascinating to see it, and she just grabbed them," said historian Chris Collins of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation. "He just left it on his desk. She snaffled it up, put it in her papers, brought it back to Downing Street and kept it in her flat."

Cary Cooper, a psychologist at Lancaster University in northern England, said Thatcher's souvenir provided an insight into the president's state of mind during the summit -- he was bored.

"Here's a body, there's a head separate from the body," Cooper said. "Is he so unenamored with what's going on that he's having an out-of-body experience?

"The eye means I'm watching what's going on, I'm observing, but I'm not altogether there."

The documents confirm the immediate warmth between the two conservative leaders, who forged a strong anti-communist alliance during the 1980s. But they also reveal a lesser-known story -- the lengths the U.S. administration went to distance itself from Thatcher's then-unpopular government, which was facing a recession, rising unemployment and inner-city riots.

Thatcher, Britain's prime minister between 1979 and 1990, was the first foreign leader invited to Washington by Reagan for a state visit. The papers reveal she was briefed extensively ahead of the February 1981 trip on how to rebut criticisms coming out of the U.S. administration.

A briefing paper from senior adviser Alfred Sherman, marked "highly confidential," warns Thatcher of "ominous aspects" and "underwater snags" to the upcoming visit because of diverging interests.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/03/17/papers-reveal-thatcher-kept-reagans-doodles/?test=latestnews#ixzz1pN6mSB00

It's A Simple Answer After All !!!

Happy 101st Birthday, President Ronald Reagan!

Ronald Wilson Reagan (/ˈrɒnəld ˈwɪlsən ˈreɪɡən/; February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was the 40th President of the United States, serving from 1981 to 1989. Prior to that, he was the 33rd Governor of California from 1967 to 1975 and a radio, film and television actor.

Born in Tampico, Illinois and raised in Dixon, Reagan was educated at Eureka College, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and sociology. After his graduation, Reagan moved first to Iowa to work as a radio broadcaster and then in to Los Angeles, California in 1937 where he began a career as an actor, first in films and later television. Some of his most notable films include Knute Rockne, All American, Kings Row, and Bedtime for Bonzo. Reagan served as president of the Screen Actors Guild, and later as a spokesman for General Electric (GE); his start in politics occurred during his work for GE. Originally a member of the Democratic Party, his positions began shifting rightward in the late 1950s, and he switched to the Republican Party in 1962. After delivering a rousing speech in support of Barry Goldwater's presidential candidacy in 1964, he was persuaded to seek the California governorship, winningtwo years later and again in 1970. He was defeated in his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 as well as 1976, but won both the nomination and election in 1980, defeating incumbent Jimmy Carter.

As president, Reagan implemented sweeping new political and economic initiatives. His supply-side economic policies, dubbed "Reaganomics", advocated reducing tax rates to spur economic growth, controlling the money supply to reduce inflation, deregulation of the economy, and reducing government spending. In his first term he survived an assassination attempt, took a hard line against labor unions, and ordered an invasion of Grenada. He was reelected in a landslide in 1984, proclaiming that it was "Morning in America." His second term was primarily marked by foreign matters, such as the ending of the Cold War, the 1986 bombing of Libya, and the revelation of the Iran-Contra affair. Publicly describing the Soviet Union as an "evil empire,"[1] he supported anti-communist movements worldwide and spent his first term forgoing the strategy of détente by ordering a massive military buildup in an arms race with the USSR. Reagan negotiated with Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, culminating in the INF Treaty and the decrease of both countries' nuclear arsenals.

Video of Gingrich Bashing Reagan Was Edited To Be Misleading

Video supposedly showing Newt Gingrich bashing Reaganism just at the end of Ronald Reagan’s presidency was edited to put the then-up-an-coming congressman in a bad light, it has turned out.

The C-SPAN video, titled “Newt Gingrich bad-mouths Ronald Reagan in 1998” on YouTube, was part of a huge coordinated campaign against Gingrich that was launched on Thursday, five days ahead of the vital Florida primary.

But it cuts off before Gingrich explains what he means.

In the portion shown on YouTube, Gingrich talks about the Republican Party’s chances after Reagan leaves office. “On Election Day, the American people, given a choice of more of eight years or something new, will vote for something new,” he said.

But what the clip does not show is Gingrich’s rationale behind his statement, which shows he was not bashing Reaganism, but merely suggesting that then-Vice President George Bush needed to take it forward.

The entire clip, which was discovered by the website RiehlWorldView, shows Gingrich going on to say he wanted “A Republicanism of the '90s that builds on Reaganism, but goes beyond Reaganism.”

He continues, “This is the country where 'new' and 'improved' are the two most powerful words in advertising,” and says if the two candidates in the 1988 election had similar stances and were equally “pleasant” the Democrat would win simply because it would signify change.

That is why, Gingrich said, Bush needed to change direction slightly with what he said should be “broadly a center-right platform.”

“Reaganism, after all, is a values system which carried 49 states last time, fairly inclusive, I would suggest,” Gingrich continued. “It is more than just a personality issue as the vice president proved in his commitment to no tax increase which was the decisive issue for him in New Hampshire.”

Read more on Newsmax.com: Video of Gingrich Bashing Reagan Was Edited To Be Misleading

Reagan Author Shirley: Romney Attack of Gingrich Is 'Preposterous'

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s contention that Newt Gingrich isn’t really a Reaganite is “preposterous,” historian Craig Shirley writes in an Op-Ed in South Florida’s Sun Sentinel.

Shirley, author of three books about President Ronald Reagan, noted that, when Romney was asked about his conservative credentials during his run for the Senate in 1994, he replied: "I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush."

“From the beginning of his political career, Gingrich was always at the ramparts as a staunch ally of the Reagan White House, from tax cuts to anti-communism to Federalism to pro-life and in all manner of great fights in that decade of Great Debates,” the Reagan Scholar at Eureka College wrote.

“Petulantly, Romney is running commercials in Florida childishly saying that Reagan only mentioned Gingrich in his diaries once. But that’s one more time than Mitt was mentioned,” wrote Shirley, whose books include “Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America.”

Romney’s newest ad is in character, while denying Reagan and the ideals of the conservative movement; he seeks to falsely accuse someone who has been a leader in that movement for 30 years. While Reaganites are about ideas and the expansion of freedom, Romniacs are about the destruction of opponents and the contraction of ideas.”

Shirley argues that Romney is a descendant of “a long line of conservative bashers.” Romney’s father, George, who also ran for the presidency, walked away from conservatives in 1964 and his mother ran on a pro-abortion platform in a campaign for the Senate, Shirley observed.

“The simple fact is Romney is from the establishment-Rockefeller-Gerald Ford-Bush Dynasty side of the GOP, more interested in great access than great ideas. Gingrich is from the anti-establishment Goldwater-Bill Buckley-Jack Kemp-Reagan-side of the GOP, more interested in questioning the establishment than joining it. These are Americans who have grand ideas about the greatness of the country and the future as a brighter one.

“In short, Romney is on the losing side of the party and he doesn’t like it one bit, yet rather than apologize for being wrong his whole life, Romney chooses to attacks conservatives.”


Read more on Newsmax.com: Reagan Author Shirley: Romney Attack of Gingrich Is 'Preposterous'

Conservative Stalwart Bozell: 'No Doubt' Gingrich Is Reagan Conservative

There is “no doubt” that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is a strong conservative in the proud tradition of former President Ronald Reagan, Media Research Center founder and President L. Brent Bozell II told Newsmax on Thursday.

Regarding the GOP presidential candidate’s commitment to Reagan’s principles, Bozell said flatly of Gingrich: “He was a warrior — of course he was.”

Bozell’s remarks came in response to a controversial article by Reagan-era Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams, published Wednesday in the National Review. In the article, Abrams maintains that Gingrich failed to support Reagan’s foreign policy initiatives against the former Soviet Union.

“I read Elliot Abram’s piece, Elliot Abram’s is a good man, and I am loathe to question him,” Bozell told Newsmax in an exclusive interview. “And I suspect it is true that, look, there wasn’t unanimous peace and harmony in the ranks during the Reagan years with the conservative movement. 

“There were differences of opinion,” Bozell said. “And sometimes, those differences of opinion were pretty strong: The INF [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces] treaty, there was a huge difference of opinion there . . . there was criticism from within the ranks.”

But Bozell noted: “You have to look at the big picture, though,” to evaluate Gingrich’s commitment to Reagan’s ideals.

Bozell added: “And I think when you look at the big picture, and you look at the totality of the years with Reagan, and you look at what happened after the years of Reagan, when you were pushing back against the ‘cauliflower agenda’ — I don’t think you can question Newt’s commitment to the Reagan principles.

“He was a warrior — of course he was,” said Bozell, the nephew of the late William F. Buckley. “And it was because he picked up that mantle of Ronald Reagan in 1993, which had been dropped by the Bush people, it’s what led to the great victories of 1994.” 

Bozell’s account of Gingrich’s role in the Reagan era is likely to be influential, given his lineage within, and lifelong dedication to, the conservative movement.

His father was a well-known conservative activist and Yale University debate team partner of Buckley, who founded the National Review. His mother, Patricia Buckley Bozell, was the “Firing Line” host’s sister.

In addition to conservative media watchdog MRC, Bozell founded the Cybercast News Service (CNSNews.com), the Parents Television Council, and the Culture and Media Institute. He has served on the boards of the American Conservative Union and the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. 


He attributed the attacks on Gingrich’s conservative bona fides to “the fact that, for whatever reason, Newt has made some enemies in Washington.” 

Nancy Reagan: Ronnie Passed His Torch To Newt !!!

LI

There is something truly obscene about the full blown assault on Newt Gingrich’s strong Reagan conservative history from and on behalf of Mitt Romney, who unabashedly ran away from the Reagan legacy and conservative principles in his 1994 Senate campaign and 2002 gubernatorial campaign. Truly obscene.

The latest iteration comes from Elliott Abrams writing in National Review, quoting pieces of a single speech Newt apparently gave on the floor of the House on March 21, 1986, in which Newt criticized certain foreign policy decisions of the Reagan administration. Abrams does not link to the full speech or to other speeches of Newt at the time.

Instead much of the anti-Newt conservative media — including a screaming Drudge banner — accuses Newt of “insulting” Reagan.  It is part of a smear campaign which started when Newt surged in Iowa and National Review unloaded with it’s infamous “Marvin the Maritan” issue, and now it has resurfaced once again now that Romney is in electoral trouble.

A more honest assessment comes from Jeffrey Lord at The American Spectator.  Lord, who was in a position to know because he witnessed first hand Newt’s interaction with Reagan, has written a critical column, Reagan’s Young Lieutenant,  Much like Byron York’s column debunking Romney attacks regarding Newt’s ethics charges, Lord’s column is a critical contribution to the truth in a sea of shameless lies.

Lord portrays Newt in a much more favorable light:

Newt Gingrich was part of the Reagan Revolution’s Murderers’ Row. And anybody who was in Washington in the day, much less in the Reagan White House or the 1984 Reagan re-election campaign (and I would make that particular cut of three), knew it….
…. time after time after time in the Reagan years, a number of those times which I had the opportunity to see up close as a young Reagan staffer charged in my duties with being the White House liaison to Gingrich and Kemp’s Conservative Opportunity Society, Newt Gingrich was out there again and again and again for Ronald Reagan and conservative principles. In his own memoirs, The Politics of Diplomacy, James Baker noted of his days as Reagan White House Chief of Staff that he always “worked closely” with the people Baker described as “congressional leaders.” And who were those leaders? Baker runs off a string of names of the older leaders of both House and Senate in the formal positions of power — plus one. That’s right: young Newt Gingrich….
…..But whatever happens, quite unlike the picture Romney is trying to paint of his prime opponent in South Carolina, Newt Gingrich was very much present and accounted for on the Reagan team. To borrow from Reagan’s farewell address to the nation and the men and women who served him, Newt Gingrich wasn’t just marking time. He made a difference. He helped make that City on a Shining Hill stronger. He helped make the City freer.
Quite to the contrary of the Romney message, Newt Gingrich was in fact one of Reagan’s Young Lieutenants.
One of the best.

At the 1995 Goldwater Institute Dinner honoring President Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich was the keynote speaker. Nancy Reagan gave a short speech on behalf of herself and President Reagan, in which she both spoke warmly of Newt and recognized Newt at the heir to the Goldwater and Reagan legacies:

The dramatic movement of 1995 is an outgrowth of a much earlier crusade that goes back half a century.  Barry Goldwater handed the torch to Ronnie, and in turn Ronnie turned that torch over to Newt and the Republican members of Congress to keep that dream alive.

Nancy Reagan had it right, as does Jeffrey Lord.  Newt was part of the Reagan revolution and he was the heir to that legacy, not alone, but as someone to whom the torch had been passed.

That torch never was passed to Mitt Romney, and if it had been, he would have rejected it:

The promotion of Romney’s presidential aspirations has forced much of the conservative mediato conflate capitalism and free markets with the Bain business model, a position we will live to regret.

So too, in order to promote someone who never was part of the Reagan revolution and opposed the conservative agenda of the 1990s, we are willing to reinvent and distort the history of conservatism.

We deserve what we get.

Watch Nancy Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime - Preview on PBS. See more from Nancy Reagan.

First, Bachmann was Reagan, then Palin, then Thatcher. Now ? Tim Tebow !!!

A political action committee supporting Michele Bachmann debuted an ad this week that compares the Minnesota congressman to Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow.


The ad notes that “the establishment sports guys love to hate Tim Tebow: he’s not smart enough, his mechanics are no good, he’s not accurate enough – still, he just keeps winning.” The ad goes on to argue that Tebow makes sports fans “feel guilty” because he doesn’t “drink, cuss, smoke, or kick opponents when they’re down” and because he is a born-again Christian. …


“The same could be said of Michele Bachmann: no baggage, Christian, and like Tebow, she keeps fighting and she just keeps winning votes,” the announcer says. Read More

Reagan Had the Recipe for Success. Let's Follow It !!!

By NEWT GINGRICH

Officially, the recession ended two and a half years ago. President Obama tells us the economy has been moving in the right direction since June 2009.

Few will take solace in that statistic. Americans are suffering. For nearly three years, nearly one in 10 have been out of work. Almost double that number are either underemployed—working part time when they would rather be full time—or have simply given up looking.

Historically in America, the deeper the recession, the stronger the recovery. By historical standards, we should be completing the second year of a booming recovery. Recall that, just like President Obama, President Reagan inherited a terrible economy when he took office. But Reagan enacted historic income tax rate cuts, regulatory reforms and spending controls. The recession officially ended in November 1982, and in the following two and a half years the unemployment rate dropped 3.6 percentage points, more than eight million Americans went to work at new jobs, and the longest period of economic growth in American history commenced.

Mr. Obama's policies have been just the opposite: trillion dollar stimulus-spending waste, a government takeover of the health-care system, an activist EPA attacking businesses, and demonization of job creators. The president barnstorms the country advocating tax increases for investors, entrepreneurs and small businesses, teeing up the country for another crash in 2013 when the Bush-era income tax rates expire. Meanwhile, America's businesses continue to suffer from the highest business tax rate in the industrialized world, with no relief in sight.

This nightmare will not end until Reagan-era economic policies are restored: tax reform, a sound dollar and smarter regulations. If they are, within a year the American economy will take off on another historic boom.

First, we must reduce the federal business tax rate to 12.5%, eliminate the capital gains tax as a double tax on capital income, and eliminate the estate tax. We must allow immediate expensing (writing off the costs in one year) for investment in capital equipment so American workers can continue to be the most productive in the world, using the latest and most advanced technology.

On the personal income side, I propose an optional 15% flat tax, allowing those American taxpayers who prefer it to file their returns on a postcard. This will save close to half a trillion dollars annually in tax-compliance costs.

These tax reforms are not designed to be revenue-neutral, but to maximize job creation, wages and economic growth. We will balance the budget with the revenues from such growth and spending cuts. That would include breaking up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into manageable, entirely private companies, with no government guarantees.

Second, the dollar needs to be stabilized by establishing a price rule for the Federal Reserve to follow in its conduct of monetary policy. This will help stabilize international exchange rates, resolve the ongoing cycles of global financial crises and investment bubbles, short-circuit the run-up in gas and food prices, and unlock the frozen credit system.

Third, the burden of regulatory costs on American businesses and consumers has to be lightened. Reflecting my unwavering opposition to cap and trade and any other form of tax on energy or carbon, we must replace the Environmental Protection Agency with an Environmental Solutions Agency. We must move from antigrowth confrontation with business to collaboration with job creators, states and local communities to achieve better results. We must repeal Dodd-Frank and its "too big to fail" big-bank bailouts, and repeal Sarbanes-Oxley, restoring Wall Street as the world's pre-eminent equities market. Read More

Citizens United's Iowa ad buy on Reagan flick, featuring the Gingriches

We wrote back in the summer about Citizens United Productions' promotion of a movie, with Michele Bachmann starring in the ad campaign.

Now, Citizens United — which is run by Newt Gingrich friend David Bossie — is launching a $250,000 ad buy in the Des Moines and Cedar Rapids markets, as well as on Fox News, promoting a Ronald Reagan documentary from 2009 that was produced by the Gingriches.

The 30-second ad — which features Newt and Callista Gingrich talking about Ronald Reagan and his "rendezvous with destiny."

The footage is clearly old (Callista Gingrich's hair style is very different in it than it is today) but the buy may blunt some of the wave of negative attack ads against Gingrich airing now, albeit without the same number of points behind it. And it yokes Gingrich pretty definitively to Reagan, something he himself does on the trail. Read More

If electability had been the question for primary candidates in 1980, Ronald Reagan would have never become president. -Newt Gingrich

If electability had been the question for primary candidates in 1980, Ronald Reagan would have never become president, Newt Gingrich said Thursday, answering challenges about whether he could be embraced by the electorate in the race to beat President Obama in 2012.

Clearly, Reagan ended up convincing primary voters that he had the right policies, and he went on to beat Jimmy Carter by a larger margin than Franklin Delano Roosevelt beat Herbert Hoover in 1932, Gingrich, a longtime history professor, said during the Fox News Republican presidential primary debate in Sioux City, Iowa.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/15/candidates-stake-iowa-debate-on-electability-leadership/#ixzz1gfmyPSY2