On the bright side, you guys won’t have to worry about President Obama using any misleading anti-state rhetoric.

This is all moot, anyway. The Republicans still hold Reagan highly, but they reject all of his anti-state rhetoric. They just use Doublespeak now. I really don’t think we are better off or freer or closer to being free thanks to Reagan’s win over Carter in 1980. Carter was one of the least offensive presidents in U.S. history; the best (i.e. least bad) president since Coolidge. Reagan was just an all-new kind of bad.

I’ve already explained that the anti-communists were not the unique property of Reagan. This was the Cold War. Even hardcore liberals like JFK talked tough about commies back then.

Not everyone did so equally. The 70s were the era of detente. Reagan represented reaction against it being perceived as weakness and failure which allowed the Reds to gain ground.

As for the Moral Majority, many of them voted for Reagan because he promised to get the government out of their lives, by scaling back the CRA, stopping passage of the ERA, etc. Remember, guys like Chuck Baldwin were in the Moral Majority back then. They weren’t nearly as openly statist as they are now.

wikipedia:

Some issues for which the Moral Majority campaigned included:

* outlawing abortion
* opposition to state recognition and acceptance of homosexuality
* opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment and Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
* enforcement of a traditional vision of family life
* censorship of media outlets that promote an ‘anti-family’ agenda

The Moral Majority had adherents in the two major United States political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, though it exercised far more influence on the former.

Falwell was the organization’s best known spokesperson throughout the 1980s. By 1982, Moral Majority surpassed Christian Voice in size and influence. The organization dissolved officially in 1989 but lives on in the Christian Coalition network initiated by Pat Robertson.

In 1981, a series of exposés (later nominated for the Pulitzer Prize) by Memphis reporter Mike Clark led to some condemning the interactions between the Moral Majority and the Republican Party.

In early October of 2007, Cal Thomas openly admitted on Fox News’ popular show Hannity and Colmes that the marketing department of the Moral Majority would commonly discuss ways to demonize homosexuals (among others) in order to manipulate the public into following the Moral Majority’s agenda.

Finally, the “Reagan Democrats” were largely a creation of the media to try to explain why the country had turned in such a conservative direction. They claimed it was because of social issues, but the more plausible explanation was that the same people who voted for JFK and LBJ looked at the economic disaster created by the Great Society programs, and turned to Reagan to solve it.

No. I’ve met many Reagan Democrats, and that is not what it was at all. There were many socially conservative and militaristic Democrats who did not like the sexual revolution, the counterculture, marijuana, desegregation, secularization, perceived weakness in the cold war – but did like the tax and spend element of the Democratic Party.

Again, many of the people who voted for George Wallace and in some cases Nixon in ’72, but voted for Carter in ’76 and continued to vote for Democrats at the local level in the 1960s and 70s.

These also included some that voted Democrat up until Reagan (although many defected in ’72).

Keep in mind that the faction of Democrats who started taking control of their party in 1972 were outside in 1968, protesting and getting their asses kicked by a police gang controlled by a Democratic Party patronage machine, and the people who went on to be Reagan Democrats were watching it on TV and cheering the cops.
That is, other than the few who were in the hall to pick Humphrey.

No.

You’re wrong in both cases. Truthers are at the core of Ron Paul supporters, and the assorted medley of reich wing statists was at the core of Ron Old Raygun’s.

I was a kid in the ’80s, and what I remember most about Reagan was all the quoting of Jefferson, references to the Founding Fathers, etc. I also had plenty of liberal teachers who despised him for not supporting their pet projects. However, perhaps other people saw him differently back then.

We most certainly did. From where I breathed, he was best known for ramping up the drug war, which we were in the middle of.

Even before we lived there, way back in ’80, he was best known as a bellicose cold warrior. That is what everyone I can remember who supported him in 1980 supported him for.

I recall being surprised that we made it out of the Raygun era without a nuclear war.

Only if they voluntarily agree to have me in control.

As for the Moral Majority, many of them voted for Reagan because he promised to get the government out of their lives, by scaling back the CRA, stopping passage of the ERA, etc. Remember, guys like Chuck Baldwin were in the Moral Majority back then. They weren’t nearly as openly statist as they are now.

Finally, the “Reagan Democrats” were largely a creation of the media to try to explain why the country had turned in such a conservative direction. They claimed it was because of social issues, but the more plausible explanation was that the same people who voted for JFK and LBJ looked at the economic disaster created by the Great Society programs, and turned to Reagan to solve it.

Yeah, I know, I’ve listened to that album way too many times.

Hopefully, you didn’t get burned twice by the same girl, like ODB.

I was a kid in the ’80s, and what I remember most about Reagan was all the quoting of Jefferson, references to the Founding Fathers, etc. I also had plenty of liberal teachers who despised him for not supporting their pet projects. However, perhaps other people saw him differently back then. I know I certainly see him differently today than I did back then.

I agree – and I’m not exactly a bible thumper.

Watch out! To the annoying libertines, admitting the truth makes you a socially conservative authoritarian who wants to control people’s lives!

I agree – and I’m not exactly a bible thumper.

But I’m a lot different than I was at sixteen, for sure.

The average Reagan voter (or at least the ones I’ve talked to) didn’t vote for him because of the things you’re talking about. Some of them liked his Cold War “death to the commies” rant, but again, that’s no different than his predecessors. What did make him different was that he claimed to be against the government.

I can’t say I agree at all.

“Law and order” a law George Wallace was a big part of the Reagan marketing plan.

“Rambo” nationalism/jingoism, as well.

Coercive moralist reaction against porn, gays, hippies, dope, etc.

Thinly veiled racial reaction was behind much of the anti-welfare state rhetoric (as much as any quasi-libertarian deception was), and even more so behind the tough on crime rhetoric.

Reagan, to many of his supporters, was the cowboy who would kick commies and Muslims in the ass (with our tax money of course), put uppity negroes and women back in their place, get the gays back in the closet, restore the ideal 1950s Father Knows Best social order and fill up the prisons.

It was not exactly a libertarian vision.

The moral majority was a big part of it.

And what about those Reagan Democrats, remember them? Not exactly libertarians — actually, socially conservative Democrats, about the opposite of libertarians.

The folks who could identify with George Wallace’s big spending (small example: we have a community college in every county in Alabama thanks to Wallace, numerous road building and public works projects, etc) as well as his social reactionary views, and were equally at home with Curtis LeMay calling for bombing Vietnam back to the stone age.

These were Reagan voters, and they responded to his campaign rhetoric.

First of all, just…ewww.

Second,

…

just…

ewww

Also, since they had zero interest in having a man to raise their babies, I did not have to worry about it at all.

The downside, other than occasional gonorrhea (luckily nothing more serious), is that unless I am infertile, I have contributed genetic material to perpetuate the problem.

With a half-life of twelve, that puts me in the awkward position that this year, at 36, I may have my first crop of biological great grandchildren.

Also, while I don’t get much action anymore, when I do I have to wonder about the possibility of any woman under the age of 24 being my daughter (vanishingly unlikely, but I still have to wonder).

As an example, if a woman got a job or a husband, she lost her benefits. If she stayed single and unemployed, she received more benefits the more kids she had. If a girl got pregnant as soon as she was physically able to, she got to move out and start her own household. Not exactly the greatest set of incentives in the world…

You see, I used to think the Right was being absurd when they said “liberals” (socialists) wanted to destroy the family. But now I believe it to be true. A basic tenant of Communism is to destroy the family, which is a threat to the supremacy of the state. Admitting that does not make one anti-gay or pro-Christian, etc.