The Onion on Reagan

Aside from the exact quotes, this is ALL TRUE. The Onion (empha­sis mine):

WASHINGTON—At a press con­fer­ence Mon­day, vis­i­bly embar­rassed lead­ers of the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee acknowl­edged that their non­stop, effu­sive praise of Ronald Rea­gan has been wholly unin­ten­tional, admit­ting they some­how man­aged to con­fuse him with Dwight D. Eisen­hower for years.

The GOP’s humil­i­at­ing blun­der was dis­cov­ered last week­end by RNC chair­man Reince Priebus, who real­ized his party had been extolling “com­pletely the wrong guy” after he watched the His­tory Chan­nel spe­cial Eisen­hower: An Amer­i­can Portrait.

“When I heard about Eisenhower’s pres­i­den­tial accomplishments—holding down the national debt, keep­ing infla­tion in check, and fight­ing for bal­anced budgets—it hit me that we’d clearly got­ten their names mixed up at some point,” Priebus told reporters. “I couldn’t believe we’d been asso­ci­at­ing terms like ‘vision­ary,’ ‘prin­ci­pled,’ and ‘bold’ with Pres­i­dent Rea­gan. That wasn’t him at all—that was Ike.”

“We deeply regret mis­at­tribut­ing such a dis­tin­guished and patri­otic legacy to Mr. Rea­gan,” Priebus added. “We really screwed up.”

Fol­low­ing his dis­cov­ery, Priebus directed RNC staffers to inform top Repub­li­cans of the error and explain that it was Eisen­hower, not Rea­gan, who care­fully man­aged the nation’s pros­per­ity, warned cit­i­zens of the military-​​industrial complex’s grow­ing influ­ence, and led the coun­try with a mix of firm resolve and hum­ble compassion.

“Wait, you’re telling me Rea­gan advo­cated that trickle-​​down non­sense that was debunked years ago? That was Rea­gan?” Sen. John Thune (R-​​SD) said upon hear­ing of the mis­take. “I can’t believe I’ve been call­ing for a return to Reagan’s Amer­ica. I feel like an asshole.”

Accord­ing to sources, mil­lions of younger Repub­li­cans have spent most of their lives view­ing Rea­gan a stal­wart of con­ser­v­a­tive prin­ci­ples, and many were “hor­ri­fied” to learn that the for­mer pres­i­dent ille­gally sold weapons to Iran, declared amnesty for 2.9 mil­lion ille­gal immi­grants, costarred in a movie with a chim­panzee, fun­neled aid to Islamic mil­i­tants in Afghanistan, and suf­fered from severe men­tal prob­lems.

In the wake of the GOP’s rev­e­la­tion, Con­gress has passed bills to rename Rea­gan National Air­port and the USS Ronald Rea­gan air­craft car­rier in honor of Eisen­hower. A num­ber of poten­tial 2012 Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial con­tenders have also rushed to reframe their agen­das in terms of “Eisen­hower ideals” while dis­tanc­ing them­selves from Reagan.

“It’s absolutely mor­ti­fy­ing to sud­denly real­ize that the man you had long cred­ited as a cham­pion of fis­cal con­ser­vatism actu­ally tripled the national debt and signed the largest peace­time tax hike in U.S. his­tory,” said for­mer House Speaker Newt Gin­grich, adding that he was ashamed to learn that the man he once called his hero stood by silently while the AIDS epi­demic exploded. “Frankly, I can’t even believe that fucker had the balls to call him­self a conservative.”

“But we must move beyond this mess and look ahead toward our country’s future, a future much like the one envi­sioned by the great Ronald Rea­gan,” Gin­grich added. “Oh, sorry—force of habit.”

The mis­placed adu­la­tion of Rea­gan has report­edly affected more than just Repub­li­can rhetoric, and seems to have had an impact on pol­icy. For­mer pres­i­dent George W. Bush told reporters he “hon­estly thought” every­one wanted him to fol­low in Reagan’s foot­steps, which led him to emu­late the 40th president’s out-​​of-​​control deficit spend­ing, fealty to the super-​​rich, and ille­gal wars.

While the GOP’s error has gone largely unno­ticed by the Amer­i­can pub­lic, a num­ber of cit­i­zens admit­ted to hav­ing been puz­zled by Repub­li­cans’ slav­ish cel­e­bra­tion of Rea­gan dur­ing recent years.

“I never under­stood why every­one ele­vated him to the level of a party icon,” said 89-​​year-​​old Nancy Rea­gan. “Ron­nie was cer­tainly sweet and I loved him very much, but let’s face it, he was a ter­ri­ble president.”

 

25 February 2011 – 12:42 am | By Benjamin Daniels | Posted in Conservative Coalition, Economics | Comments (797)