Opinion of Ronald Reagan

[Dr. MB]

Good face for the camera, bad off-set policies.

[Mr. Illini]

One of the worst

[Theodore]

One of the worst best

[darklordoftech]

Why the world sucks today.

[MarkD]

He appointed Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, and Anthony Kennedy to the Supreme Court, and elevated William Rehnquist from an Associate Justice to Chief Justice. None of those appointments resulted in improving the objectivity of the Court, they just moved the ideology of the Court to the right. So all in all, I'd rate RR as a meh.

[RINO Tom]

FF

[DavidB.]

Ehhh. Undecided.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Massive FF

[Alabama_Indy10]

The biggest of FF's

[Karpatsky]

Sleazeball who got away with it because of fabulous personal charisma and good timing with political developments in the Soviet Union.

[America Needs R'hllor]

Very mixed bag. He helped radicalize the Republican party, leading to its current ultra-conservative self. His "treatment" of the AIDs epidemic was incredibly homophobic and resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths. His economic policies were mostly meh. He was, admittedly, pretty good for growth and for making America stronger, and his foreign policy was mostly solid. He also had very reasonable views on guns and immigration. But on balance- lean HP.

[Santander]

As Trump said, he was a "great cheerleader for America", but a massive HP on balance.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Very mixed bag. He helped radicalize the Republican party, leading to its current ultra-conservative self. His "treatment" of the AIDs epidemic was incredibly homophobic and resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths. His economic policies were mostly meh. He was, admittedly, pretty good for growth and for making America stronger, and his foreign policy was mostly solid. He also had very reasonable views on guns and immigration. But on balance- lean HP.

I would say Newt Gingrich was a lot more responsible for today’s gop than Reagan

Reagan political beliefs were a lot more like Kasich or Romney than Cruz or Trump

[TPIG]

One of the worst best

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

One of the worst best

[UlmerFudd]

One of the worst best

[courts]

a republican that's for banning guns and pro amnesty... obviously horrible. even ignoring other issues

[DavidB.]

Ehhh. Undecided.

Yeah I'm actually going to say HP, despite being an FF geopolitically.

[mvd10]

FF. Somewhat overrated by most conservatives, severely underrated by lefties.

[America Needs R'hllor]

Very mixed bag. He helped radicalize the Republican party, leading to its current ultra-conservative self. His "treatment" of the AIDs epidemic was incredibly homophobic and resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths. His economic policies were mostly meh. He was, admittedly, pretty good for growth and for making America stronger, and his foreign policy was mostly solid. He also had very reasonable views on guns and immigration. But on balance- lean HP.

I would say Newt Gingrich was a lot more responsible for today’s gop than Reagan

Reagan political beliefs were a lot more like Kasich or Romney than Cruz or Trump

In my opinion, Gingrich is a symptom more than a cause. And the second part might be true- but the Republican party moved strongly to the right, so it doesn't change the fact that Reagan was very conservative for his time and basically lead hardline conservatives to take over the party.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Very mixed bag. He helped radicalize the Republican party, leading to its current ultra-conservative self. His "treatment" of the AIDs epidemic was incredibly homophobic and resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths. His economic policies were mostly meh. He was, admittedly, pretty good for growth and for making America stronger, and his foreign policy was mostly solid. He also had very reasonable views on guns and immigration. But on balance- lean HP.

I would say Newt Gingrich was a lot more responsible for today’s gop than Reagan

Reagan political beliefs were a lot more like Kasich or Romney than Cruz or Trump

In my opinion, Gingrich is a symptom more than a cause. And the second part might be true- but the Republican party moved strongly to the right, so it doesn't change the fact that Reagan was very conservative for his time and basically lead hardline conservatives to take over the party.

Nope Newt was the cause


Newt slammed Reagan throughout the 80s for compromising too much with the Democrats .

Newt was the first one to nationalize house races and that moved the GOP pretty far to the right.
Now the sad thing is he was still a better speaker than all his successors.

[wxtransit]

One of the worst best

[America Needs R'hllor]

Very mixed bag. He helped radicalize the Republican party, leading to its current ultra-conservative self. His "treatment" of the AIDs epidemic was incredibly homophobic and resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths. His economic policies were mostly meh. He was, admittedly, pretty good for growth and for making America stronger, and his foreign policy was mostly solid. He also had very reasonable views on guns and immigration. But on balance- lean HP.

I would say Newt Gingrich was a lot more responsible for today’s gop than Reagan

Reagan political beliefs were a lot more like Kasich or Romney than Cruz or Trump

In my opinion, Gingrich is a symptom more than a cause. And the second part might be true- but the Republican party moved strongly to the right, so it doesn't change the fact that Reagan was very conservative for his time and basically lead hardline conservatives to take over the party.

Nope Newt was the cause


Newt slammed Reagan throughout the 80s for compromising too much with the Democrats .

Newt was the first one to nationalize house races and that moved the GOP pretty far to the right.
Now the sad thing is he was still a better speaker than all his successors.

That all just goes to show that Newt was very conservative- it doens't mean he was the cause. Of course, this is all very normative rather than empirical, no one can actually prove any of these things. But the way I see it, Reagan's conservative takeover enabled the subsequent radicalization, which Newt, who didn't have even close to as much influence on the party as Reagan, further advanced.

[dw93]

Overall, an HP. He began the process of radicalizing the Republican Party and made the Religious Right a force in American Politics, it was on his watch that Income Inequality started to become an issue, he began the notion of "Deficits Don't Matter" (except when Democrats are in the Presidency of course), and it seems like ever since 1981, the tax burden has shifted from the Wealthy to the working class and what's left of the Middle Class. His response to the AIDS epidemic was a disgrace, the Reagan Cabinet was more criminal than even Nixon's, he sold Weapons to an enemy state to skirt the Boland Amendment and fund the Contras, and brought the Cold War tensions to dangerous highs in his first term.

Reagan does have a few bright spots though. He worked with Gorbachev in his Second term to wind down the Cold War, and while Reagan didn't single handily win the Cold War, I don't think it would've ended as smoothly as it did if he, Bush Sr., and Gorbachev hadn't done what they did from '85-'91. Reagan also, after the country was rocked by the events of the '60's and '70's, made everyone feel good about America again. Also, the fact that he served two full terms also gave people the perception that the Presidency worked again as for the two decades prior to Reagan, Presidents were either defeated (Ford, Carter), assassinated (JFK), declined to run again (LBJ), or driven out of office due to Scandal (Nixon). Also I will say that despite how misguided and even pig headed his views were, Reagan did seem like a decent human being.

I would say Newt Gingrich was a lot more responsible for today’s gop than Reagan

Reagan political beliefs were a lot more like Kasich or Romney than Cruz or Trump

With regards to today's Republican party, Newt dumped a can of gas on a fire that had already started. Both Pat Robertson's and Pat Buchanan's Presidential runs came before Newt's rise in National Politics in 1994. I do think Gingrich did far more damage to our Politics as a whole than Reagan did because he made compromise a bad word, he mad villains out of everyone on the opposite side of him politically, and like you said, he nationalized House Races. Plus, I also don't think Reagan would've supported using Impeachment as a Political Weapon.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Very mixed bag. He helped radicalize the Republican party, leading to its current ultra-conservative self. His "treatment" of the AIDs epidemic was incredibly homophobic and resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths. His economic policies were mostly meh. He was, admittedly, pretty good for growth and for making America stronger, and his foreign policy was mostly solid. He also had very reasonable views on guns and immigration. But on balance- lean HP.

I would say Newt Gingrich was a lot more responsible for today’s gop than Reagan

Reagan political beliefs were a lot more like Kasich or Romney than Cruz or Trump

In my opinion, Gingrich is a symptom more than a cause. And the second part might be true- but the Republican party moved strongly to the right, so it doesn't change the fact that Reagan was very conservative for his time and basically lead hardline conservatives to take over the party.

Nope Newt was the cause


Newt slammed Reagan throughout the 80s for compromising too much with the Democrats .

Newt was the first one to nationalize house races and that moved the GOP pretty far to the right.
Now the sad thing is he was still a better speaker than all his successors.

That all just goes to show that Newt was very conservative- it doens't mean he was the cause. Of course, this is all very normative rather than empirical, no one can actually prove any of these things. But the way I see it, Reagan's conservative takeover enabled the subsequent radicalization, which Newt, who didn't have even close to as much influence on the party as Reagan, further advanced.

Reagan type Republicans taking over the party was inevitable as the Reason Rockefeller Republicans dominated the GOP in the first place from 1940-1976 was that in that period the North East,  and Urban Areas was basically the Geographical Area that dominated politics in the country in that period(due to the South being a one-party state, and the Suburbs being not that influential ) .That's the reason why the GOP was so moderate because they had to be to win areas they needed to win elections.

The 1968 Election basically showed that the GOP no longer needed the North East or Urban Areas to win elections, as the Suburbs + Sunbelt coalition was more than enough to give the GOP a majority in the electoral college and by the 1970s that coalition was on the ascendant which meant the GOP no longer had to rely on picking off areas and voters from the old New Deal Coalition in the North East and Urban Areas to win elections. The Sunbelt and the Suburbs were also significantly more conservative than the North East and Urban Areas and since that was the coalition on the ascendant it was inevitable that the GOP was going to become significantly more conservative.


If you want to blame anyone for the GOP going to the right then it was Nixon because once he created that Sunbelt + Suburbs Coalition it was inevitable the GOP was going to move towards Reagan. Lastly in 1979 the vast majority of the GOP establishment supported Reagan in the primaries and not HW (Reagan had 90% of the endorsements which were given out in 1979: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ted-cruz-is-just-like-reagan-in-1980-expect-people-actually-liked-reagan/ )



What wasnt inevitable though was the No Compromise types in the GOP and what created that was Fox News and Newt Gingrich