Opinion of Ronald Reagan?

[MarkD]

I used to think of RR as FF, but I don't think that way anymore.

First of all, I disapprove of the fact that he vetoed the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987, which was good legislation, and RR's argument against it, as well as Pat Robertson's, was BS.

Secondly, I eventually realized what a hypocrite RR was regarding the appointment of Supreme Court Justices. In 1987, when Reagan announced he was appointing Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, he said that Bork "shares my view that judges' personal perferences and values should not be part of their constitutional interpretations. The guiding principle of judicial restraint recognizes that under the Constitution it is the exclusive province of the legislatures to enact laws and the role of the courts to interpret them." But more than a dozen years later, all of Reagan's successful appointees to the Court -- Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and William Rehnquist (elevated by Reagan to be Chief Justice) -- joined in together to perpetrate the Bush v. Gore decision, which was a decision that had absolutely nothing to do with judicial restraint, and which certainly had nothing to do with Originalism as a method of constitutional interpretation. That Court decision punctured my faith that Republicans appoint better Justices than do Democrats, and it drove me to making the decision to stop voting (for over a dozen years).