Image: Wikipedia

 The path to the Republican Party presidential nomination travels through Ronald Reagan’s ghost. From Iowa to South Carolina, GOP primaries are often reduced to a competition for the number of times a candidate can invoke his name. If Jesus hadn’t died at such a youthful age, Reagan’s image would have been what right-wing Americans imagined when they thought of an elderly Messiah. For a conservative to offer anything less than pious servitude to his memory is to violate the fourth of the Ten Commandments: thou shall not take the name of the Lord in vain, which is exactly the sin committed by one of the 2016 GOP packleaders, Sen. Rand Paul.

In a speech given to student Republicans at Western Kentucky University, Paul said you can trace the Republican Party’s hypocrisy on spending and deficits back to Reagan:

Some say, well that’s fine, but there were good old days. We did at one time … When we had Reagan, we were fiscal conservatives. Well, unfortunately, even that wasn’t true. When Reagan was elected in 1980, the first bill they passed was called the Gramm-Latta bill of 1981, and Republicans pegged it as this great step forward. Well, Jimmy Carter’s last budget was about $34 or $36 billion in debt. Well, it turns out, Reagan’s first budget turned out to be $110 billion dollars in debt. And each successive year, the deficit rose throughout Reagan’s two terms.

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Posted by The NON-Conformist