Freedom Line Blog

Bill Pascoe, Executive Vice President of Citizens for the Republic and a longtime political and communications advisor, discusses President Reagan’s political legacy and why he gives “Three Cheers” for Judge Vinson’s ruling declaring unconstitutional the individual mandate that is the heart of ObamaCare.

Listen to the interview here.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

With the 100th Anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth approaching next month, Reagan supporters and detractors alike are looking to cash in on our 40th President’s legacy. Sadly, it’s not clear which of those categories his son, Ron Jr., falls into.

In a new book, “My Father at 100”, the junior Reagan claims that his father was suffering the effects of Alzheimer’s Disease during his second term. This is not a new allegation, but it’s one that has usually been limited to liberal innuendo in the past. No publisher worth his salt is going to let a book like this go to press without a pre-release date press bombshell, however, and Reagan’s closeness to his father (genetically speaking, at least) gives this claim more credence than it would otherwise enjoy.

Remarkably, a defense of the Gipper is coming from an unexpected corner of the media. On today’s episode of “The View”, Barbara Walters — who moderated the 1984 presidential debate that the younger Reagan cites as evidence of his father’s deteriorating mental state — came out hard against the allegations. As noted by the Daily Caller, she said:

“Ron, Jr.’s half-brother Michael said this is not true. This didn’t happen,” she continued. “I’m going to say something that I probably saw more of President Reagan in those years than either of his sons. He was not really close to them. And I did interview after interview. I didn’t see any signs of dementia or Alzheimer’s or whatever until after he left office.

After all these years of Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, and Rosie O’Donnell, this is hardly penance for all of “The View’s” shots at conservatism. But it’s not a bad place to start.

We’re only a few months away from the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birthday. And the crew of the USS Ronald Reagan is already beginning to celebrate. A touching tribute from the men and women of our armed forces — those who Reagan loved and who loved him in return:

From the Deck of the USS Ronald Reagan

Below is the latest video from the Republican Study Committee, which contrasts Ronald Reagan with the “leadership” in Washington, D.C. today. 

I can think of no one better to ring in the Fourth of July than our 40th president, Ronald Wilson Reagan.  Happy Birthday, America.

I guess there had to be at least one negative aspect of the Reagan legacy. It’s temperamental. The Gipper was famous for the sign on his desk reading “It CAN be done”. What a great American sentiment: sweet-tempered, optimistic, tenacious. It helps, of course, when the goal in question CAN be done.

Not so “energy independence”, which has become something of a Fox News shibboleth the last few years. While there’s a strong case to be made for allowing increased domestic energy production, the idea that it will free us from the vagaries of the global energy market is a pipe dream. But don’t take my word for it. Noted conservative economist Irwin Stelzer (a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a regular contributor to the Weekly Standard) makes the point in a very judicious analysis of President Obama’s push for increased oil exploration published in today’s D.C. Examiner:

More important, and this is no fault of the president’s, even if these offshore areas are eventually opened up, their development cannot eliminate the security threat and economic consequences of our dependence on foreign oil. Fuel autarchy is not in our future.

There just isn’t enough oil offshore to replace our imports from unfriendly countries such as Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. No matter what happens in the newly permitted areas, we will need their oil.

Sober, but entirely accurate. Call it Coolidge Conservatism.

Following up on Brother Ellis’s earlier CPAC post, the most notable fallout from the weekend confab may have been Mike Huckabee’s criticism of the conference for being “too libertarian.” Let’s call this what it is: a fig leaf.

After a dissapointing seventh place finish in CPAC’s presidential straw poll, Huckabee is looking for a way to write off the legitimacy of the whole endeavor (let’s not deny, however, that Ron Paul’s victory in the poll does look a bit … well, eccentric). But CPAC organizers are quick to point out that when Huckabee declined their offer to speak this year, he attributed it to a scheduling conflict, not any ideological differences. Thus, claiming that he stayed away from the festivities because they were a little too fervent for liberty rings hollow.

Huckabee has two positive traits to offer conservatives: a winning, optimistic personality and a consistent social conservatism (part of what puts him at odds with some libertarians).  What he doesn’t have, however, is damning enough to remove him from serious consideration as a future presidential nominee. Huckabee is a practitioner of the baser kind of economic “populism” — no one who calls the Club for Growth “the Club for Greed” has the dictional authority to be taken seriously as either a conservative or a theologian. He has also proved himself to be functionally illiterate on matters of foreign policy.

Huckabee, like every Republican candidate for the past three decades, claims to have been baptized in the River Reagan. But Ronaldus Magnus famously said “I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.” Indeed, I don’t know how one indicts the GOP heresies of the past decade without faulting the party for losing touch with its libertarian roots. Huckabee is a terrific guy; but I think it’s time for the movement to acknowledge that he might be a Democrat if only that party was a little less secular.

Saturday marked the 99th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth.  It was also the day on which “Snowmageddon” dumped two feet of snow on Washington, D.C., closing government agencies into this week.

Coincidence?  Or yet another win for the Gipper?

After all, Reagan once lamented the federal government’s counterproductive overactivity:

“We have all heard that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.  Today, if you build a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.”

Well, let’s consider this a symbolic reverse birthday gift from President Reagan, since every day on which the federal government is shut down is a day on which it isn’t devising a better mouse to unleash on us all.

The arrival of 2010 ushers in yet another federal election.  This year, every seat in the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate is up for grabs.

A new study from the polling firm Public Opinion Strategies demonstrates that President Obama’s approval rating could determine the fate of his strong Democratic majorities in Congress.

Public Opinion studied midterm election results and presidential job approval numbers from 1962 to 2006.  The results aren’t too surprising, but they are nevertheless discouraging for the current party in power.

Even a strong approval mark of 60% has only historically garnered the president’s party one seat in the House.  For example, President Ronald Reagan had a 63% approval rating in 1986, but Republicans still managed to lose five seats in Congress that year.

An average approval rating of 50% to 59% historically results in an average loss of 12 seats.  President Obama’s current approval rating is 50%.

If his approval rating dips below 50%, he may be welcoming Speaker John Boehner in 2011.  When the president’s approval rating falls below the Mendoza Line (50%) for politicians, his party loses an average of 41 seats, or one more than Republicans currently need to take back the lower chamber.

Generally, a president’s popularity and tenure in Congress are inexorably linked.  When November arrives, President Obama will learn that lesson anew.

Stay tuned for more coverage by CFIF on the 2010 elections.

Ah, the world of Democratic fiscal policy.  If you pass three massive stimulus bills that not only fail to stimulate job growth, but partly contribute to 10.2% unemployment, why not go back to the well and push for tax hikes?

According to the Hill, Democrats are seeking a $150 billion tax on the sale and purchase of financial instruments like stocks and derivatives.  The thinking is that since Wall Street is finally recovering and unemployment is still lingering above 10 percent that Wall Street needs to involuntarily fund a “Job Creation Reserve” for the unemployed.  If that’s all it takes to lift a $14 trillion economy out of recession, why didn’t our exalted class of politicos think of this before?

Now that Wall Street is starting to recover, what better way to welcome it back to prosperity than with a massive new tax hike?  This failed line of thinking reminds me of the old Ronald Reagan quote, “If it moves, tax it.  If it keeps moving, regulate it.  And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

For real life illustrations of this quote see: Wall Street bailouts/new taxes, taxing “rich people,” bailing out Detroit, subsidizing Amtrak, subsidizing the postal service, subsidizing agriculture, and the regulation of pretty much every productive economic venture in the U.S.

Back before he took his oath of office, there were moments when Barack Obama seemed to have an intellectual clarity that occasionally allowed him to transcend partisanship. One such moment came in an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal’s editorial board during the 2008 presidential primaries, when he made the (utterly true) claim that Ronald Reagan had been a transformative president in a way that figures such as Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton had not.

Of course, the fact that Obama wasn’t praising the content of Reagan’s legacy was obvious at the time.  Long before he was praising the virtues of Whole Foods arugula to Iowa caucus-goers (denizens of a state without a single Whole Foods location), The One was a Columbia undergraduate sympathetic to the nuclear freeze movement that thought Reagan was Dr. Strangelove with Pomade.  So this is a man who has never been a fellow-traveler with us Reaganites.

That being said, there are certain times when presidential grace requires biting history’s bullet (especially when it’s in service of a noble cause).  Thus, President Obama’s decision to snub Germany’s invitation to help commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s demise is as petty as it is revealing.

Two decades ago, the world witnessed the parting shots of perhaps the most protracted struggle between liberty and tyranny in human history. That this victory was achieved without any actual shots owes to the man that Obama once rightly recognized as transformational.  Yet while Obama was able to take time out of his presidential campaign to visit a Germany eager to enshrine him as a golden calf, he can’t find room in his day-planner for a return trip to celebrate the greatest human liberation of the 20th century.

Being wrong about the Cold War in the 1980s can be chalked up to an honest mistake fueled by a lack of intellectual sophistication. Being wrong about it 20 years later ought to disqualify you from any public office … let alone the highest in the land.