Why are conservatives infatuated with Ronald Reagan?

Question

I'm asking you--what is the appeal?

Answer 1

Why do you think liberals hate him? You didn't cover this in school?

Answer 2

Look at us, we won the Cold War

Answer 3

Reagan inherited Carter's disaster and actually turned things around for the better and cleaned up the mess.

Answer 4

He was the best president of the 20th century.

Great communicator. Deep political philosopher. Unashamedly pround and optimistic about America. Believed strongly in fighting the evil that was the Soviet Union, that had caused so much harm in the world, and used our resources to counter it and force its collapse.

He built up our neglected military, and crafted policies to get the economic engine of the US moving again. Yes, there was massive spending increases, but the budget deficits were rapidly decreasing due to significantly increasing revenues by the time he left office; they would have been surpluses under Bush41, except for the short recession that interrupted the growth.

He was a true leader. He put America back into place as world leader.

He was a great president.

Answer 5

He was a great communicator. I have no idea what else he had.

Answer 6

Latent homosexuality.

Answer 7

He made a lot of good points.  

Is the problem in Washington that we aren't sending them enough of our hard earned money in taxes or that they are spending too much money.

Do we really need a government program for every problem.

Government is not the solution to our problems government is the problem.

Answer 8

He was the last good leader they had.

Answer 9

A man does not win re-election with 49 of 50 states with only his appeal to conservatives. Perhaps, you should be asking the liberal Democrats out there why they left their Party and voted for him!

Actually, never mind! That will be my next question on Yahoo Answers!

Answer 10

They like the way he hid the real economy from the citizens

What do you do when you want to s***w only the working people of your nation with the largest tax increase in history and hand those trillions of dollars to your wealthy campaign contributors, yet not have anybody realize you've done it? If you're Ronald Reagan, you call in Alan Greenspan.

Through the "golden years of the American middle class" - the 1940s through 1982 - the top income tax rate for the hyper-rich had been between 90 and 70 percent. Ronald Reagan wanted to cut that rate dramatically, to help out his political patrons. He did this with a massive tax cut in the summer of 1981.

The only problem was that when Reagan took his meat axe to our tax code, he produced mind-boggling budget deficits. Voodoo economics didn't work out as planned, and even after borrowing so much money that this year we'll pay over $100 billion just in interest on the money Reagan borrowed to make the economy look good in the 1980s, Reagan couldn't come up with the revenues he needed to run the government.

Coincidentally, the actuaries at the Social Security Administration were beginning to get worried about the Baby Boomer generation, who would begin retiring in big numbers in fifty years or so. They were a "rabbit going through the python" bulge that would require a few trillion more dollars than Social Security could easily collect during the same 20 year or so period of their retirement. We needed, the actuaries said, to tax more heavily those very persons who would eventually retire, so instead of using current workers' money to pay for the Boomer's Social Security payments in 2020, the Boomers themselves would have pre-paid for their own retirement.

Reagan got Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Alan Greenspan together to form a commission on Social Security reform, along with a few other politicians and economists, and they recommend a near-doubling of the Social Security tax on the then-working Boomers. That tax created - for the first time in history - a giant savings account that Social Security could use to pay for the Boomers' retirement.

This was a huge change. Prior to this, Social Security had always paid for today's retirees with income from today's workers (it still is today). The Boomers were the first generation that would pay Social Security taxes both to fund current retirees and save up enough money to pay for their own retirement. And, after the Boomers were all retired and the savings account - called the "Social Security Trust Fund" - was all spent, the rabbit would have finished its journey through the python and Social Security could go back to a "pay as you go" taxing system.

Thus, within the period of a few short years, Reagan dramatically dropped the income tax on America's most wealthy by more than half, and roughly doubled the Social Security tax on people earning $30,000 or less. It was, simultaneously, the largest income tax cut in America's history (almost entirely for the very wealthy), and the most massive tax increase in the history of the nation (which entirely hit working-class people).

But Reagan still had a problem. His tax cuts for the wealthy - even when moderated by subsequent tax increases - weren't generating enough money to invest properly in America's infrastructure, schools, police and fire departments, and military. The country was facing bankruptcy.

No problem, suggested Greenspan. Just borrow the Boomer's savings account - the money in the Social Security Trust Fund - and, because you're borrowing "government money" to fund "government expenditures," you don't have to list it as part of the deficit. Much of the deficit will magically seem to disappear, and nobody will know what you did for another 50 years when the Boomers begin to retire 2015.

Reagan jumped at the opportunity. As did George H. W. Bush. As did Bill Clinton (although Al Gore argued strongly that Social Security funds should not be raided, but, instead, put in a "lock box"). And so did George W. Bush.

The result is that all that money - trillions of dollars - that has been taxed out of working Boomers (the ceiling has risen from the tax being on your first $30,000 of income to the first $90,000 today) has been borrowed and spent. What are left behind are a special form of IOUs - an unique form of Treasury debt instruments similar (but not identical) to those the government issues to borrow money from China today to fund George W. Bush's most recent tax cuts for billionaires (George Junior is still also "borrowing" from the Social Security Trust Fund).

Former Bush Junior Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill recounts how d**k Cheney famously said, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." Cheney was either ignorant or being disingenuous - it would be more accurate to say, "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter if you rip off the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for them, and don't report that borrowing from the Boomers as part of the deficit."

Answer 11

For the same reason that Democrats were in love with Clinton. He was vaguely charming at times and brought in money for the party from business classes.As a bonus, the rotten edifice that is the Soviet Union came tumbling down and although it had nothing to do with him, it's easy to say he did it because some people want to believe that.

f that doesn't sound like much to you, I agree--it's not. But we're talking about political professionals who only care about subordinating the power of the other party.

Answer 12

Because he snored the loudest !

He let the rich get richer

He "ended" the cold war  (actually a mistake if you look at it in perspective)

The top 2 of these are real the other is imaginary.

Answer 13

He was charismatic (thankfully not in the religious sense) and good looking, an ex-movie star and was the perfect puppet for his neocon masters, who set him up. He was probably a decent enough person. But there is definitely an heroic mythology that the Reptilians have built up all around him which doesn't always dovetail with reality. Remember Contra cocaine? Ollie North?

Answer 14

I'm not sure either.

Answer 15

ended the cold war, fixed carter's economic failure

Answer 16

Mainstream media have relied heavily on Republicans  to tell the story of Reagan and his accomplishments, which results in a decidedly one-sided version of events.

While he was a likable man,  Reagan didn't rate much higher than other post-World War II presidents. And during his first two years, Reagan's approval ratings were quite low. His 52 percent average approval rating for his presidency places him sixth out of the past ten presidents, behind Kennedy (70 percent), Eisenhower (66 percent), George H.W. Bush (61 percent), Clinton (55 percent), and Johnson (55 percent). His popularity frequently dipped below 50 percent during his first term, plummeted to 46 percent during the Iran-Contra scandal, and never exceeded 68 percent. By contrast, Clinton's maximum approval rating hit 71 percent.

Answer 17

Don C, is it your contention that a marginal tax rate of 90% is fair? I'm just asking for clarification.