Are Trump's coronavirus failures Ronald Reagan's fault?

[dajoki]

Op-Ed: Are Trump’s coronavirus failures Ronald Reagan’s fault?
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-07-01/ronald-reagan-donald-trump-anti-government-anti-science

Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis has been deeply flawed. The administration’s pandemic faults are vast and varied, and the president should be held accountable for them. But so should the Republican Party: In many ways, the author of the Trump administration’s COVID-19 fiasco is the man who remade the party in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan.

At every stage of the COVID-19 challenge, Trump has failed to mobilize the federal government effectively. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been ill-prepared or blocked from coordinating a national response that matches the crisis. Experts, especially scientists, have been sidelined. Despite Congress authorizing trillions in stimulus and relief aid, the actual management of those programs has been slipshod and haphazard. And the number of cases just keeps rising, ominously.

Trump’s lack of leadership reflects an agenda that takes its cues from an idealized President Reagan. From the start of his presidency, Reagan trumpeted a rejection of using government to help the country, to act as a partner in solving its problems. In his first inaugural address in 1981, Reagan declared, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” In his second term, during a news conference in August 1986, he phrased the issue in even starker terms: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

Is it any surprise that, today, a Republican Party that is spiritual heir to Reagan would be ineffective in using a tool its most revered recent president disowned? “While the economic pain is nowhere close to ending,” reported the New York Times in May, “Republicans seem disinclined to renew huge spending programs, particularly as November looms.” Said top presidential advisor Stephen Moore: “All government can do right now is make things worse, not better.” Sound familiar?

In particular, Reagan’s legacy has hamstrung Republican support for a strong scientific response to COVID-19. Richard Nixon bonded the GOP with Southern conservatives in the late 1960s over race, then Reagan moved this alliance in a new direction by courting the often anti-science religious far right.

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[DSandra]

1. Trump is the epitome of 80's greed and largesse

Trump is a monster created by the Reagan revolution. It’s pretty obvious that he would follow Reagan.

America sank into a Great Depression because Hoover stuck to his right wing views rather than adequately help society.

[SMC22307]

2. People need to stop making excuses for Donald Trump.

Oh, his Dad didn't love him. Nor did his Mom. He's a slow learner. It's Reagan's fault. Blah blah. Trump is a grown man. Republican governors Hogan and DeWine did a good job handling COVID-19. I imagine Jon Huntsman would have as well. I'm a total nobody in the DC area who would have done a better job than Dirty Don because I'd listen to the experts and know the good the federal goverment -- in the right hands -- can do.

To whomever wrote that piece, JUST STOP.

[abqtommy]

3. +100 Spot on!

[SMC22307]

4. Thanks. I'm sick of the excuses and this effort to turn him into a sympathetic character.

He's a total POS and always has been - as far back as throwing stones at a toddler in a playpen (or something to that effect).

[demigoddess]

6. amen

[dajoki]

8. No excuse...

just the rot of the repub party coming out after more than half a century of sleaze. That's why the entire party must be destroyed or the same thing will keep happening.

[Midnight Writer]

7. Our nation has already decided it's OK to sacrifice citizens to the Great God Greed.

Look at tobacco. 400,000 plus dead per year, but we won't stop it because rich people are invested in it, and it would be bad for business..

[moondust]

9. "Let the market decide."

Yes, Republicans have been working on reducing the role of "big gubment," i.e. taxes, regulations, and policies promoting equality, at least since Reagan. Dumbo himself may not know or care much about it but those have been the party's goals for a long time. Dumbo may simply want to distance himself from any and all bad news.

[Kid Berwyn]

10. Weren't Trump, it'd be Jebthro.

GOP is organized crime. If it weren’t, Trump woulda been impeached and convicted way back in 2017 just fir Jared telling Quinn to ask Russians for a secure comlink to Moscow.