Does anyone have a quote showing me where Obama agrees with what Reagan did? [View All]

[Drunken Irishman]

Because I think most political historians would agree that Reagan probably had a far bigger impact on government than any modern day president since FDR. And that was because he rolled back all of FDR and LBJ's social policies. Now I heard what Obama said and not once did he say he supported Reagan, thought Reagan was a great president or agreed with what he did. Instead, he stated the obvious, Ronald Reagan did more for his agenda and ideology than Clinton did. And he's right.

Ronald Reagan took a failed, dying ideology and reinvigorated it. You can thank Ronald Reagan for the Democratic Party weakening greatly locally and nationally throughout the 1980s. You can thank Ronald Reagan for a Republican congress in the 1990s and you can thank Ronald Reagan for the Christian Right. He was, without a doubt, the most influential politician of our time (or at least mine, since I was born in 1984). That does not mean I endorse what he did, because I don't, but only someone blind to the political landscape of America throughout the 80s and 90s would disagree.

Take Utah for example. Prior to Reagan, the state was pretty moderate. Oh sure it hadn't voted Democratic since Johnson, but at the local level, Democrats held the governor's mansion and the legislature. From 1925-1985, Utah had a Democratic governor for 52 of the 60 years. Since 1985, Republicans have controlled the state.

The Reagan revolution had far more coattails than the Clinton revolution. It dramatically changed the inner-workings of city politics, taking union support -- which had strongly been behind the Democrats -- and siding them with Republicans. Reagan was successful at not only rebuilding his party, but crippling the Democratic Party as well. It took Bush ruining the party to get the Democrats back to respectability. So no, don't underrate the impact Reagan had on his own party and America as a whole -- even if it was negative.