Ron Reagan Jr: Co-Opting the Reagan Legacy

On the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth the left is desperately trying to co-opt his memory. Suddenly everyone one from Dick Durbin to Ron Reagan Jr. is telling us what Ronnie would have thought about … well, just about everything.

Hardest to take in this sudden outburst Reagan authoritativeness, however, are Ron Reagan Jr and Patti Davis, the Great Communicator’s second family. Those are the ones who disrespected their father when he was alive, while making their living solely on the fact that he was president.

During the early years of Reagan’s presidency, Ron Jr. disgraced his father by hanging out in teen gay bars like Hollywood’s Odyssey 1, probably doing dope with the locals, but definitely picking up cash by giving tongue-in-cheek interviews to make it clear he wanted nothing to do with his father’s politics.

For those of you who don’t remember, this was the era when Junior and his sister Patty Davis supported the leftos who were blaming their father for everything from homelessness to the AIDS virus.

They still do.

But today, Ron Reagan Jr. is out busily attempting to lay claim to his father’s legacy, while continuing to denounce everything the 40th President stood for, and expecting us to accept his veracity as the authoritative voice on Ronald Wilson Reagan.

This week Ron Jr. is back in the headlines, capitalizing once again on his father’s centennial, and proclaiming himself the be go-to guy on all things Reagan. Want to know what the Gipper would think? Call Ron Jr.

“Sarah Palin is a soap opera, basically,” the Junior Reagan tells AP. “She’s doing mostly what she does to make money and keep her name in the news.”

Now is that the pot calling the kettle black, or what? Reagan Jr., who made it absolutely certain no one called him Junior, because he didn’t want to be associated with his father, went on to say, “She is not a serious candidate for president and never has been.”

Ron Jr., the failed ballerino (um, charger), cum failed radio commentator, cum failed journalist, cum failed television presenter, and now GOP political consultant.

Let me get this straight. Junior whores himself out to a publisher with a scandalous piece of trash he tries to dress up as a tribute to his father, and he wants us to believe that Sarah Palin is only honoring Dad for the money?

For the record, Junior does this on the anniversary of his father’s birth every year. For—you guessed it—money. Last year he took a shot at the tea party and Palin, and in 2008 he told us all how Ronnie would have voted.

Patty Davis is up to this, as well, but she obviously couldn’t get a book deal this year.

Two slacker scions of one of the greatest American’s in history, who were embarrassed be mentioned in the same breath with Ronald Reagan when he was president, are all of a sudden authorities on everything from his opinions to his medical history?

The very idea that either of them would presume to know what their father’s conservative views would be about the tea parties or Sarah Palin is laughable. What we are pretty sure of, though, is that President Reagan wouldn’t be consulting the family ne’er-do-wells for advice.

A final note: Ronald Reagan was arguably one of America’s greatest presidents, but he was not quite the paragon of perfection many on the right tout him to be. He may not have liked Sarah Palin—after all he married Nancy, and Jane Wyman before her. Nor was he much in the field of siring children; actually he had to adopt one to get it right.

Ron Reagan Jr. Disgraces Father’s Legacy … Again

UPDATE: Liberal Media Legitimizes Claim

Eleanor Clift

ABC News

WaPo’s Atrocious Comments:

“I knew the idiot didn’t [know] what the hell was going on around him when he had to use cue cards to remember to say “hullo, h-o-w a-r-e y-o-u.  That’s the reason he had this “kitchen cabinet” to run the country illegally. The poor clown had no idea which end was up.”

Voice of Sanity from Red State:  Medical professionals interviewed so far, including some who were around during Reagan’s second term, have said that there was absolutely no indication of Alzheimer’s during the time Ron Jr. references, but the younger Reagan assures us that we all now know that the onset of Alzheimer’s can be years before being medically discovered.  Well, sure.  And we are not here challenging Junior’s apprehension in 1984, for that is impossible to ascertain.  What we are challenging is both the propriety of this, shall we say, “bombshell” being offered at this moment,  or at all, and the callous disregard, if indeed it is disregard, for the ways in which it will be used.

STORY

In an attempt to hawk a cheap, no doubt ghostwritten, memoir, Ron Reagan, youngest son of Ronald Reagan said in a press release this week that his father had Alzheimer’s disease while he was President. This isn’t the first time Reagan and his sister Patty Davis have disgraced the Great Communicator and it probably will not be the last, if there is a buck to be made on his name.

In a counter press release tonight, President Reagan’s oldest son, Michael said, “Ron was an embarrassment to his father when he was alive and today he became an embarrassment to his mother.”

According to the review of “My Father at 100,” in U.S. News, Reagan implies his father may have had the disease as early as 1984, and that we was incompetent to serve.

“Watching the first of his two debates with 1984 Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale, I began to experience the nausea of a bad dream coming true. At 73, Ronald Reagan would be the oldest president ever reelected. Some voters were beginning to imagine grandpa—who can never find his reading glasses—in charge of a bristling nuclear arsenal, and it was making them nervous. Worse, my father now seemed to be giving them legitimate reason for concern. My heart sank as he floundered his way through his responses, fumbling with his notes, uncharacteristically lost for words. He looked tired and bewildered.”

Which of course explains how the Gipper was responsible for the fall of Eastern Bloc communism, the greatest period of financial growth in the twentieth century, and established the United States as the world’s sole superpower.

And the drivel goes on as the prodigal leads us to the threshold of revelation only to bring us crashing back to terra firma with the proverbial “no cigar.” Trust me, the acid was good in Hollywood in the 1980s when Little Ronnie was there.

“I’ve seen no evidence that my father (or anyone else) was aware of his medical condition while he was in office. Had the diagnosis been made in, say 1987, would he have stepped down? I believe he would have.

Yeah, he wishes.

Question: Could it be he has seen no evidence because the condition did not exist? Just a thought. Hint. A President of the United States is subjected to the most rigorous physicals of any human being on the planet, Junior.

One has to wonder if there are any lengths to which this little ne’er-do-well snot will not go to disgrace his father’s legacy and make a few bucks.

Channeling Ronnie. Are you absolutely sure this little SOB is your son?