The Voice of New Rochelle: Baited and Switched

Like most people, I loved Ronald Reagan. But, then again, I grew up during a time when you rooted for your president even if you did not agree with all of his policies. Like anyone, he was not perfect.

After all, The ‘Gipper” was also the man who went easy on apartheid in South Africa and painted the enduring and belittling picture of black woman on public assistance as Welfare Queens. He also probably got away with breaking the law during the Iran-Contra scandal.

Nonetheless, Reagan made me proud of my country again and ushered in a period that mixed toughness, kindness and sincerity following a two decades long period of cynicism and lost faith starting with the Vietnam War, on through three assassinations and Watergate, topping off with the failed presidency of the well intentioned but incompetent Jimmy Carter. Ronald Reagan was the right man at the right time. He will be remembered for breaking the back of Communism, lowering the tax rates and relighting the idea that America was, indeed, a shinning city on the hill.

One legacy he left, unfortunately, has haunted electoral politics for 30 years and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future: The so-called Reagan Democrat.

It was understandable at the time. Americans were still humbled by the on-going humiliation that was the Iran hostage crisis. Vietnam veterans were still treated with disdain because of the unpopularity of that war, rather than hailed for their service to our country. Social programs, now called entitlements, had grown so large and taxes so high that a split emerged between the largely white, patriotic, working and middle class America, and the poor, less affluent parts of society that were mostly composed of minorities.

The former group, many of them union members who once saw themselves as separate from the Republican country club elite and, thus, were Democrats, now switched their allegiance to the party that wanted to cut their taxes, control entitlement spending and restore America’s place and pride in the world.

It made perfect sense as a political strategy. And with the exception of those that went along for racial bias, or other class-related reasons, it was altogether appropriate and sensible for voters…then.

Now, however, those same people (patriots all), continue to drink from a political brew that contains many of the same intoxicants…lower taxes and less entitlement spending, for example, but also includes the hemlock of contempt for all things union and all things social, including Social Security and Medicare. Some candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, such as the honest, if wrong headed, Ron Paul, will tell you they, indeed, want to roll back the social programs of the last 50 years. 

Others on the far right will let the issue dangle out there; some not really wanting to do away with the programs, but hoping the Tea Partiers will think they do; and others who do want to do away with them, but don’t want you to know that they do. But it is you—actually we—who must decide what we want and need and who will deliver on that.

All too often I meet people my age, or older, voters who used to be Democrats and were swept away by the fresh and honest breezes of Ronald Reagan, who say that the current president, who we can admit has not done a very good job to date, hates America and wants to take their future away. Sadly, many of them have allowed the sweet perfume of blind patriotism, combined with the bitter angry taste of talk radio and FOX News, to obscure the fact that the people whom they now believe have picked up Reagan’s fallen standard, are the very ones who intend to just that, take away their future.

As long as that is what you want, be my guest, go ahead and drink the tea. But don’t look up from your cup and tell me your Social Security better be there. Don’t embarrass yourself.