cheetah440
Member
You notice how they always trot out Reagan but never trot out Goldwater?
If you mean by "they", those of us who don't think we can win with a liberal, let's look at that.
Who does Obama look more like right now. LBJ or Carter? If you are going to go with historical comparisons, use apt ones.
The whole Goldwater argument is that if the GOP had ONLY run Nelson Rockerfeller instead of Barry Goldwater, they could have really won in 1964.
Which is bullshit. No way LBJ was going to lose in 1964. The economy was going gangbusters, we were at peace, (Vietnam wouldn't start in earnest for another year) the President was enormasly popular and was wearing the mantle of a martyred JFK.
No, Goldwater lost because he didn't have an argument to make. If Goldwater had asked the "Reagan Question", - are you better off than you were four years ago- nearly everyone would have said, "Absolutely!" He was president of America's Zenith. There's a reason why we so romanticize "Camelot" today, because we've been in decline ever since.
If Romney asks the Reagan Question, the answer might well be, "Probably not, but guys like you got us into this mess to start with!"
Newt isn't Reagan. Neither is Perry nor Bachmann nor Santorum nor Cain nor Trump nor whomever you want to analogize. So please stop making that comparison. Quayle used to say that "they used to say that about Reagan" when referring to himself as a candidate who couldn't win. Guess what? Nobody says "They said that about Quayle!"
Reagan wasn't Reagan in 1980, he was the guy who acted with a chimp to more than a few.