Remembering Ronald Reagan: Rendezvous With Destiny

Fifty years ago, a great American presented a great speech, as Steven Hayward wrote in the Washington Post ...

At the same time, Reagan made great efforts to transcend partisanship by portraying his views as common sense: “You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well, I’d like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There’s only an up or down: man’s old, old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.”

Would-be heirs of Reagan should take note: He wasn’t just trying to speak to the base. He was trying to expand the base through persuasion of independents and, later, disaffected Democrats.

Another notable aspect of Reagan’s rhetorical strategy was claiming populism for the right. He asserted that it was now progressive liberalism, with its embrace of ever-expanding “administrative government,” that represented the elitist force in American politics: “This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government, or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”

Reagan didn’t divide Americans along the typical interest group or class lines. Unlike Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remark or the “makers and takers” theme popular with many conservatives today, Reagan portrayed big government as opposing the interests of all Americans, not just the entrepreneurial or property-owning class that forms the GOP’s core constituency.

and Keith Koffler recognized at White House Dossier ...

Ronald Reagan was a man of ideas. A man persuaded by certain ideas. Americans can also be persuaded by these ideas today. But first, Republicans will have to find someone who is persuasive. And since Americans know fakery when they see it, that means Republicans, if they want to win an election with any meaning to it, will need someone who not only believes what they are saying, but understands it. They will need someone with the seriousness of Ronald Reagan.

Indeed, the Republicans will need someone from the ranks of the Tea Party movement; someone who believes that the only true reformation is to revert to the limited government that the Founders created and who provided a written bond between the People and those they choose to operate their government - the Constitution of the United States. We the People need a statesman or stateswoman that focuses upon what is important to the United States and return the rights and liberties that have progressively been diminished or annulled by politicians with the help of a society that has progressed as a mirrored reflection of the corruption in Washington DC presents and continues as politics as usual.
Some feel that we have reached the point of non-return because the damage done by both Democrats and Republicans has given victory to the corrupted. This mid-term election of 2014 will reveal how by the two-party system of Democrats and Republicans have not enforced immigration laws and thus this election, like the presidential election in 2012, will have an alarming amount of illegal aliens voting (with the help of Democrats refusing verification of citizenship to vote).
Read article at Townhall.  Despite passing Congress in 2004, the border is still not secure.
"Come To The USA" by Ray Stevens ...