Reply #8: Like "The Thing That Would Not Die," the Nixon and Reagan administrations live on in W's regime

[struggle4progress]

W's Presidency is not an a bizarre aberration: it is the logical continuation of a Republican agenda stretching back many decades. Lying lunatics like Cheney and Rumsfeld didn't come out of nowhere: they both served in Nixon's administration. John Bolton and Condoleeza Rice served under Reagan. Grover Norquist laid out the techniques for Reagan used to attack on American institutions and two decades later W is following the same script. W broought a whole gaggle of Iran-contra crooks back into power.

It's true that a big chunk of the public has an unrealistic and rosy memory of Reagan. But it's important to be realistic about who the current thugs are, where they learned their political philosophies and how they got their political training.