Would the Gipper be pleased?

Editor’s note: This is an unfinished post. I hope to have the time to complete it in the future. For now, just so I can move ahead with other tMR-related projects, I’m publishing this in its incomplete form.

When former President Ronald Reagan slipped the surly bonds of this earth to touch the face of God, political partisanship appropriatley took a quiet back seat for a time — but not for long. No sooner had Reagan been laid to rest than Democrats began waving fingers in the face of President Bush: “Don’t you go exploiting the death of Ronald Reagan to further your own political campaign, Dubya. That would be reprehensible. Of course, we wouldn’t put anything past you.”

Let’s be frank. The very thing the Democrats warned President Bush against — the very deed they decried as despicable, heartless, cynical, and ruthlessly opportunistic — is what they have actually done. The facts:

• Ronald Reagan was debilitated by Alzheimer’s up to the time of his death.
• Some claim that embryonic stem cell research holds the cure for this awful disease.
• Early in his presidency, George Bush halted federal funding for such research, citing the ethical conundrum it presents.
• Meanwhile, Democrats have made easing restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research a key tenet of their party platform.
• The DNC achieves what they consider a political coup by getting Ron Reagan Jr. to address their convention in prime-time, for the purpose of plugging the virtues of embryonic stem cell therapy and to denounce the vice of the small minded religious nuts (i.e., President Bush) who stand in its way. Note that Ron Reagan’s address comes scant weeks after his father’s death.

Where are all the left-leaning moralists now? Who, I ask, are the real exploiters who would deign to use a dead president to further their own political end?

I am digressing from what I intended to do in this post. My real purpose was to pick apart some of Ron Reagan’s speech to the DNC. He began by saying:

Let me assure you, I am not here to make a political speech, and the topic at hand should not — must not — have anything to do with partisanship.

Well, Ron, then what in the world are you doing at the Democratic National Convention? Why not choose a non-partisan venue to urge that embryonic stem cell research move forward? If keeping things apolitical was your aim, pal, you blew it the instant you agreed to address the donkeys up in Beantown.

I’ll have to continue this later, friends

Blessings,

Rob
aka The MonT-SteR