In the two weeks since former president Ronald Reagan was laid to rest, his grieving family has mostly retreated from public view, staying mum as Republican leaders lionize his legacy and promote President Bush as his political heir.
Not the late president's younger son, Ron. Bashing Bush is his new pastime.
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He returned to CNN again Thursday with another round of denunciations, saying at one point, "My father didn't know George W. Bush from Adam."
It is quite a blitz. And it has Republican leaders across the country amazed and amused, but apparently not alarmed.
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Besides, Khachigian said, the GOP still has the other Reagan son in its corner: Michael Reagan, the nationally syndicated conservative radio talk show host. Since his father's death, Michael Reagan has said that his father, like Bush, would have opposed stem cell research on moral grounds -- and that the suggestion such research is likely to cure Alzheimer's disease is politically motivated disinformation. "This is junk science at its worst," he wrote in a recent column.
"What Ron Reagan says is going to be offset by what Michael Reagan says," Khachigian said.
Republicans are more apprehensive, he said, about the public stands that former first lady Nancy Reagan, who is not close to Bush, may take in the coming months.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3914-2004Jun24.html