My father frequently said that yes, Ronald Reagan was a very stupid man.

[cali]

My parents had the Reagans for dinner one night in 1961. It was something to do with a fundraiser for the school that their kids and the kids in my family attended. My father went on for years about what an idiot Reagan was. He often said that Reagan was one of the stupidest people he'd ever met. Granted, my dad was an insufferable intellectual snob and a die hard liberal, but still, his contempt for Reagan's intellectual abilities was notable.

[lisa58]

1. well, in 1961 Reagan was a dem so your Dad wasn't being partisan about his assessment

[cali]

5. In 1961 Reagan gave his famous speech against socialized medicine

he wasn't a liberal, that's for sure.

[MADem]

10. It was when he hooked up with Nancy. Her parents helped to sway him. NT

[backscatter712]

6. A little earlier.

I remember Thom Hartman playing a speech from Ronald Reagan circa 1949, where he supported repealing Taft-Hartley and supported all sorts of labor causes. I couldn't tell except from the dates whether this was Ronald Reagan or his son Ron Reagan on Air America...

It was what, the 50's? when he drank the right-wing Kool-Aid and became Ronnie Ray-Gun.

[MADem]

8. Most Dems weren't terribly liberal back in the sixties.

Kennedy was a bit of a hawk, after all. They were simply more into equality and social programs than the bootstrap GOP.

[Heidi]

2. Intellectual-bashing launched Reagan's career.

Reagan in 1964:
"It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, "We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government." This idea that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power, is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. 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 capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x59wNGHe6iI

[mediaman007]

3. That was why it was so easy to reprogram him from a union

leader to a conservative. Reagan made his switch to the Republicans when General Electric began to pay his bills in the late 1950's. Prior to that, Reagan was a part of the "Red Scare," ridding the Screen Actors Guild of Communists in the late 1940's and early 50's.

[Ian David]

4. I thought he became a Conservative so Nancy's father would let him marry her.

Because, after all, she gave the best blowjobs in Hollywood.

[Lerkfish]

11. LOL! omigod.

[Burma Jones]

7. A stupid man with a lot of very clever ones around him

The GOP Model.......

[MADem]

9. Hee hee--had 'em for dinner, eh? Bet he was greasy and she was bony! nt

[madrchsod]

12. my father knew ronny when he was living in dixon....

yup dumb as a box of rocks but a really nice guy. he had the knack of sucking up to the swells here in dixon to get ahead...