LIONEL VAN DEERLIN
July 28, 2004
(snip)
But suddenly the Democrats went poaching where they don't belong. As one of their convention speakers, they had enlisted the flesh-and-blood offspring of a sainted Republican – one bearing the same honored name, no less. Yes, 46-year-old Ron Reagan. To true conservatives, parading any Reagan before a Democratic convention seemed worse than scattering pearls before swine. More like political grand larceny. Dour Robert Novak of the Chicago Sun-Times branded young Ron's actions "despicable." Just a short speech about stem-cell research? Hah – one would suppose that, at the very least, the Gipper's offspring had committed a public nuisance on the steps of Faneuil Hall.
Among those most annoyed, right from the start, was Gary Bauer, a still youthful religioso who once served as point man for President Reagan's social agenda. (In his early thirties, he was Reagan's undersecretary of education.) Now organizing a drive to maximize the fundamentalist voter turnout in November, Bauer chided son Ron for "helping to damage the party your father spent all of his adult political life in."
We must not be taken in by Bauer's cherubic countenance. The guy has been around long enough to know he's straying from the truth. Ronald Reagan a Republican for all his adult life? Hey, I can provide a sworn deposition on that one. As a reporter, I recall seeing Reagan introduced at a campaign rally for Harry Truman in 1948, along with fellow-Democrat Katharine Hepburn. Two years later he was co-chairing Democrat Helen Douglas' campaign committee in her U.S. Senate race against Richard Nixon. Indeed, Ronald Reagan, who had headed the Screen Actors Guild, was so widely tagged as a left-winger that the Douglas committee advised against using the Gipper for an appearance in San Diego. They decided he was much too radical for this town. The man was then in his 40th year. Indeed, it was not until he was 46 – son Ron's present age – that Reagan is known to have switched political colors.
(snip)
But this begs the real question. At middle age, is Ron Reagan not entitled to a life of his own? Would Gary Bauer's brand of piety bind us all to the religious and political preferences of our forebears? And if so, for how long – unto the third or fourth generation? Or merely till after Nov. 2?
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http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040728/news_lz1e28deerlin.html Van Deerlin represented a San Diego County district in Congress for 18 years.
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