Ronald Reagan: The Original Teabagger

On Bill Maher's "Real Time" on June 7, Maher did a marvelous segment, "Reagan was the Original Teabagger," absolutely destroying Ronald Reagan (something that should be done frequently.) An excerpt:

MAHER: This has become a kind of conventional wisdom, that the Republican party has gone so far right, Reagan himself wouldn't fit in. But I'm here tonight to call bullshit on that.

Ronald Reagan was an anti-government, union busting, race baiting, anti-abortion and anti-gay anti-intellectual who cut rich people's taxes in half, had an incurable case of the military industrial complex, and said Medicare was socialism that would destroy our freedom.

Sounds to me like he would fit in just fine. [...]

But what they cannot contest is even though Ronald Reagan did a few things today's GOP would not like, he wrote the playbook for them on every issue of consequence. Sure, he raised taxes a few times, but when you look at where he started with taxes and where he ended, this is where our income inequality problem began. He invented voodoo economics.

On race, his ideas couldn't have been more tea party if he shouted them from a Rascal scooter. He ran on states' rights. He invented the notion that black people get all the breaks. [...] Reagan just made shit up. Something else he pioneered for his party of today.

He described the New Deal as fascism, Medicaid recipients as waiting for handouts, unemployment insurance as pre-paid vacation for freeloaders, and once said, "A tree's a tree; how many more do you need to look at?"

He was the original, official pitch man for bat-shit, where they hold up signs that say "No socialized medicine." Where do you think they got it from? We got it from you, dad. We got it from you.