Cagle World

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

What a good week it should have been for Republicans.

Dozens of campuses from UCLA to Columbia University were being wracked by pro-Palestinian protestors who set up “Gaza Solidarity” encampments, spewed antisemitic hate speech, took over buildings and intimidated Jewish students.

The protestors demanded their schools condemn Israel’s invasion of Gaza, come out in support of Palestinians or divest themselves of any Israeli investments.

The riots were so heavily covered by the national media and criticized by conservatives that some spineless “progressive” university presidents were finally shamed into calling in the cops to clear the campgrounds and restore order.

The campus riots of the last two weeks should have been a sweet political bonus for Republicans.

They should have been another issue to hang around the necks of Democrats, a party that will never criticize any part of their base no matter how criminally or idiotic they behave or hatefully they chant.

But instead of pounding President Biden, Sen. Chuck Schumer and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul in the media for their cowardly silence over the pro-Palestinian riots, what did the Republican Party do to get into the headlines?

Marjorie Taylor Greene announced she was going to go through with her attempt to oust Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House next week.

A narcissist who always wants the media spotlight on her, Rep. MTG is the leader of the GOP’s right-wing fringe. She and her ilk think now is a great time to try to get rid of Johnson.

But it isn’t the right time, and she’s apparently too much of a narcissist to know better.

What all Republicans should be doing right now is ripping into the Blue State governors for their failure to immediately address and end the college riots.

They all should be blasting Biden for waiting until Thursday to wake up and tell the American people what he should have been saying a week ago – violent protest is wrong.

And by the way, does anyone think Biden would have stayed quiet for so long if white supremacists had rioted on Columbia’s campus and chanted “Death to blacks”?

Biden would have ordered in the National Guard in 30 seconds and Gov. Hochul would have been leading them — wearing a helmet and carrying a carbine.

Hochul, like Gov. Newsom of California, Gov. Whitmer of Michigan and Gov. What’s-his-name of Illinois, has been MIA since the campus riots began spreading.

Don’t they have any wise moral lessons to impart to college students about the responsible use of our greatest freedom, free speech?

Can’t they tell students that although peacefully calling for the death of all Jews is protected by the First Amendment, it’s not a good or moral or American thing to do?

And can’t Blue State governors tell students that violent protest that hurts people and destroys property is never protected by law – no matter how holy or woke the cause?

Of course, we know from what happened during the BLM riots and the bloody and destructive riots in dozens of cities following George Floyd’s death that some violent protestors get a stay-out-of-jail pass under Democrat justice.

We also know that the 1,000 college kids who’ve been arrested so far will be free in a couple hours, won’t have to post bail and are likely to never be prosecuted.

There’s only one way to stop this madness and return the country to sanity — vote these dangerous Democrats out of office in November.

It’s got to be much more than just trading Trump for Biden.

If you elect Trump president, you’ve got to give him a Republican Senate and House, too, or he’ll get nothing done for four years.

In other words, there’s no hope for the future of the country or my grandchildren unless there’s a massive Republican wave in the fall.

And one of the best ways to help ensure a Red Wave happens is for MTG to sit down, shut up and realize it’s not about her, it’s about America.

–

Copyright 2024 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

Another week, another round of Republicans attacking each other.

This time it was over the Ukraine funding bill that was passed by the House and ultimately became part of the big military aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan that Congress passed this week.

The Republican controlled House, led by Speaker Mike Johnson, passed the Ukraine funding bill after what seemed like years of delays by a vote of 311-112.

All the “no” votes came from Republicans and Johnson had to rely on Democrats to get the bill over the finish line.

That, of course, raised new cries for Speaker Johnson’s ouster from the suicidal wing of his own party.

Many House Republicans voted “no” on the military aid bill because they wanted Johnson to include money for Southern border security in the bill.

I get it. We need to take care of the Southern border. I live in California and see the consequences of Biden’s immigration fiasco every day.

But attaching money for border security to the military aid bill would have been a poison pill that would have killed it immediately.

How do we know that? Because the HR 2 immigration bill that came out of the Republican House last year has never been voted on by the Democrat-controlled Senate – and never will be.

And the so-called bipartisan immigration bill that the Senate passed a few weeks ago will never get voted on in the House.

Attaching border security money to the foreign aid bill was always a dumb idea.

It would have meant Israel and Taiwan would not get the military help they need. And Ukraine would not get any more of the help it needs from us to defend itself – and which was promised years ago by two presidents.

The reality is, people, we are morally and militarily obligated to Ukraine.

Presidents Clinton and Obama each guaranteed Ukraine’s leaders that if they gave up their stockpile of Soviet Empire-vintage nuclear weapons, which they did, the United States would protect and defend them.

That obligation to protect Ukraine is what we have been doing with money and weapons since Vladimir Putin started the war by sending in his tanks and artillery.

It doesn’t matter how corrupt Ukraine’s politicians are or whether Ukraine should or should not become a member of NATO. Two U.S. presidents guaranteed the country’s safety and protection if they gave up their nukes and we should honor that guarantee.

So the political reality in Washington is that it is wrong to blame Johnson or the other House Republicans for doing what was needed to keep our promise to Ukraine.

Money for the Southern border was a totally separate issue that should never have been attached to the Ukraine military funding bill.

Speaker Johnson is a smart guy. He did it the right way by keeping Ukraine aid and the border security issue separate.

If we Republicans want to take care of the Southern border, then, damn it, I would suggest we elect a Republican president, a Republican Senate and a Republican House on Nov. 5, 2024.

That’s the only way we will ever be able to fix the border and fix our hapless immigration system, which has remained broken for decades because both parties have been too weak, too afraid and too stupid to fix it.

If Republicans in Congress continue to fight with each other the way they have been since Biden was elected, the American people have every right to ask, “Why in the hell would I want to elect one of these people to lead when they are incapable of working together?”

It’s very simple: If the Republican Party can’t find a way to unite, it doesn’t deserve to win anything in 2024.

And if Hakeem Jeffries becomes Speaker of the House in 2025, it won’t be because the Democrats did such a damn good job in the election.

It’ll be because the Republicans screwed up. Again.

–

Copyright 2024 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

“Death to Israel!”

“Death to America!”

It sounds like something you’d hear chanted by hundreds of brainwashed young people in the streets of Tehran.

But as we saw this week, those are the chants of our own children on college campuses.

People can agree or disagree on what the Israeli military is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza to punish Hamas for its attack on Oct. 7, or what our State Department is doing wrong in the Middle East.

And am I seriously worried about Joe Biden’s weak, confused and destructive foreign policy in the Middle East – and everywhere else? Absolutely.

But what terrifies me the most – and saddens me the most – is that we are now seeing crowds of our young people calling for the death of America.

I am terrified of what’s going on in Minnesota, Michigan and Illinois.

Those Middle American places – what I’d be calling “Gaza West” if I were president – have become breeding grounds for what in my mind look like future homegrown terrorists.

We have generously allowed tens of thousands of people from the poorest and least free corners of the world to come to this country – and their children have grown up to hate America.

If you go to Gaza, it’s no surprise that you will find children being brought up by Hamas to hate Israel and America. It’s the political indoctrination kids also get in Iran and elsewhere in the Mideast.

But now here at home we are seeing that same hateful philosophy taught on our college campuses by professors who are brainwashing students to hate America while siding with terrorists who want to destroy Israel.

Is “Hate America First” widespread? No. Is it a mass movement like the Vietnam war protests? No.

Most American college kids are far more concerned about the records of their sports teams, midterms and the next beer fest than who’s dying in Israel, Gaza or anywhere else.

But teaching “Hatred of America 101” in Michigan, Minnesota, and Illinois is like a cancer – and cancer spreads.

Last week at a council meeting in Bakersfield, Calif., we saw a woman arrested for threatening to murder 18 members of the city council if they didn’t pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. She’s now out on bail, of course.

How long will it be before some crazed American college kid wearing a bomb walks into a schoolhouse or church and blows himself up to protest our government’s support of Israel?

I don’t think it will be more than a year or two, if not sooner, that we will see a homegrown suicide bomber.

When I hear a bunch of American college kids and adults who should know better chanting “Death to America,” I take it personally.

What they’re really saying is, “Death to me and you.” I’m an American. You’re an American. We’re all Americans – or used to be.

Last week I went to see the disturbing new movie “Civil War,” which is set in the near future when the U.S, is controlled by a dystopian dictatorship and has been torn apart by the bloody Second American Civil War.

The movie really terrified me. I know it’s only Hollywood. And I’m still an optimist about the future of America and the good sense of its people.

But based on the anger and hate we’re seeing today, it’s not a stretch to think that while I watched the violence and hatred depicted in “Civil War” I was looking at a preview of what’s coming soon to America.

–

Copyright 2024 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

I don’t blame the public for not wanting to put the Republican Party back in power in Washington.

As the GOP proved again in the House this week, it’s incapable of accomplishing anything of importance.

This week, the big vote was over the reauthorization of a reformed version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – aka, FISA.

FISA is the controversial act that permits U.S. spy agencies to gather foreign intelligence by collecting the communications of non-Americans located outside the country.

It’s considered by government officials to be a crucial tool for disrupting terror attacks, cyber intrusions and foreign espionage.

But, as we know, FISA was abused by Democrats, the FBI and the CIA to spy on members of the Trump campaign, subvert his presidency and violate the civil rights of American citizens.

House Speaker Johnson pushed for passage of the reformed FISA bill.

But Donald Trump said it deserved to be killed, and about 20 conservative Republican members who thought FISA’s powers should be weakened more severely joined with Democrats to block it.

Everyone agrees FISA is an important tool against terrorism and we will probably still get a compromise version of it by April 19.

But it’s up to the Republicans in the House to fix FISA so it can never again be used against our own people.

Ordinarily, that should not be too hard to do when you control the House, even by a few votes. But Republicans in Washington can’t even control their own members or unite behind their own leaders.

They just recently dumped Speaker Kevin McCarthy and replaced him with Speaker Mike Johnson.

Now Marjorie Taylor Greene is causing trouble again and talking about ousting Johnson as Speaker because he worked with Democrats to pass big spending bills.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party of California is doing the same stupid, suicidal things on a state level.

The state’s Republican Party barely exists today and its future looks worse.

The main problem is an electorate that keeps reelecting the same Democrat yahoos whose “progressive” ideas about criminal justice and $20 minimum wage laws have turned the state’s cities into dirty, dangerous homeless encampments.

Republicans are outnumbered by Democrats in California by almost 2 to 1 – 47% to 24%, with independents at 23%. So until we somehow double the number of our voters, the only way we Republicans can win a state-wide election is if we cheat.

Yet there is a small group within the state Republican Party that is trying to get rid of Republicans they don’t like.

The group recently invited me to speak at this year’s state convention. They said they wanted to expand their numbers so there would be more of them and less room in the party for Republicans they didn’t like – the moderate Kevin McCarthy kind.

When I said I wouldn’t help them with that idea, they said, “But isn’t that what you want?”

“No,” I said.

“You are the minority party and you think the way to win is to kick more people out and make it even smaller than it is today?”

I said to someone in the group, “I bet you’re going to tell me you learned from Ronald Reagan.”

“Yes,” he said.”

“No you didn’t,” I said.

I told him my father didn’t spend his time trying to get rid of people in the Republican Party. He embraced members. He might campaign against you in a primary, but he would never kick you out of the party.

Republicans at the state and national level are spending more time trying to get rid of their own people instead of embracing each other and uniting for victory.

We have an awful president and a lunatic Democrat Party that are handing Republicans a dozen juicy issues we can run on.

But if the Republican Party wants to win this fall, it has to get its own act together before it’s too late.

–

Copyright 2024 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

Lent is over – and I’m kind of sorry.

As a practicing Roman Catholic, I observe Lent every year.

The Britannica defines Lent as a solemn period of penitential preparation in Christian churches before Easter that provides 40 days for fasting and abstinence in imitation of Christ’s fasting in the wilderness before he began his public ministry.

“Giving up” something that you enjoy in your daily life is a widely known part of observing Lent. Usually, adults give up something like wine or red meat or golf.

But this year, I swore off social media.

For 40 days and nights, I stayed away from X, Facebook and the thousands of other digital temptations that make social media so addictive, aggravating and dangerous to our country’s mental and political health.

Some people say that swearing off social media was a brave thing to do — a real sacrifice. But it really wasn’t.

It was such a nice vacation from the daily madness of our country’s most important communications forum that I have barely gone back to it.

I realize now how little I missed in those 40 Internet-less days. All the big old problems we had in the world before Lent started didn’t get solved, plus we got some new ones.

We still have an open Southern border, high inflation and too much crime. We are still tangled up in bloody, costly and dangerous wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

We still have an incompetent and embarrassing president in the White House and a highly partisan Congress whose power is so evenly split nothing good can get done.

And in addition to still having a flood of illegal immigrants bankrupting our cities with their social welfare needs, we have a new crazy thing – squatters.

The housing laws in cities are so upside down, squatters are allowed to move into people’s vacant homes and stay there while the legal owners must spend two months in court to get them evicted.

I’m particularly disappointed by the failings of the Republican Party, which has a razor-thin majority in the House.

The GOP, which is held back by factions and rogue members like Marjorie Taylor Greene, spends more time trying to get rid of people within its own ranks than it does trying to fix America.

This week, for example, we have Greene calling for the ouster of Republican Speaker Mike Johnson over the Ukraine funding bill and charging him with being “a Democrat” comparable to Nancy Pelosi.

During my 40 days of preparing for Easter and “giving up” social media, I did a lot of praying for America – and a lot of worrying.

Where are we going? What are we doing to solve our problems? People are so angry and divided. What are we doing to work together?

Where is a leader who’ll make us feel better? Who’s offering an uplifting message all Americans can get behind?

What are we doing to make America a better place? My father was elected in 1980 in large part because he was an optimist. He made us all feel proud to be Americans. He looked forward to a brighter future for America, not backward to its faults.

None of the awful stuff that is wrecking our political discourse and tearing apart our social fabric is going to change anytime soon.

The election this fall won’t fix things. One party’s message is “Hate Trump.” The other party’s is “Hate Biden.”

Whichever one brings out the most hate mongers will win. But no matter who gets elected president, there’s likely to be riots in the streets.

We might be able to solve an economic problem or an immigration problem or two with an election. But what – or who – is going to solve the problem of America’s heart? And soul.

–

Copyright 2024 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

This week must have been especially rough for the people still living in the contaminated eastern Ohio town of East Palestine.

On Tuesday, only hours after the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore Harbor was knocked down by an out-of-control container ship, they had to watch President Biden come on national TV and promise to “move heaven and earth” to reopen the port and rebuild the bridge “as soon as humanly possible.”

They also had to see Biden pledge to have the federal government pay the entire cost of the accident and hear him say he plans to visit Baltimore as “quickly” as he can.

As extra punishment, sick and depressed people of East Palestine also had to watch Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg perform his annoying act at a one-hour press conference.

I can’t imagine how mad the nearly 5,000 people still left in East Palestine must have been after seeing Biden and Buttigieg rush to Baltimore’s rescue with all federal resources blazing.

Biden waited more than a year to visit them and feel their community’s pain after a train derailment on Feb. 3, 2023 started fires that poisoned their whole town with a cloud of toxic chemicals.

Baltimore’s fallen bridge is a major disaster that should be repaired as quickly as possible by the Biden administration and the federal government.

But so was repairing the daily lives of the victims of the train derailment in East Palestine.

For the last 14 months their lives have been in constant turmoil, their health has been in danger and their futures have been scientifically scary and uncertain.

They are still getting their homes tested for toxins, still wondering if the chemicals they inhaled or drank is the reason they are always sick or depressed.

Many East Palestinians want to leave but can’t sell their homes because their property values have been decimated, and their town is now an American Chernobyl.

Activists are arguing that the federal government needs to put an end to their suffering now, and they’re right.

They say the feds – i.e., Biden and his administration — should offer to buy everyone’s home, compensate people who want to move away, and, as was done at Love Canal and Camp Lejeune, pay for the medical costs of people who were exposed to toxic chemicals.

When everything is as fixed as it can be, the final bill should be sent to Norfolk Southern Railroad.

The people of East Palestine have every right to be angry at Biden and the shoddy way they’ve been treated by his government.

They’re victims of the worst kind of partisan politics.

They had the bad luck to be living in a red part of a red state – an Ohio county that went 71-26 for Donald Trump in 2020.

If they had been living in a Blue State like Pennsylvania, which is only three mile east, or Maryland, we know things would have been much different.

Biden and Buttigieg would have been seen by the whole country walking the polluted streets, farms and creek beds of East Palestine while the toxic fires still smoldered.

The Biden administration’s cold shoulder to Ohio’s Republicans and its bottomless concern for Maryland’s Democrats is a textbook example of cynical partisanship – not that the major media and their stable of liberal pundits noticed or cared.

Fake journalists like Chuck Todd and professional Trump haters like Morning Joe & Mika were too busy being distraught this week – in public – over NBC’s smart decision to hire ex-RNC boss Ronna McDaniel as a conservative commentator.

She would have made a nice Republican version of Jen Psaki or George Stephanopoulos – former Democrat Party hacks who now pass as TV pundits and journalists.

But Chuck and Joe – who pretend to be advocates of democracy and ideological diversity – went ape for four days until they got NBC’s cowardly executives to fire a person after four days because she might not agree with their partisan opinions 110% of the time.

Wake up, America.

–

Copyright 2024 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

You’d never expect a tax revolt to start in the blue California city of Oakland.

But a bunch of angry, over-taxed and under-protected local business people there have said, “Enough is enough.”

The owner of a restaurant has called on other Oakland small businesses to stop paying local taxes until their city starts doing what it should be doing – protecting them from a recent wave of robberies and thefts.

Big businesses like Tesla or Oracle can escape the madness and high taxes in California by moving to Texas, and they have.

But the poor guy who runs a pizza shop, gas station or a bar in Oakland or Los Angeles is trapped in a city while civilization and law and order have been breaking down around them.

Thanks to the bias and dishonesty of the TV networks and mainstream media, at least half the country has no idea just how bad things have gotten in West Coast cities like Oakland, Portland and Seattle.

Only Fox will regularly show their sidewalks lined for blocks with tents and strewn with used needles and human feces. Only Fox covers the financial strain tens of thousands of illegal immigrants are placing on their finances and police forces.

The ideologically perverse people in charge of our big cities in California and elsewhere have forgotten that the first job of any government is to protect us from being harmed by bad people who’d hurt us or take our stuff.

Democratic governments like the one in New York City are spending more time and money protecting and helping the people who are here illegally than they are on their own citizens.

They’re protecting squatters and homeless people living on sidewalks, not the homes and businesses of taxpayers.

In New York, while their city is going broke paying for their illegal “visitors’ ” food, hotel rooms and welfare benefits, government officials have kicked kids out of schools to make room for illegal immigrants.

Meanwhile, New York’s politicians and government attorneys are so evil, it will not surprise me if someday they try to seize Trump Tower and turn it into the Migrant Tower.

The tax revolt of small businesses in Oakland is only a spark so far, but it could become a ray of hope for people living in our battered cities.

If a few million other businesses and taxpayers catch the Oaklanders’ Tea Party spirit, the people in charge might get the message and the upside-down world we’ve been living in for the last five years might be turned right-side up again.

Shoplifters might be arrested and imprisoned for more than four hours again. Sidewalks might be cleared of homeless encampments again.

Police might be adequately funded and deployed again. People might even be able to get the cops to arrest squatters who have taken over their homes again.

Daylight carjackings and home robberies might be reduced dramatically and women might feel safe to go to the mall again without worrying that their jewelry or smart phones will be swiped.

Oakland’s talk of a tax revolt is an insurrection that might never spread to other cities in California and elsewhere.

But it’s an encouraging sign that the harmful “woke progressive policies” liberal Democrats have put into place in cities like New York, Los Angeles and Seattle may not last much longer.

–

Copyright 2024 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

Republicans are never going to impeach Joe Biden.

I wish more Republicans would beat that fact into their skulls.

Just as Democrats weren’t able to impeach Donald Trump because they didn’t control the Senate, Republicans are never going to impeach Biden for the same reason.

It doesn’t matter how corrupt Biden and his family are, how he has allowed 8 million illegal immigrants to invade our Southern border or how mentally out-of-it he is.

Biden will never be impeached and MAGA Republicans have already wasted far too much time and energy blustering about it.

It was always a political dead end for the GOP. Now it’s suicidal – a cliff that leads to another disastrous and embarrassing legislative failure for Republicans.

Wanting to impeach Biden at this point is also incredibly stupid. His poll numbers are in the toilet. He’s so obviously inept and demented even his partisan defenders and sycophants in the major liberal media are turning against him.

Why would Republicans ever want him to be replaced?

He’s the worst president in history. If they can’t defeat him in the fall, the party my father brought back from the dead might as well fold its tent and go the way of the Whigs.

I think most sensible Americans are tired of the tit-for-tat impeachment game. I know I am.

But I’m also tired of Republicans’ constantly railing about what they’re against and never telling us what they are for.

Yeah, yeah, if we watch Fox, we know how terrible Biden’s open border, out-of-control spending and foreign policy fiascoes are.

Trump tells us about it all the time. So does Fox and the conservative talk show people.

But most Americans never see or hear about the damage Biden and the Democrats in Washington and our big cities have done to the country in three short years.

It’s time for Republicans to go on offense.

Instead of focusing on Biden’s obvious failures, Republicans need to start telling us what they’re going to do to repair America – and then hammer their message home to the conservative Democrats and independents who need to hear it.

Remember New Gingrich’s brainchild, the “Contract with America”?

That was the Republican Party’s list of promises to voters in the mid-term election of 1994 that ended up giving the GOP control of the Senate and House for the first time in 40 years.

Republicans pledged to remove some regulations, cut taxes and pass a balanced budget amendment – and as soon as they took over Congress, that’s what they set out to do.

The “Contract with America” worked to get Republicans elected because it was clear, simple and specific.

Republicans today have to come up with a similar pledge this year. So where is their contract? What’s the GOP’s plan? Is there one? No one knows.

Republicans need to start telling us – without the usual political platitudes – how they’re going to reverse and repair the Biden administration’s deconstruction of America and make things better for all of us.

I’m not too optimistic.

The last time Republicans tried to do something big they made my taxes go up by removing the deduction for my state taxes. They also failed to fix health care and or immigration – things they’ve been failing at fixing for more than three decades.

The game is on. Both Trump and Biden have the delegates they need to win their nominations.

I don’t know if the Republican Party can actually tell us how they’re going to cut federal spending or fix the border crisis or bring peace to the Middle East and Ukraine.

But I do know that if they want to recapture Congress and the White House and save the country, it’s time to go on offense.

–

Copyright 2024 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

A miracle occurred Tuesday in California’s U.S. Senate primary race.

In a deep Blue state where Democrat voters outnumber Republicans 2-1, Steve Garvey, the former L.A. Dodger star, ran against three Democrats and came in a close second to Democrat Congressman Adam Schiff.

Garvey, a conservative Republican, finished behind Schiff in California’s crazy “jungle primary,” where voters are allowed to vote for any candidate regardless of party affiliation.

That means in the general election this fall Garvey gets to face off against Rep. Schiff, the heavy favorite to replace the late Dianne Feinstein in the U.S. Senate.

The important question now – for California and our broken and troubled country – is whether the Republican Party has the guts and brains to give Garvey the money and support he’ll need to pull off a second, much more important miracle in November.

Garvey, 74, is the best state-wide Republican prospect to come along in decades.

He has never held public office, but it looks like he knows how to win a tough fight.

In the primary the odds were stacked heavily against him in every way.

He only entered the race in October, took out no TV ads, staged no major events and raised only $2 million compared to the $30 million Schiff blew on his campaign.

Though he has confessed to voting for Donald Trump twice, Garvey focused his primary campaign on sensible, down-the-middle fastball things like quality-of-life issues, education and public safety.

Garvey’s chances of beating Schiff and getting in the U.S. Senate are slim.

But as he said in his victory speech on Tuesday night, it’s the first game of a double-header and there are still a lot of innings to play.

Garvey’s win was great, but it scares the hell out of me to think what the people in charge of the Republican Party in Washington and California will do about it.

I’m afraid they’ll do what they normally do in California in an election year – immediately give up and ignore the state except when they come out here looking for donor money.

The GOP has people who work in the California Republican Party, the national committee and in the Senate who are supposed to help Republican candidates win senate seats. That mainly means raising lots of money for people like Garvey.

But the party won’t get behind candidates in California because they assume from the get-go that it’s a loss cause. Of course, when you assume something’s already a lost cause, it usually becomes one.

It’s imperative for the country that the GOP regains control of the Senate in 2025. That means Republicans have to fight extra hard to win Senate elections on Nov. 5, 2024.

In California Republicans have a potential winner in Garvey.

Both he and Schiff have wide name recognition in the state and across the USA.

But Garvey made his fame the honest way – as an all-star first baseman.

Schiff – whom I’m sorry to say has represented me and the rest of Burbank in the House for something like 23 years — earned his national fame as the Democrats’ all-star Washington liar.

During President Trump’s years in office he spent more time on CNN and MSNBC lying his butt off about the “Russia Hoax” than he did doing his job in Congress.

He’s a potential loser – a bum with a bad political record in California. For 23 years he’s done nothing in Congress and he has been a star player for the party that has turned parts of the state into a Third World Country.

A good slogan that might work for Garvey against Schiff in the general election is “Make California Great Again.”

After finishing second in Tuesday’s primary, Garvey said he felt like he did when he hit his famous walk-off home run for the San Diego Padres against the Cubs in the 1984 National League Championship Series.

If the Republican Party does the right thing and supports his Senate campaign, he might shock the country with another walk-off homer in November.

–

Copyright 2024 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

OK, Nikki Haley.

Sing along with me, the Republican Party and the great Kenny Rogers:

You’ve got to know when to hold ’em,
know when to fold ’em,
Know when to walk away,
know when (NOT) to run.

It’s long past time for you to drop out of the race for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination.

You’ve been called repeatedly and you’ve still got a losing hand.

Donald Trump has humiliated your political butt in primaries across the U.S. But you still don’t know when to throw in your cards and just go away.

Ron DeSantis was smart enough to get out of the primary race before he made a fool of himself.

He knows he still has a future in the GOP, as governor of Florida or maybe even as Trump’s vice president.

But you are still busy burning your political bridges to nowhere.

When you were in that terrible Republican presidential primary debate last fall, I said you looked like you were doing an impression of a mad housewife, arguing with Sen. Tim Scott about drapes.

You changed, as I hoped you would, but it was for the worst.

Now you’re apparently running an “I told you so” campaign.

You want to be able to wake up this Nov. 6 and tell the rest of us Republicans, “ See? I told you so. Trump was going to lose. And you still didn’t vote for me?!”

But what you’re really doing is making sure you’ll never have another position in Republican politics – anywhere.

You were a phenomenal United Nations ambassador for Trump and a great governor of South Carolina.

But by dragging out your hopeless campaign and refusing to quit the primary, you’re throwing away your legacy and political future.

You know you have no hope of winning the presidency. You couldn’t even win a primary in your own state.

You lost Michigan this week and on Super Tuesday on March 5 you will lose every primary in 15 states.

Maybe on March 6 you’ll finally wake up, look in the mirror and suddenly realize that Americans would rather have a president who might be behind bars than you.

Maybe instead of asking what that says about Americans, you’ll ask yourself, “What’s that say about me?”

The rest of us might also ask what do your back-to-back humiliations in the primaries say about the sanity of your donors?

Your biggest donor, one of the zillionaire Koch brothers, woke up, saw the cards you’re betting with and bailed on you.

Face it, Nikki, someone running for president who is counting on the guy you’re running against being in jail is not a good look.

And what makes you think that if Trump was thrown in solitary tomorrow America’s voters would choose you?

It’d be a free-for-all at the Republican National Convention but the party would choose anyone who’s still breathing over you.

I get it that a Republican nominee, whoever it is, will need Democrat votes to win the presidency. I’ve been there, seen that.

But the Democrats who crossed party lines and voted for you in the primaries so far wouldn’t vote for Trump this fall if their party nominated a convicted serial killer.

If Trump fell over dead tomorrow, would the Republican Party support you? Not a chance. A lot of other people would jump in the race and you would be trampled.

So Nikki, please, face the Kenny Rogers music.

You’ve blown your present and your future. It’s so sad, Gavin Newsom is now telling everyone you’re the best surrogate Biden and the Democrats have.

The Republican Party and its members don’t want you to be the nominee, no matter what.

It’s time to fold your losing hand, cash in your chips and go home to Carolina.

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Copyright 2024 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.