Cagle World

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

Let’s go way back to 1976.

Gerald Ford was the sitting Republican president.

Jimmy Carter of Georgia was going to beat him in the fall.

And Ronald Reagan’s primary campaign to win the Republican Party’s presidential nomination was in deep doodoo.

My father had lost seven primaries in a row to Ford. Most Republicans in Congress were backing President Ford – even Sen. Barry Goldwater, the conservative candidate my father supported in 1964 with his famous “A Time for Choosing” speech.

At one point in the spring of 1976 my father was in his plane on an airport tarmac.

His campaign had no money left to buy jet fuel. He needed a political miracle, a way to live for another day and stay in the primary game.

Lo and behold, at the darkest hour, the angel who came to his rescue was Jesse Helms, the super-conservative Republican senator from North Carolina.

With the backing of Helms and his strong political organization, my father won the North Carolina primary in March, picked up momentum and beat Ford in 23 more primaries.

Then he nearly won the nomination at the contested Republican convention with 1,078 delegates to Ford’s 1,121.

My father was asked by Ford to speak at the end of the convention, which he did as a way to preserve party unity and show his support for Ford.

But it was also a brilliant personal political move because my father’s speech also served as a launching pad to help him win the 1980 GOP nomination and ultimately the presidency.

Without Jesse Helms’ support, my father might have faded away by 1980 and there never would have been a President Reagan.

Likewise, but on a more negative note for the country’s health, in 2020 there might never have been a President Biden if South Carolina congressman James Clyburn hadn’t come to his rescue during the Democrat primaries.

In the run-up to the South Carolina primary Biden’s candidacy was on life support. His party was fractured and in disarray and President Trump looked like a sure winner in the fall.

But then Rep. Clyburn stepped up and called on his state’s black voters to get out and vote for Joe – and they came out in force.

Biden won the South Carolina primary and started down the road to winning the Democrat nomination and the White House.

In the 1976 and 2020 primaries my father and Joe Biden were both saved just in time because angels came to their rescue out of nowhere.

But when I look at the 2024 primary, there are no angels ready to fly in and save Ron DeSantis, keep him in the race until the end and earn him a prime-time speaking spot at the GOP national convention this summer.

DeSantis is and has been a great governor of Florida. But he has zero chance of beating Trump for the nomination.

DeSantis’ road to the White House in 2024 is already gone and all the bridges are down. He’s spent more money than anyone, but he’s gone backwards.

If he competes in the New Hampshire primary race, he’ll be crushed there by Trump just as he was in Iowa. If he goes to South Carolina, he’ll be crushed again.

By staying in the primary race any longer, DeSantis will only hurt the GOP and close the door for himself in 2028.

If he ever hopes to be a viable Republican presidential candidate, he should endorse Donald Trump for president and go back to Florida.

Then, after being the best damn Republican governor he can be for the next four years, he should do what he should have done all along – run for president in 2028.

Nikki Haley obviously is not going anywhere this year, either. If she ever wants to run for president again, she should do what DeSantis should do – quit now.

–

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 heard there was another Republican presidential debate this week.

I didn’t watch it – I’ve suffered enough, thanks.

I don’t care how few political masochists tuned in to CNN Wednesday night to watch Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis engage in another meaningless debate.

I don’t care who the big-shot media think “won” or “lost.”

Twelve hours later, it already doesn’t matter one bit.

Everyone knows the ultimate winner was the same guy who won all the previous GOP debates and was appearing simultaneously Wednesday night at a town hall on Fox – Donald Trump.

As we’ve known for a year, unless he drops dead, Trump will be the GOP’s 2024 nominee no matter what the liberal media says or hopes or tries to make happen.

On Thursday morning I read something in what’s left of USA Today that could have been written after every Republican presidential primary debate so far.

Instead of “robust policy discussions” and articulating their positions, a political science professor said, Haley and DeSantis “focused a lot on attacking each other.”

Sadly, attacking each other is what Republicans are focusing on a lot these days.

At this point in the GOP primary race, with Republican candidates ripping into Trump and each other like a pack of hyenas, my father must be turning over in his grave.

His 11th Commandment was that a Republican should never speak ill of a fellow Republican.

But that’s all Haley and DeSantis did in Iowa, where they argued like nasty little kids on a playground and traded “You’re a liar” slaps with “You’re a bigger liar” slaps.

Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives, where the GOP holds a precariously small and shrinking majority, Republicans still can’t stop squabbling with each other.

The most conservative faction – the tiny Freedom Caucus – is after the head of the new House speaker, Mike Johnson, for reaching a $1.66 trillion budget deal with Sen. Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats to keep the federal government from shutting down in two weeks.

Dumping the Republican speaker? We’ve just gone down that dumb dead-end road and the Freedom Caucus was who led us there.

As I said on Newsmax this week, conservative Republicans in the House better wise up, do the math and understand the reality that they are a minority within their party.

They are never going to get everything they – and we – want in Congress or Washington until they start electing more Republicans to the House and Senate.

Controlling both the House and Senate is the only way Republicans will ever be able to push a “conservative” budget through Congress.

Then, if the White House is still in the hands of the people who are controlling Joe Biden, Biden can veto the Republican budget and take the heat from the public for closing down the federal government.

In the real world he lives in, Johnson made the best bargain he could.

If the government would have had to shut down because he couldn’t get a budget deal, Democrats and the media would have blamed Republicans, as they always do, and voters would punish the GOP in the fall.

Republicans have to stop their intra-party fighting and learn to unite like the Democrats do.

If Joe Biden is their nominee, every Democrat on Earth – or under the Earth – will vote for him for president in November. Several times, if necessary.

Instead of looking at things to snipe at each other about, Republicans have to realize that winning in November is more crucial than anything right now – to the party and, more important, to the country.

I can come up with some reasons not to like Haley or DeSantis or Trump for president – any conservative Reagan Republican can.

But the absolute worst Republican on the planet is better than the best Democrat on the planet.

And the Republican Party better figure that out this year 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

It’s a brand new year.

But it’s beginning to feel like I’m stuck in the movie “Groundhog Day.”

Nothing ever seems to change.

We still have two bloody wars, a border invasion, a growing $34 trillion national debt and, sadly, we’re still living in a divided country of haters.

You turn on the news and everyone’s still angry. People are still not talking to one another. Blind partisanship is everywhere. There’s so little to feel good or optimistic about in Washington or around the world.

President Biden has already started his 2024 reelection campaign of divisiveness, lies and hate.

Like a tape on a loop, he’s still talking crazy about the fake insurrection of Jan. 6, the alleged dangers of rampant white supremacy and the threat that “Dictator” Trump and his mad MAGA Republicans supposedly pose to democracy.

With Biden, the Democrats and the left-wing media splitting the people into smaller and smaller silos of hate, it’s no wonder everyone’s at each other’s throat.

I don’t know how families survived their Christmas gatherings. I didn’t see the death toll, but I could hear the bitter arguing from coast to divided coast.

Out here in Los Angeles, for the second year in a row, a great local restaurant I go to all the time had to scrap the annual Christmas dinner it used to throw for its best customers.

So many people were calling the owner and telling him they would not sit at a table with certain people they felt were politically unacceptable that he just stopped the dinner.

I get it that Fox hates Biden and MSNBC hates Trump. But it makes me sad to have watched our everyday politics devolve into something so hateful.

We’ve had many fearful social and economic problems in my 78-year lifetime.

But until recently – until the Democrats, the liberal media and rogues at the top of the FBI declared their dirty partisan war on Donald Trump and his presidency in 2015 – both parties in Washington always managed to be civil toward each other and tried to work together.

We’ve always had professional haters in both parties, but they were the crazies on the fringes.

Even if we thought Obama, the Bushes, Bill Clinton or the opposing party in power were incompetent or bad for the country, we weren’t willing to see everything go to hell if it meant the guys we hated were hurt politically.

Now we live in a political world that runs on hate. It’s become OK to be a hater.

Haters used to be frowned upon in politics. Now if you don’t hate your opponent with enough enthusiasm or venom, people think there’s something wrong with you.

Hating has become the national pastime any amateur can play. People you’ve never met before will say to you, “Oh, my God! You’re for Trump or Biden?!”

It’s my hope going into this New Year that the American people will start talking to each other again, not at each other, so we can fix what’s broken in the country before it gets worse and unfixable.

But it’s already looking like my dream will never become real.

I don’t see anyone in the Divided States of America – in or out of politics – who could stop the hate, unite the country and work in a bipartisan way to bring sanity to important issues like immigration, the federal budget and the economy.

It won’t be Trump, Biden, RFK Jr. or anyone else in 2024. Whoever it will be may not even be born yet, but I’m an optimist.

In the 1980s there was a guy who spoke to all Americans, didn’t run his campaigns on hate and had a hopeful, upbeat vision to make the country great again. It’s why he swept 44 states in 1980 and 49 in 1984.

And by the way, as I reminded everyone in a tweet during this week’s partisan flap over the president of Harvard resigning, that guy was a graduate of little Eureka College, not the Ivy League.

–

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

Having a happy New Year this year won’t be easy in California.

The state is a fiscal, social and economic train wreck that just keeps on wrecking.

As we roll into 2024, we’ve learned we’re looking at a projected budget deficit of $68 billion.

The Los Angeles Times explained the cause of California’s huge shortfall this week in its usual biased way – without pinning blame on the Democrats in Sacramento whose policies are responsible for it.

The deficit is not just because the state’s tech economy has cooled, unemployment is up and state income tax revenues are projected to fall by 25 percent. Or because gazillionaires like Elon Musk have taken their big companies and fortunes to Texas.

The experts in the Los Angeles Times pointed to another important contribution to the budget shortfall – more and more well-off, well-educated, ordinary Californians are leaving the state.

The escapees – the middle-class people who average about $150,000 a year – have finally had it with California’s higher taxes and permanently higher cost of living.

And, though the Los Angeles Times article does not mention it, the escapees have also had it with the general decline of the California Dream.

The state’s $68 billion shortfall is bound to grow even larger next year when a wave of costly new illegal immigrants arrives and a few hundred thousand more Californians flee to income-tax-free states like Florida, Texas and Tennessee.

But don’t worry, a mere $68 billion in red ink won’t stop California’s Democrats from spending more money than they have.

It’s the way they roll.

I remember what happened way back in 1966, right after my father became governor after defeating incumbent Pat Brown in a landslide.

On his way out the door after cleaning out his desk, Brown’s budget director stuck his head in my father’s office.

“By the way,” he said, “We’re spending a million dollars more a day than we’re bringing in.” Then he left.

My father just sat there, shocked. He had no idea. No one did.

Ultimately, because the state constitution says the budget has to be balanced, my father

Was forced to do something he never would have done otherwise – raise taxes.

But then he did something else. A few years later, his budget guy came in and said, “Governor, we have an issue.”

“What is it,” my father said.

“We have a surplus. We need to know what to do with a budget surplus.”

My dad simply said, “Well, give it back.”

“We don’t have a way to do that,” the budget guy said. “No one has ever done that before.”

My dad told the budget guy to find a way to give the money back to the taxpayers who had overpaid and given the state a surplus, and that’s what happened.

If you want to know the difference between a Red State and Blue State, that’s a pretty good example.

Of course, what my dad did almost 60 years ago is not how things work in Sacramento today.

We’re living in a one-party state run by Democrats who, whenever they get a surplus, yell “Windfall!” and spend and tax us even more.

It’s really sad to see what’s happened to California.

In the 1960s and 1970s it truly was the Golden State. Everything the Beach Boys said about it was true.

But it wasn’t just the sunshine and the beaches that made California a paradise.

Back then it was America’s model state. It had a sensible government, the best infrastructure and its economy was wide open, healthy and growing.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans came out to California from dull or dying places like Des Moines and Pittsburgh every year. They lived better, happier, more prosperous lives – and never dreamed of leaving.

Every year I look forward to the New Year. I don’t feel too good about what 2024 will bring for my wrecked state. But there’s always hope that the people still here will wake up and put California back on track.

Happy New Year, everyone.

–

Copyright 2023 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 America said its final goodbye to Sandra Day O’Connor.

The first woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court was eulogized at Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday by President Joe Biden and Chief Justice John Roberts.

Justice O’Connor was appointed in 1981 by my father, served nearly a quarter century and died Dec. 1 at age 93.

As Chief Justice John Roberts said, she was “a strong, influential, iconic jurist. Her leadership shaped the legal profession, making it obvious that judges are both women and men.”

Most people know about Justice O’Connor making history as the first woman justice.

But few people know the story behind her selection and the role my sister Maureen played in making it happen.

Even Justice O’Connor didn’t know the backstory until I made a point of telling it to her when she visited the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library out here in Simi Valley.

The deal my father made with Maureen took place during the 1980 Republican primaries when he was running hard for the party’s presidential nomination.

Maureen was closely involved in the Reagan campaign, giving speeches around the country to Republican women’s groups and local party officials.

There was a big problem with her, however.

At the time she was a fiery and ardent advocate of the ERA – the controversial Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution that would have guaranteed equality of rights under the law for all persons regardless of sex.
But my father, Republicans and conservatives in general were strongly opposed to the ERA.

The brain trust of my father’s campaign – Lyn Nofziger, Michael Deaver and Stuart Spencer – became seriously worried about Maureen’s public support for the ERA and called her in for a meeting with her father.

They told Maureen her father could not have her on the trail campaigning for him and the ERA at same time and wanted to know what could be done to get her off the ERA trail.

Now Maureen was a smart and tough cookie. She knew how to play the game to get what she wanted.

At the meeting her father was sitting in front of her, to her left, and Nofziger, Deaver and Spencer were sitting to her right.

She turned to the trio and said, “If you can get your candidate to guarantee me that his first Supreme Court appointment will be a woman, I’ll stop campaigning for the ERA.”

Their candidate – her father – said, “Done. Deal.”

Maureen turned around to her father, who had his hand out. They shook hands, agreeing that if he got elected his first nominee to the Supreme Court would be a woman.

The deal was made between Maureen and her father, not anyone else. And it was done solely to get her to stop campaigning for the ERA.

Maureen kept her part of the bargain. But later that year at the GOP national convention in Detroit she had a little fun at the expense of her father’s handlers.

She had some campaign buttons made – some small and some large – that had “E-R-A” written on them in big letters and passed them out to her friends and family.

I had a small one. My wife Colleen had a small one. And Maureen wore a huge one.

The Reagan campaign staff bosses were worried that she had gone back on her word and was supporting the ERA again.

But she hadn’t flipped. If you got up really close to the button and read the tiny print under the letters “E-R-A,” you got the joke.

It said simply, “Elect Reagan Anyway.”

And that’s the backstory about how my late sister Maureen used her smarts to get Ronald Reagan to put the first woman on the Supreme Court – who turned out to be the great Sandra Day O’Connor.

P.S. It’s because I know the O’Connor backstory and other backstories from my father’s time in office that the people who run the Reagan Library kiddingly refer to me sometimes as “The Prequel.”

Merry Christmas.

–

Copyright 2023 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

We’ve got Israel looking for billions.

We’ve got Ukraine begging for more billions.

And the president and Democrats can’t wait another day to cut fat checks for both countries.

Thank God the Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives are telling Democrats that before we dish out money to help Ukraine and Israel defend their borders, we have to defend ours first.

Naturally, Democrats don’t want anything to do with that sensible deal.

They’re calling it outrageous. They’re saying Republicans are bad guys who don’t care about dead Israelis or who support Russia and not Ukraine.

But wait a minute.

Thanks to the Democrats, our Southern border isn’t even a border anymore. It’s become the wide-open front door of America that 10,000 people from a hundred countries want to pass through – every day.

About 8,500 are being allowed in – checked in, really, to Hotel America – every day. Then they are quickly scattered around to cities like Chicago and New York, where they’re causing social and economic problems that have become so costly even the biased national media can no longer ignore them.

Republicans in the House cannot allow the Democrats and President Biden to get the money they want for Ukraine and Israel now with the promise that they’ll close the Southern border later.

Republicans – and the country – got suckered down that crooked Democrat road in 1986 with the Immigration Reform and Control Act.

Known as the Simpson–Mazzoli Act, it granted amnesty to millions of immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally and gave them a path to citizenship.

My father agreed to sign that act into law in exchange for a promise made by the Democrats running Congress that they would close the border.

Thirty seven years and at least 12 million illegal immigrants later, we’re still waiting for the Democrats to keep their promise.

This president has irresponsibly opened the border wide and invited in all the citizens of the world.

So many people are pouring in that they can’t be properly vetted. We don’t know if they’re criminals, plus thousands of single young men are coming from countries that hate us like Iran and China.

God knows how many terrorists have sneaked in – which explains why FBI director Christopher Wray is saying the threat of terrorism today is at the “blinking-red” level.

It’s no wonder every morning when I wake up it feels like Sept. 10, 2001. I cross my fingers and pray we won’t suffer another major attack by terrorists.

I believe most of the immigrants coming here today from Mexico, Central America and God-knows-where else are good and decent people who’ll make fine Americans – even most of the got-aways.

It’s true that to get here they broke or took advantage of our poorly written or badly enforced immigration laws. But they came for the same good reasons our forefathers did – to improve their economic lives and enjoy our freedoms.

We don’t hear enough about the successful immigrants who came here illegally decades ago, but I run into them all the time.

For example, the guy who put in new counter tops for our house in 2006 was sneaked across the border as a child in the trunk of a Ford Grenada because his parents didn’t want him to grow up in Mexico.

He grew up, was given amnesty by the Simpson-Mazzoli Act and became a premier stone worker – and a good American.

You can’t blame today’s tsunami of illegal immigrants for taking advantage of our broken immigration policy, which has been a bipartisan failure for decades and has been deliberately blown up by Biden’s insane open-door policies.

Republicans are now in a position to end our immigration nightmare. But they have to be tough with the Democrats. It’s been 37 years since Simpson-Mazzoli. It’s time to shut the damn door.

–

Copyright 2023 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

Monica Crowley summed up the sad state of the Republican Party perfectly this week in a single tweet.

Following the House’s 311-114 vote last week to expel the lying GOP weirdo and future criminal defendant George Santos, she wrote:

“Republicans bounced George Santos.

“Kevin McCarthy is leaving this month.

“Bill Johnson is retiring.

“This will leave the GOP with a ONE-SEAT majority.

“Democrats would never do their voters like this.

“These people don’t give a bleep about us or the country. In fact, they revel in sticking it to us and the country.

“Disgusting.”

Disgusting is the right word to describe what Republicans are doing. Pathetic, stupid and hapless apply, too.

Republicans increasingly look like a political party that’s trying to commit suicide – and take the country with it.

They are in the process of proving – yet again – that they are incapable of draining the horrible federal swamp they’ve allowed Democrats to create in Washington.

Given the economic and social mess the Democrats have made in just three years, the GOP should be riding high today and counting on a rout in next year’s elections.

Democrats have not only stuck the country with the most incompetent and apparently corrupt president in our lifetimes, they’ve got us entangled in two wars and thrown open our Southern border so wide they’re letting in ten thousand illegal immigrants a day.

By now, if the Republican Party had even a shred of competency, it should have a 100-seat majority in the House and be in control of the Senate

Instead, the party Ronald Reagan loved but would barely recognize is looking at the possibility of a one-seat majority in the only part of the federal government that can prevent Democrats from damaging the country even more..

What if some House Republican gets really sick or dies next month? We’d have a 50-50 split. Then what could the GOP do to block the Democrats – besides nothing?

The Republicans who are leaving the House say they are retiring. But my wife Colleen is more accurate when she calls them “quitters.”

What they’re doing is like the entire offensive line of a team that’s about to play in the Super Bowl suddenly saying, “We quit.”

What Republicans in Congress desperately need is a real leader with good conservative ideas and a lot of spunk to take on the liberal media.

They haven’t had one of those since Newt Gingrich rose up in the House in the mid-‘90s and pushed his agenda to reduce the size of government, cut taxes and reform welfare.

The GOP’s “leader” in Congress today is Sen. Mitch McConnell, an ancient political tactician with zero ideas and zero public appeal who is barely half a step ahead of bumbling Joe Biden.

A major problem with Republican politicians of our era is that so many of them are only interested in becoming a top dog – a governor or president. They aren’t interested in getting elected to Congress, state houses and city councils.

Democrats are much smarter.

They understand they don’t have to be the governor or president to get their way. All they have to do is win control of the House or Senate or state legislatures.

Winning a governorship or presidency is just a cherry on top that lets them control the entire government – so they can wreck places like California with their bad policies.

It’s become very clear that there are precious few Republicans in Congress now who have the brains, backbones or leadership skills to save us from the Democrats.

If we want a Red Wave next year, it’s going to be up to voters to elect dozens of principled conservatives who know how to lead and fight, not quit.

The scary thing is, I can’t point to a single Republican in Congress right now who’d make a good model for the kind of men and women we will so badly need.

–

Copyright 2023 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

Excuse me for skipping the great debate Thursday night between the governors of Florida and California.

I had better things to do than watch a meaningless political debate between Red State hero Ron DeSantis and Blue State hero Gavin Newsom.

Anyway, I’ve already suffered enough political pain in the last few months.

I’ve watched what seemed like a dozen presidential primary debates – Republican Party exhibition games, really – starring a bunch of second- and third-stringers who haven’t made a dent in the lead of its future 2024 candidate Donald Trump.

And now I was supposed to watch a made-up-for-TV studio wrestling match between two governors who will not be running for president in 2024? No thanks.

I didn’t really need to watch the debate.

Writing this on Thursday afternoon, I can easily predict Thursday night’s winners and losers: Red State people will say DeSantis won and Blue State people and the liberal media will say Newsom won.

But both governors have little to gain by engaging each other now.

Even if DeSantis humiliates Newsom tonight, it won’t help him vault past Trump and win the Republican Party nomination for 2024.

I don’t know what he would gain or why his campaign advisers think meeting face-to-face with Newsom was a good idea.

What are the pluses for DeSantis? To prove Red States do better than Blue States? It’s true, but only people in Red States will believe that.

In any case, DeSantis is already loved in the Red States and he’s proved he’s been a great Republican governor who’s turned a purple state deep red.

But as we’ve said here before, he’s also proved he’s a lousy debater. Why prove it again?

He knows how to defend himself well from attacks by the Florida media. But when he’s in a lineup of Republican candidates on a debate stage he’s been stiff, has had a hard time competing and at times has almost seemed to disappear.

Meanwhile, while DeSantis has been wasting time prepping for an unnecessary debate with Newsom, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has been kicking his butt in the Iowa primary polls.

As for slick Gavin Newsom, he won’t get much benefit from winning tonight’s debate even if he leaves his fellow presidential wannabe in tears.

His twisting road to the White House bypasses DeSantis and goes right through the office door of VP Kamala Harris.

His easiest shot at moving into the Biden administration would be for the Democrat Party bosses to have him replace Harris as VP and have Harris hop over to the Attorney General’s desk after Merrick Garland retires.

I haven’t heard anyone put forth that clever scheme, but I’m not betting it won’t happen.

With Biden becoming more mentally incapacitated by the day in front of the whole world, putting Newsom in the VP spot would be an astute move by Democrats.

Newsom would allay the Democrats’ fear of the 25th Amendment being invoked to remove a re-elected President Biden because they would have someone with a brain who could step in for him instead of Harris, who has no brains.

So, it’s pretty clear that neither DeSantis nor Newsom will benefit much from their “Great Debate.”

The only sure winners will be Trump (again), moderator Sean Hannity, who put the contrived match together, and Fox News, which might score higher than usual ratings.

That’s why instead of enduring another forgettable political debate that ends in a 0-0 tie, I’ll be enjoying the Seahawks-Cowboys game on Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime.

At least I know there will be a clear winner.

–

Copyright 2023 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

Here in sunny Los Angeles, it’s raining.

It’s too bad it didn’t rain real hard last Saturday.

It might have helped firefighters put out the enormous fire under the 10 Freeway near downtown before the heat weakened the pillars and forced the highway to be closed.

The fire – which officials now say was arson – erupted near a village of homeless people living in their colorful tents, trailers and sleeping bags.

It was fed by huge stacks of wood pallets that were illegally stored in the underpass.

Gov. Gavin Newsom promised the freeway will only be closed for the next month or so while repairs are made 24/7.

I’m sure that’s good news for the 300,000 drivers who were using the highway each day.

Gov. Newsom would never dare say that “houseless” persons might have had anything to do with last Saturday’s inferno. He acted like the fire was an act of nature. A lightning strike, or maybe climate change.

He didn’t seem worried about the fate of the homeless people displaced by the freeway fire.

They were a small part of the city’s 70,000-plus homeless population, and they’ll be able to easily find other underpasses and sidewalks.

That happy ending might not happen for thousands of homeless citizens who suddenly disappeared from downtown San Francisco during the last two weeks.

They were living happily in their sidewalk homesteads until China’s Xi Jinping and other leaders came to town for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

The summit has been in the international news this week for several reasons, most of them embarrassing to the United States.

The good news was President Biden met face-to-face with Xi for four hours of serious talk without needing a nap.

The bad news was later, to the horror of the State Department, Biden referred to Xi in a speech as a “dictator,” which was probably the most truthful gaffe Biden has made in years.

The other big news from San Francisco was the mystery of the missing homeless people.

Seemingly overnight, many of the city’s permanent sidewalk population disappeared. So did their drug zones, tents, sleeping bags, junk piles, used needles and feces.

City crews power-hosed sidewalks, erased graffiti, painted murals and colorful crosswalk markings, installed planter boxes with wildflowers and erected fences around the Moscone Center where the summit was being held.

Presto, San Francisco suddenly looked clean, safe and civilized again. It looked like a place tourists from Iowa and dictators from China would feel comfortable visiting.

City hall’s cosmetic overhaul wasn’t anything new. Other American cities have cleaned up themselves in advance of the Pope’s visit, a Super Bowl game or the Olympics.

San Francisco’s sweeping of its unsafe and unsightly streets and sidewalks was so dramatic and quick that even the liberal media noticed, and asked Newsom for an explanation.

Newson, who’s been busy pretending not to be running for president, actually admitted that, yes, it was true that the city he used to be mayor of cleaned up its act for the benefit of Xi and the other leaders.

It was like when you tidy up your house when you invite guests for dinner, he claimed.

I don’t know if the voters of San Francisco will ever wake up, smell the BS and dethrone the Democrats who’ve been wrecking their city for decades.

For 30 years Newsom and his ilk spent hundreds of millions and couldn’t solve the city’s homeless problem. Then Dictator Xi came to town, and a week later a thousand flower boxes bloomed.

No one seems to know where San Francisco’s homeless people went. And so far, I haven’t seen the media demanding to know if they were flown to New York City, spent the week camped out on Newsom’s estate, or what.

But San Francisco’s miracle gave me an idea for any city in America that wants to quickly solve its homeless problem.

Get the mayor to invite Dictator Xi for dinner.

–

Copyright 2023 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 know how sometimes when you’re going 70 mph and suddenly a stupid fly in the car starts bothering the hell out you?

You know how it keeps buzzing around your head, landing on your windshield, and you have to open the window and try to shoo it out without crashing your car?

Well, Vivek Ramaswamy reminded me of that fly during the Republican primary debate Wednesday night.

The brash 38-year-old easily stole the show in the third Trump-less contest.

And he was dead right on a couple issues – especially when he attacked the liberal media and told the Republican National Committee to fire its loser-in-chief Ronna McDaniels.

Much of the time Vivek was like that fly – annoying.

But he said out loud what Republicans everywhere are saying – We’re tired of losing elections.

The debate came a day after disappointing losses for Republicans, who saw their candidates and/or issues lose to Democrats in Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia.

What happened in Virginia on Tuesday was a perfect example of how hapless Republicans are.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin, the terrific conservative who surprisingly won in 2021, worked overtime to try to get Republicans to hold on to their majority in the state House and take over the Senate.

But he not only failed to win the Senate, he lost the House and pretty much wrecked any chance of ever getting his policies passed.

Youngkin was seen as a possible 2028 Republican candidate, but he totally blew it.

He should have appealed to the same angry parents that voted him into office because of the way school boards were mistreating or ignoring them.

Instead, he pushed a strict abortion bill, spooking suburban women and causing them to come out in droves to vote against it and Republican candidates.

The losses in the states this week, which had nothing to do with the McDaniels and the RNC, may not mean a thing for the 2024 presidential election. But it was fresh evidence that the GOP has no clear message and no strategy.

Joe Biden is probably the worst and weakest president in recent U.S. history. Even Democrats and the liberal media know it.

But Republicans better pray Donald Trump stays as healthy as a college quarterback – and out of jail – because the debates are showing the second-stringers aren’t ready to play in the big game.

For example, the only people who had their answers on abortion right at the debate were Nikki Haley and Chris Christie. Both nailed it.

They said that striking down Roe and having abortion laws set by the states is what the GOP fought for for half a century, and working for a strict federal abortion law now was not just suicidal politics, it was impossible because it could never get 60 votes in the U.S. Senate.

As for debate, NBC gets points for putting on the fairest and best one so far.

Hardly any crosstalk. The moderators asked each candidate the same questions and gave them time to answer. And the questions didn’t sound like they were written by Keith Olbermann.

As for the debaters, Wednesday’s show could have been a rerun.

I love Ron DeSantis – as governor of Florida. But he’s a lousy debater who’s not getting any better.

Nikki Haley was probably the smartest person on the stage – especially on abortion. She’s so tough, if Trump wins next year, he should make her Secretary of Defense.

Tim Scott I feel sorry for. He’s a great senator but he comes off like a preacher caught in a bar fight.

Chris Christie isn’t going anywhere, but he actually answers the questions he’s asked. Plus he scolded the other candidates for their petty attacks on each other when the real enemy is Joe Biden.

And Vivek, the fly in your car that keeps landing on your forehead, had his moments.

But it was obvious again who won the night – Donald Trump. He always wins when he’s not there.

–

Copyright 2023 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.