Cagle World

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

It’s a good thing Donald Trump doesn’t own one of the Super Bowl teams.

If he did, people would already be rioting in the streets of Las Vegas, demanding that the NFL call off next weekend’s big game.

The liberal media would be cheering on the rioters, as usual.

CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, the Washington Post – they and their fellow Trump Haters in the media would be calling for the game not to be televised or at least moved to Moscow.

The Kansas City Trumpers? No way.

In 2024 America, Donald Trump would never be allowed to get his hands or name on a NFL franchise.

Democrats in Congress, the FBI, the United Nations, an assistant district attorney in Buffalo, Taylor Swift – somebody in power would make sure of that.

But believe it or not, Trump is not just the madman from New York who his political enemies say tried to destroy democracy in America and has plans to install himself as a dictator this fall.

According to leftist Democrats and the liberal media, Trump is to blame for everything that’s gone wrong in the world since he left office in January of 2021.

Apparently, it was Trump’s fault we screwed up the war on COVID.

Apparently, it was Trump’s fault we totally botched our withdrawal from Afghanistan.

And apparently, it was Trump’s fault our economy was wrecked by high inflation, our election results became untrustworthy and our greatest cities have become centers of lawlessness and disorder.

None of that was the fault of Joe Biden, right?

Biden and the progressive Democrats have had nothing to do with any of our other current problems at home and in the Middle East or the national news media would have told us about it, right?

Wrong.

Everything everywhere all the time apparently has been Trump’s fault, and now that includes the hottest issue in the coming election — the border.

If you only watch CNN, MSNBC or the major TV networks, where they say everything on the border is going fine, you’ve probably never heard the phrase “Every state is a border state now.”

But you’d realize what that means real fast if you took a stroll in downtown Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York City or Philadelphia and saw the thousands of “asylum seekers” fresh from the Southern border.

The left tries to tell us illegal immigrants have suddenly arrived here by the millions because Donald Trump has refused to allow MAGA Republicans in Congress to pass a bill that Joe Biden could sign that gives him the power to pass a law to fix the border.

Even our confused pretend president believes that myth.

The other day he claimed he’s been asking Congress for a border bill to sign since his first day in office, but that’s pure bull.

If we had an honest media, they would point out that in his first week Biden signed executive orders that blew the doors to our Southern border wide open.

He spent money to tear down the new parts of the wall that had already been built. He reinstated “catch and release” rules at the border and he took away the “stay in Mexico” policy.

He did that in the first week….

By executive fiat, Biden cancelled everything to do with immigration that President Trump had put in place. He did it out of political spite.

He could undo all of his harmful executive orders tomorrow and put the border back to where it was when he found it, but he never will.

I’m not a favorite of Donald Trump.

Am I happy with all the crazy things he says? No. Do I like everything he does – or has done? No.

Do I like how he’s taken over the Republican Party? No. Do I have a problem with his MAGA Republicans? Yes. Do I think some of them are completely nuts? Yes.

But if in November my choice is between Joe Biden or Donald Trump, I’ll vote for nuts. In a heartbeat.

–

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

Our belated and weak response to the missile attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea by Houthi militants has been embarrassing.

But that’s what happens when there’s no strong leader in the White House.

Watching Joe Biden and his inept state department screw up everything they try to do in Ukraine and the Middle East reminds me of something I saw my father do in his first year in office.

In 1981 the Bad Boy of the Middle East was the late Muammar Gaddafi, the dictator of Libya who was funding deadly terrorist groups in Palestine, Syria and elsewhere.

One night in August of that year my wife Colleen and I ate dinner with my father and Nancy in a hotel room in the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles.

As we were having coffee, my father got a call from Ed Meese, my father’s advisor, counselor and future attorney general, who was staying in a room three floors down.

I couldn’t hear what Meese was saying, but by listening to my father’s answers it wasn’t hard to figure out.

Meese said he had an admiral on the phone from a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Sidra, which Gaddafi claimed was part of Libya’s territorial waters.

“You know we’re doing war games in the Gulf of Sidra,” Meese said.

“I know, Ed. I approved them.”

President Carter had called off the war games in previous years because he didn’t want to upset Gaddafi, but my father had resumed them.

“What does the admiral want?” my father asked.

Meese explained that Gaddafi was sending fighter planes out from Tripoli and they were locking their radars on to our F-14 jets and feigning like they were going to shoot their air-to-air missiles.

“The admiral wants to know what we should do if our boys are shot at,” Meese said.

“Shoot back,” my father said.

There was a short pause.

I’m assuming Meese’s next question was, “What if our boys are shot at and the Libyan jets turn and run?”

“Then you chase them,” my father said.

“Mr. President,” Meese apparently said, “the admiral wants to know if the Libyan fighters fire and run back into their own air space, what should we do then?”

“Ed, you tell the admiral that if they shoot at our boys, you chase them all the way back to their hangars if necessary. But you will shoot them down.”

Meese and my father exchanged “good nights” and Colleen and I left for our home.

The next morning the world woke up to headlines that two Russian-made Su-22 fighters were in the ground outside Tripoli.

The conversation between Meese and my father shows the huge gap between the strong leadership of the Reagan White House and the weak leadership we have now.

Five years later, after Libyan terrorists set off a bomb in a nightclub in Berlin that was popular with U.S. soldiers, my dad ordered airstrikes on military targets in Tripoli that nearly killed Gaddafi.

My father made a “statement” – with 6o tons of bombs – that Gaddafi heard loud and clear, and he kept a much lower profile for the next 15 years.

How my father handled Gaddafi’s terrorism was completely different from what Biden is doing with the Houthi attacks and the situation with Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism.

This week Biden finally ordered a few airstrikes on Houthi missile sites.

But how many Houthi attacks on commercial ships were needed before we decided to retaliate? 40? 50? That’s not much of a “statement.”

Right now the United States has its weakest leader since Jimmy Carter. Our enemies know it and are exploiting it wherever they can.

When the media asked my father during the Cold War what his game plan was for dealing with the evil Soviet Empire, he famously said, “We win, they lose.”

Biden is a hopeless case. But let’s hope and pray that in 2024 we elect a president that can lead us back to my father’s winning attitude instead of Biden’s.

–

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

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.

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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.

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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.