Rachel Maddow’s New Book Attacks Reagan and His ‘Cockamamie’ Cold War Rhetoric for ‘Partisan Gain’

April 7th, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

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MSNBC host Rachel Maddow’s new book “Drift” focuses heavily on Ronald Reagan, including a rehash of the Iran-Contra scandal, and Maddow clearly chafes at the idea that Reagan would seek a goal like “the restoration of American military superiority,” and that he would dare to seek political gain with a saber-rattling posture during the Cold War.

Mediaite noted that Maddow appeared Tuesday on MSNBC’s Now with Jane Wagner to plug her book and mocked Reagan for making an issue in the 1976 campaign about handing over the Panama Canal, which she said was “cockamamie” in retrospect. “Reagan was a genius at taking elements of patriotism and turning them toward partisan gain,” Maddow said.

“One of the things we’ve forgotten about Reagan’s initial run for the president, he challenged Gerald Ford, and when he eventually won, was what a big deal he made out of the Panama Canal? Sort of lost to history, that this would be?” Maddow raised her hands and scrunched up her face in a “what the hey?” posture. “Basically the idea was that Panama was an American state, and that the canal in Panama was an American canal and that there was this massive challenge to American sovereignty represented by the idea that the canal might go back to Panamanian control. And it does – it seems cockamamie when we look back at it. And you know what? Panama’s fine.”

“A lot of people who were even to Reagan’s right – you would have thought they were to Reagan’s right – people like John Wayne, people like William F. Buckley told Reagan that he was nuts for doing this,” she said. With his “fellow travelers,” his ideological peers, “He’s [Reagan] sticking to his guns and making this a hugely combative partisan issue,” said Maddow.

“Nuts” is more than a little hyperbolic. Buckley sent Reagan a letter after they had a “Firing Line” debate on the issue in 1978: “I profoundly disagree with the conclusion at which you have arrived, but I know that you credit my disagreement with you as sincere and thoughtful, and only wish I could say as much for some of your continuing fans, and some of my erstwhile fans!”

But historical hyperbole was Maddow’s style: “He almost destroyed the Senate over this issue in the ratification of the treaty, but he was playing politics. He knew that this was good politics — the idea of strength, particularly martial strength, particularly aggression could be used in a political way, and in a way that he never gave up on.”

Maddow barely mentioned the Soviets, which is why Reagan didn’t want the canal out of American hands. “I think it’s sort of, it’s key to understanding why we saw such a huge military buildup under Ronald Reagan, why he was so eager to accept, sort of at face value, estimates of Soviet military strength that turned out to completely off, we found out later.”

Wagner highlighted a quote from Maddow’s book that “Somewhere along the way, Reagan had taken the remarkable posture that even public debate on matters of war and peace was detrimental to our national security.” It’s always amusing when MSNBC hosts posture for robust debate when they routinely host a circle of liberals and leftists talking among themselves. That includes when Joe Scarborough is hosting.