Trump is an affront to the GOP’s days of Reagan

By Jeffrey Shear, North Las Vegas

Saturday, Aug. 6, 2016 | 2 a.m.

I had my problems with Ronald Reagan, the “patron saint” and “savior” of the modern Republican Party.

Reagan’s cut-and-run strategy following the terrorist bombing of the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, only emboldened Muslim extremists, and selling weapons to Iran in exchange for that nation sending small arms to the Nicaraguan Contras was an illegal and impeachable act. He sometimes seemed more like a “cowboy” actor than a statesman. However, after the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, I miss him and the Grand Old Party of yesteryear.

At least you kind of knew where Reagan and the GOP stood on the major issues; with Donald Trump and his supporters, who knows?

The vulgar, racist, anti-immigrant, isolationist, pro-Vladimir Putin comments voiced by Trump, plus his choice of ultraconservative Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate, must make the spirit of the “polished,” anti-Russian, tolerant and non-socially conservative Reagan — who personally experienced being the victim of a mass shooting — turn over in his grave!

Reagan championed one of the most comprehensive immigration reforms of the 20th century that legalized the status of more than 10 million Americans, and he caused a famous wall (in Berlin) to be “torn down.”

Trump wants to spend $25 billion to build a wall along the Mexico border that wouldn’t solve the nation’s illegal immigration problem. Additionally, while Reagan engineered historic reform of both entitlements and the U.S. tax code, Trump has proposed trade restrictions and a 10 percent flat tax that would be great for billionaires but would cause an inflationary cycle that would debase the dollar and bankrupt the Treasury, eroding the savings and retirements of hundreds of millions of Americans.

Finally, while Reagan characterized modern America as “the new dawn ... of a shining city on a hill,” Trump characterized it as a dark, divided crime scene. It would appear that Trump is the anti-Reagan or, in Republican parlance, the Antichrist!