This is brilliant.

May 1981. President Ronald Reagan is giving a speech at an Air Force base in West Berlin when a balloon pops loudly. Only two months previously, the President had been shot in an attempt on his life, not long after beginning his first term.

Reagan's response:

"Missed me"

Raru
11 hours ago
Takes me back to the 80s. The Reagan haters then (George Bush, Sen. Jacob Javits, Gerald Ford, Rep. John Anderson, who ran against Reagan as an independent) eventually had to shut up because Reagan was so popular. He threw the haters a bone by picking GHWB as his VP. And then Bush won what was essentially Reagan's third term.

Now imagine if Reagan had lost in 1984. That would have emboldened the haters and they would have acted the same way today's Trump-haters are. But because Reagan won, they had to keep their mouths shut lest they be drummed out of the party. Do you think any Rs would have voted for impeachment if Trump had won?

What Reagan did not know in 1980 was that he would have won even without the Rockefeller republicans. Imagine if he would have gone with a young Jack Kemp as VP who could have honestly advocated for his economic policies. Maybe we would not have had a Bill Clinton. Maybe a Liz Cheney would have never been in a place of power.

There's always been these scoundrels in the party, and the only thing that shuts them up is the good guys winning.

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deornwulf Raru
11 hours ago
President Reagan did not choose Bush. The Establish required Mr. Reagan to choose Bush. I have read that Mr. Reagan never met without others present during the entire 8 years he was in office.

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Raru deornwulf
9 hours ago
True. Reagan was badgered into choosing Bush by the "moderates". Little did anyone know at the time, the moderates turned out to be the fringe group of the Reagan coalition. They just happened to be the leaders of the Happy Losers in the House and Senate at the time, therefore they had Reagan's ear, moreso than the grass roots.

When a moderator tried to silence Ronald Reagan's microphone during a 1980 Republican primary debate that he had personally financed, Reagan shouted: "I am paying for this microphone!" The line, as NBC's Brian Williams noted, became a "political home run" for Reagan, even though it wasn't actually his. He borrowed it from the 1948 film State of the Union.

I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience," Ronald Reagan quipped during the 1984 presidential debates when asked if, at 73, he is too old to be President. The line — a classic example of Reagan's sense of humor — even solicited a laugh from Democratic opponent Walter Mondale.