Opinion: A lot of California Democrats loathed Gov. Ronald Reagan. Here’s why they’re misguided

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Posted on 09/30/2024 6:50:00 AM PDT by ChicagoConservative27

In his first-ever bid for political office, former actor Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California in 1966, defeating two-term incumbent Gov. Pat Brown in a landslide. There was good reason for Democrats to fear that a radical right-winger had taken control of what even then was the nation’s most populous state.

The onetime New Deal Democrat had become a very conservative Republican who often echoed the conspiratorial complaints of the John Birch Society. He regularly warned that social welfare legislation such as Medicare and Medicaid (“socialized medicine” to Reagan) and civil rights laws were going to lead to the total extinction of freedom in America. In his famous 1964 “time for choosing” speech delivered on behalf of Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, Reagan complained that Democratic leaders were “taking the party of Jefferson, Jackson and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin and Stalin.”

Yet, once in Sacramento, Reagan upended radical expectations — as he would later do as president — by showing that he had a hidden streak of pragmatism. He governed much more moderately than he campaigned, and than most of today’s deep-blue Californians might believe. His pragmatism, not ideology, set him on the path to a historic presidency.

(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...

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Maybe because these California Democrats are self-loathing idiots?

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