The Party of Reagan | Journeyman Pictures

Transcript

Script	Visual/Graphics
Music: excited battle music VO: This is Wilson's Creek Missouri, on the 150^th anniversary of a famous American civil war battle. It was a war fought over slavery and triggered by the election of the first Republican President... Man with Moustache: We're trying to teach history, keep the interest in history alive and we enjoy, quite honestly, I;'m in artillery, we enjoy exploding large amounts of black powered in a safe manner. Man with beard: I think we're really just fighting some of the same battles again, the time of this war, the time of a centralized government, we're talking about a government making decisions that certain sections of the population don't agree with and isn't that where we are today with American politics? Where will our government go, what direction will it take - will it be free spending or will it be economically conservative or will it be socially conservative? Music: Up-beat campaigning. VO: "It a five hour drive north from the Wilsons creek battlefield to the town of Ames, Iowa... and here another kind of battle is underway, the campaign is getting underway to see who will be the Republican Presidential nominee in 2012.... But ask the voters, and they can only seem to agree on one candidate Woman: Ronald Reagan (why?) conservative, wasn't afraid to cut taxes, wasn't afraid to cut the freebies to the people who just thought they deserved ‘em. Man: He was an Iowa boy and matter of a fact my grandparents knew him and so he was just a good straightforward honest man. Man: He was my first real exposure to politics, I saw him take us through several crises and just always thought of him as a great figure. Man: Reagan was a pretty good one. Sean Hannity : He had every quality of a great leader, strong principles, a good vision, the ability to rally the country, terrific communication skills - remember this is before the internet, this is before Fox, this is before Fox, or talk radio, this is before Rush Limbaugh, you know and he had the ability to go to the nation and say ‘we can do better'. Jane Neiss: To me he inspired leadership, he always had a positive attitude, he had a good sense of humor, I like the way he treated other people, and I think he did this country a great deal of good and on the world stage too, so yes, he would be my favourite president.	Video: Battle sequence from Wilson's Creek. Man and overlay of battle. Man and overlay of battle. Driving footage. GOP candidates group shot on stage. psot: Reagan. External Jane and Tim's house.
SH: I see a very similar political situation now evolving, where if anything I would argue Jimmy Carter was the worse President ever - Barack Obama is worse. He adopted the same Keynesian, socialist, redistribution of wealth economic policies that lead to predictable declines in economic growth. VO: About as soon as Barack Obama arrived in the White House in January 2009, Republicans were vowing to make him in to another Jimmy Carter - the very definition of a failed, one-term Democratic President. B ut of course in order to make Obama another Jimmy Carter, they needed another Ronald Reagan, and they soon found out a Ronald Reagan doesn't come along every day. Mitt Romney: I have some hymns, some American hymns that I love, one of them is America the Beautiful, I think I like each of those verses, I cant say which I like the best - oh beautiful for spacious skies for amber waves of grain - if corn counts, amber waves of grain right here in Iowa... for beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife, for more than self for country loved more than life.... Tim Pawlenty: Thirty years ago this very day, August 13^th, Ronald Reagan one of the greatest Presidents in the history of our country signed the economic recovery act into law... Rick Perry: Day 1, I know what I'm going to be doing once I take my hand off the bible, the first thing I'm going to do is take out probably a sharpie like that and sign an executive order that will wipe out as much of Obamacare as I can with one fell swoop. Rick Santorum: Margaret Thatcher when she left the prime ministership of England sais she was never able to accomplish what Ronald Reagan was able to accomplish, never able to turn the tides of socialism and that's what we're talking about here...never able to turn it back in Britain like Reagan was, what Reagan did... Herman Cain: Ronald Reagan was a leader and a uniter and that's what I believe that I can do based upon my experiences. Newt Gingrich: If you take the Reagan recovery and apply it to the current population you would add 25 million jobs, in seven years.... Michele Bachmann: And together we are going to make Barack Obama a one-term-president. Ed Meese: I think the candidates would all like to be compared favorably with Ronald Reagan and they want to convince the people they follow in the footsteps of Reagan both from the standpoint of philosophy and leadership. Gary Bauer: And I think it's interesting that in this last cycle, and quite frankly most every election cycle since Ronald Reagan left the scene, every Republican vying for the nomination tries to convince the electorate that they are the true heir to the Reagan mantle. Montage of candidates saying "Reagan" Ron Reagan Jr.: Everything was Reagan, Reagan, Reagan, I'm Reagan, I'm the next Reagan - but none of them are... Pat Buchanan: Everybody wants to be like Reagan because everybody agrees it was a success - good heavens, he leaves office and the whole soviet empire collapses, the economy creates twenty million jobs, the spirit of the country is up, it's morning in America again - I mean, what's not to like? "It's Morning in America...." EM: He was the leading proponent of conservative principles; free market economics, individual liberty, strong national defence, traditional American values and limited government. RRjr: Personally, he was impossible not to like. You couldn't spend five minutes in a room with him without coming away thinking, ‘what a good guy/what a nice guy' and you'd be right. EM: He was always cheerful and optimistic and that raised the feelings and optimism of the people. RRJr: He was an honorable man. Very honest, You could hand your watch 10 years ago and 10 years from today and say meet him on a street corner 10 years from today and he'd be there; with your watch. He meant what he said and he said what he meant. Roger Porter: He had a deep set of principles. That he believed in very fervently that he was reluctant to abandon or compromise. At the same time he had a remarkable capacity to understand the give and take of politics and how one needs to accommodate large numbers of interests, and viewpoints and perspectives. EM: Ronald Reagan always stood for principle. He never compromised his principles but he would sometimes compromise on issues to get to his objectives to get to his objectives. As he used to say ‘I'll take half a loaf from Congress if that's all I can get and then once I've got that, I'll go back and try and get the rest. Roger Porter: I remember him saying, ‘Let's see if I've got this right. We've got 80% of what we want. I don't know about you fellas' - and it was always fellas even when there were women in the room, ‘I don't know about you fellas but I think that's pretty good.' And there were always people who were thumping their chest saying we had to go back to the negotiating table and he would come in an disarm the situation by basically saying ‘I think we've got as much as we're going to get' and ‘Let's declare victory'. PB: Ronald Reagan is the gold standard. Even the liberals have given up trying to finish him off - they really have. He has gone into the pantheon.	Standup in front of White House. Pawlenty at Ames. Perry on a stage in front of Rick Perry signage. Upsot of 1984 campaign ad "Prouder, Stronger Better." Overlay; Reagan in meetings at White House. Overlay: Reagan looking triumphant.
RRjr: Ronald Reagan is the guy in the poster, he's the guy with the voice, with the face, with the beautiful words. "...they left the surely bonds of earth to touch the face of god" Roger Porter: Ronald Reagan came into office in Jan 1981 at a time that is not unlike the current time, There was a good deal of anxiety. There was what President Carter had called a sense of malaise there was a lack of confidence. Anxiety and that's what we face today. GB: The United States was being humiliated in Iran, you had a President who didn't believe in the idea of American exceptionalism, didn't seem to be very confident about America's future and in comes this sort of iconic figure already.. somebody known by the conservative movement and there was a remarkable turnaround in the first couple of years of his Presidency James Fallows: There could hardly be two more different personality types within American politics than Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan: It's significant that Jimmy Carter came to power in the aftermath of the Watergate scandals and so his presentation as a serious, good, overly sincere character who spent his time not as a religious preacher but as a lay preacher - those were all parts of his appeal in 1976 .... Four years later when the US had been battered in so many ways - with oils shocks and economic stagnation, and the Iran hostage crisis and all the rest, those parts of Carters personality seemed overly pious too serious, sort of under-whelming for the forces of what was happening in the world. And the relative jauntiness of Ronald Reagan suggesting that things weren't as hard as they seemed under Jimmy Carter was a part of his appeal... not being any kind of master of the details as Carter was, but a person who could say "look, I have this under control, stick with me and we'll be able to move forward again.	Overlay: Reagan library, portrait, statue, as President - cheerful, waving. Overlay - newspaper headlines about oil prices, crisis, malaise, Iran hostage crisis Overlay - headlines about 1979 Iran hostage crisis, Carter looking meek.
VO: Back in Des Moines, Iowa, it's the Sunday before the vote for the Republican presidential candidate .... but there's a split between the state's Christian conservatives... Steve Deace: I decided to endorse Newt Gingrich for President of the United States. Bob Deever I have chosen to support Michele Bachmann personally, the reason being that after listening to all the candidates and my conviction is that she really is a solid believer. SD: I've really been impressed with Newt Gingrich's humility in this process, if there is any candidate who can say "I am a rock star, I'm an icon, I've already been the king of the world, I don't have to do things like the Steve Deace radio program, I don't have to beat myself up about my past and face the accountability for my mistakes, I'm Newt Freaking Gingrich!" VO: Across town, Tim and Jane have made up their minds too - they'll be voting for Mitt Romney. Tim Neiss: Which was as big a surprise to us as, ‘cos in the last election we were not impressed at all with Mitt Romney. Jane Neiss: We really took a look at some of the more conservative candidates, I would say, because I am very conservative in how I live my life and always have been - so he wasn't necessarily the most conservative candidate in my mind, but after seeing him, he comes off as a leader. I think this country is really in need of a good leader and I think Romney could do that. TN: I know a lot of conservatives have problems that his stance on abortion has changed over the years, the fact that Romneycare in Massachusetts... a realk substantive change for me that came out of this campaign has been that when it gets down to social issues, and I think this has been brought on more influenced by the economy and financially where we are as a country - when it comes to the social issues I have decided that we been shooting too low as a country to deal with those social issues, we have been handing it over to politicians when I've handed those over to God. VO: Bob Vander Plaats is President of the Iowa christian conservative group The Family Leader, they call him "the King of the Caucuses..." ...he's endorsed Senator Rick Santorum because he says Mitt Romney lacks principles... BVDP: His record was flip-flopping, he was on both sides of the life issue, he was on both sides of the marriage issue, he was on both sides of the healthcare issue, he was on both sides of about every issue. TN: I guess where I've gotten to with Romney is that he at least tried to do something on a state level which I believe was probably better done on a state level that it is on a national level... TN: (upsot) ...we've seen what happens when you take this country and jerk it to the left... TN: He's obviously someone again who is willing to risk fixing a problem rather than demagoging it and getting nothing done. TN: (upsot) ...and that's why I'm supporting Mitt Romney. (applause) VO: But if Republicans like Tim and Jane are in a mood to compromise, the same can't be said in Washington these days...virtually no Republican members of the House or Senate have been prepared work with President Obama since his election... JF: In 2006, when the Republicans lost their control of the senate and so Mitch McConnell who is the republican senator from Kentucky became the senate minority leader - he essentially said the filibuster was going to be applied to everything that came through the senate, so instead of one out of a thousand measures or one out of a hundreds it was eighty out of a hundred or ninety out of a hundred of insisting on sixty votes to get things through. AS: Well, that's what he said he would do, I know Mitch pretty well, he keeps his troops together pretty well, he rules with an iron hand, he's very clever, very shrewd, very partisan, and I think he has some allergy towards democrats, I don't know what that is but it was early gained... Specter; Senator McConnell, the Republican leader said the Republican senate agenda was to defeat Obama in 2012 - now, is that a legislative agenda? AS: He will tell you, you know, don't work with the other side on that bill any further or try to accommodate, or I might have a new job for you, make you the ranking member of the journal committee or some lesser place in the structure. BB: The republicans have shown the Democrats exactly what to do should we have a republican president you can be guaranteed that the senate democrats will filibuster every single bill that he proposes they will filibuster every single nominee that he proposes and that the republicans who do that routinely to every one of Obama's proposals and appointees now will scream bloody murder - they'll say this is awful, this is anti-constitutional - they're just hypocritical jerks. VO: Another battle in congress was looming. Mike Lofgren had been a Republican congressional staff member for 28 years, but began to worry about the Tea Party when they refused to support what had always been a routine increase in America's debt ceiling. ML: This is about the inherently fragile institutions of our democracy, they are not automatically self-sustaining, they require an informed electorate that makes good decisions based on objective facts and not mystification. And the polarization has become so great that it threatens to simply stop the processes of government. BB: Its an institutional problem between the presidency and the congress that could ultimately lead to a constitutional crisis of some kind. VO: Arlen Specter was elected to the United States senate from Pennsylvania as a moderate Republican on the same day Ronald Reagan won the White House...he later became a Republican Presidential candidate himself, but finally left the Party when his fellow Republicans refused to support emergency spending at the height of the global financial crisis... Specter's defection gave Democrats and President Obama a crucial sixtieth senate vote to overcome a filibuster and made possible not just the rescue of the US economy, but landmark healthcare reforms. Specter: When I cast the vote for the stimulus package there was no doubt that I could not win a Republican primary - you could politely characterize it as ‘irreconcilable differences'... but there was no longer any room for me in the Party. VO: (STANDUP CAP HILL) It's not just old style republican moderates like Arlen Specter that find they no longer have a home in the republican party - any Republican member of congress now who works across the aisle with democrats to try to get something done can now face a conservative challenger from the Tea Party - the result, the 112^th congress elected in 2010 was officially the least productive and most partisan in American history - quite simply without compromise from both sides, this place doesn't work. JF: Since the Democrats had sixty votes for any a few months in Barack Obama's time it meant that most of the things they were trying to do they were blocked in doing - they couldn't appoint people to judgeships, they couldn't name ambassadors they couldn't get things done and so you've had kind of a historically unprecedented log-jam in American governance that is really destructive. RRJr: I mean you've got people now who are willing to - well you've got a Republican party now that has announced that they think that the full faith and credit of the united states is as Mitch McConnell put it - a good hostage to ransom. (edit) And um, I don't think that my father would have thought too much of people like that. AS: The word ‘compromise' has become a dirty word - a compromise means you are a whimp - if you compromise pffff you're just a whimp. Well let me tell ya, if you cant learn to compromise an issue without compromising yourself, you should never be in a legislative body. GB: If one side wants the government to be bigger and my side wants the government to be smaller, what is the compromise between those two positions? Anything you agree on is either going to make government bigger or going to make government smaller. And you can go down the list on virtually every issue - either man is between a man and a woman or its something else - it cant be in between something else and a man and a woman, so I think we're going through a period in the United States where unfortunately, probably we're going to see these kinds of bruising battles and perhaps the country swinging back and forth depending on any given election which side prevails. VO: More than any other issue, modern Republicans wont compromise on tax increases - almost all signing up to a pledge never to increase taxes inspired by Ronald Reagan... JF: The muscle, or the face of the absolutism about taxes is a man named Grover Norquist. AS: he's a nice guy with a very bad idea. GN: The taxpayer protection pledge is a written commitment that a candidate or an incumbent congressman, senator, governor, president, signs and its too the America people and it says ‘I will oppose and vote against any effort to raise your taxes.' AS: Nice idea, and when he got those signatures unemployment was, you know, 4%, inflation was you know, whatever, we owed four trillion bucks instead of sixteen - and so he's locked these people in and if they say well I'm going to repudiate that the he does a full page ad and he begins to use his money and he'll cremate you in your district. BB: The no-new taxes pledge has had an enormous impact on federal finances, its really decimated them and made it almost impossible to raise adequate revenue to fund the federal government, and the people who support this idea such as Grover Norquist have this really extremely shallow and naieve view that if you just take away the governments credit card that somhow or another spending will automatically come down - this is just complete and total nonsense, and I think it misunderstands Reagan's record - if you look at his record he did indeed cut taxes sharply in 1981 but he raised taxes almost every other year of his presidency 11 different times he signed into law different tax increases. GN: Well the taxpayer protection pledge has allowed the modern republican party not only to be the party that opposes tax increases but to be branded like a product that voters KNOW that if you vote for a republican you have ivory soap percentages 99.99% certainty that they wont raise taxes. JF: After the Reagan era, this goal of "starving the beast" became much more of a fixed ideology of literally no new taxes and so the republicans who had historically prided themselves in the Eisenhower administration and Robert Taft as being the party of fiscal prudence, became the party of gigantic deficits. GN: We have a spending problem; the government spends too much. We don't have a lack of taxes, its not the problem. It isn't that the peasants aren't bring enough money into the King ITS THAT THE KING IS SPENDING TOO MUCH MONEY - YOU GOTTA KNOCK IT OFF.... So step one, hey hey hey, we're not giving you any more money, step two, stop spending so much... VO: To try and find a bi-partisan solution to reign-in America's sixteen trillion dollar debt, President Obama appointed former Republican Senator Alan Simpson as co-commissioner for fiscal responsibility, but he soon found Republicans would only consider cuts to spending, not increased taxes... because of Grover Norquist's pledge, half the solution was already off the table... AS: You can't cut spending you way out of this hole, you cant grow your way out of this hole, you could have double-digit growth for twenty years and not grow out of this hole, and you cant tax your way out of this hole - so you have to have a blend of cutting and revenue... JF: Something has to give. The tax versus debt tension for the republican party - we had the classic irresistible force and immovable object situation because they cannot plausibly be on the warpath against deficits and on the warpath against ever raising taxes. GN: The commitment that republicans who sign the pledge is; when I go to Washington I;m not going to raise taxes, I'm going to reform government, what the democrats and people like Simpson want to do is raise taxes so that Washington doesn't have to reform itself. AS: I mean, what the hell... lets get serious, this guy is a monster... and he is the most powerful person in America today, but Isaid to him ‘you will be irrelevant in two years' cos your country cant exist on this diet of soup... JF: Its put the republicans in an untenable position - which you saw during the 2012 primaries when there was one debate where the question was suppose their was a budget deal skewed ten-to-one in favour of budget cuts spending cuts versus tax increases would you veto it and every single republican candidate raised his or her hands saying yes they would veto that even a ten-to-one, ten to one bargain... and it became difficult both for them to say debt is this huge menace to the country and we are so unreasonable that even a ten-to-one solution is out of bounds for us, so I think the Republicans, this is one more force pushing them to the extreme. VO: Another force arguably pushing the Republican party to an extreme position is the anti-Tax Tea Party Movement....and like Grover Norquist, many Tea Partiers take their lead from Ronald Reagan... Matt Kibbe is one of the most prominent Tea partiers, he's with a group called Freedomworks which finances Tea Party Republican candidates... MK: Go back to Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan said that government was the problem not the solution ... Republicans win when they stand for something that's an alternative to the big government progressivism represented by this President. GN: The Republican party has become the party that will not raise your taxes, after the Tea party movement, the Republican party became the party that wanted to reign-in spending but that second half only happened more recently and came about as a result of the failure of the Bush administration to focus on restraining spending. MK: We trace it to the wall street bailout, and particularly when George W Bush said I'm abandoning free market principles to save the free market. Every Tea partier I know again and again and again will quote that verbatim and cite that as the moment they realized they needed to show up and fight against a government that had gotten too big, perhaps gotten too close to Wall Street and too in bed with special interests inside the DC beltway.... JF: The Tea Party Movement simultaneously added fervor and energy to the Republican side while pushing it to the extreme, I think that Mitt Romney in the 2012 general election had a much harder path to follow against Barack Obama than he would have if he hadn't had all of this Tea Party pressure during the primaries that he had to accommodate. BB: Today's run-of-the-mill, you know, Republican Tea Party member, I mean to them Ronald Reagan is like a face on Mount Rushmore, he is just someone that they worship but they don't really know anything about what he actually did - they just assume that everything he did was great and everything good that happened to the United States in the 1980's was his responsibility...err their knowledge is really very, very shallow. AS: Ronald Reagan, I knew well, I really did, there were times when he would invite us to the White House just four or five of us for an evening just to tell stories ... no business, Nancy would be off with her mother, her father down in Scotsdale - he'd say come on by, he'd be pouring wine and we'd just tell stories... and none of them are like that, none of them with big, big hearts who listen ... Reagan had democrats in the white house all the time, and republicans and they don't do that. Specter:, I was a frequent visitor to the President, he had those two chairs in the oval office and would sit down and talk to me about supporting the MX missile or supporting school prayer or supporting his program and there was a attitude that if you didn't vote his way all the time he understood... but that is not the Republican Party that I faced after my vote in favor of the stimulus package. GN: The Republican Party for 100 years was the party of Lincoln - that's what defined being a republican, it meant being from the north, and people from your state were against slavery and against sucession, well you know what, after 100 years even most democrats are against slavery and against sucession so it doesn't distinguish republicans from democrats from a republican, most democrats are against slavery and against sucession so a Lincoln republican doesn't have any meaning any more - a Reagan Republican defines a modern republican - limited government, maximizing liberty, limiting taxes and spending and control over your life, strong defense, strong enough to keep other clountries from attacking you - not running an empire but having national self defense - that's the modern republican - Reagan and his policies and his writings and his speeches is the model for the next 100 years of how a modern republican party will move forward - I think there'll be others like Ryan who will help flesh out what Reagan republicanism means but we will always go back to Reagan's principles where he talks about "up to liberty instead of down towards serfdom". ML: The Northeastern Republicans are virtually an extinct species, the old style moderate republican wing. VO: Almost two years into Obama's term the political tide had turned from Hope and Change to fear and anger over the struggling economy and ballooning debt, Tea party republicans won senate seats including Arlen Specter's and claimed the balance of power in the House of Representatives, handing them huge power to block the President's agenda. ML: I think by the 2010 mid-terms, once you saw the incoming members, what they were saying, I knew that they would push the debt limit increase into a crisis - they could just not help themselves. US credit rating or no, they would do that and that's what decided me to find an exit strategy. MK: When it comes to cutting a deal to expand the debt ceiling one more time, the citizens are attacked for holding politicians accountable - I don't think its about holding moderate republicans accountable, I think its about holding all politicians to the same standard. GB: I've heard for decades that the public doesn't believe politicians - they say one thing when they are running for office they go to Washington they do something else - where here were people, most of them businessmen, or entrepenuers who said look, when I say I;m going to go to Washington lower your taxes and cut government spending you can count on me, that's actually what I'm going to do... MK: To me, (bi) partisanship is code words for insiders inside the beltway in Washington DC cutting a deal behind closed doors. AS: I mean these guys are purists, and the thing that will destroy and has destroyed the Republican party through the decades of my existence is that they give eachother the saliva test of purity. And then they lose and then they bitch for four years and wonder how they lost... BB: The culture of congress was quite different in the 1980's ... remember that the Republicans did control the senate of six of his eight years and the leadership in the house was more ‘old school' - the idea that you opposed what the other party was for but you didn't throw up insurmountable road blocks...Tip O'Neill for example, could have killed the Reagan tax cut (he was the speaker of the house by the way) could have killed the Reagan tax cut in 1981 using parliamentary procedures if he had wanted to but he didn't think that was right, he felt that Reagan's policy proposal, even though it was wrong, was worthy of being voted upon and let the people speak and let the members of congress vote their consciences or whatever...and that view is clearly not the case today. Specter: There is a general feeling that the United States Government is broken, that the gridlock is intolerable and that Washington is a madhouse mess. VO: One of the biggest factors in the rise of the Tea Party movement was conservative media in the form of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel... DS: The media is one of several elements that's created suchan ideologically driven hyper-polarised electorate. RRJr: Remember that most republicans just watch Fox News ... most of the republican electorate they don't listen to MSNBC they look at CNN, they don't look at ABC or any of that stuff - Fox News...you go to the middle of the country turn on television in a hotel - it'll be tuned to Fox, you might not even be able to GET other cable networks in the middle of the country - it's all Fox. So these people are getting their news filtered through Rupert Murdoch's weird little universe. DS: We all want to talk to, read from and listen to the smartest people in the word. Who are the smartest people in the word? The people who agree with me. And if cable television and talk radio and the internet can provide me with an information environment that only reinforces what I already believe rather than challenge it, what you do end up with is these two ideological cul-de-sacs in which somebody with whom you disagree is no longer your opponent but your enemy. And as we saw in the debate over the federal debt limit not too long ago, it took the prospect of absolute apocalypse to get people to put aside the caricatures of their opponents and actually find a way to work together. SH: I think Barack Obama's biggest problem is that he's never run a business, he's met a payroll that I know of, ~~he votes ‘present' in the state senate in Illinois~~, he hung out with a lot of radical people, I think he's a rigid ideologue and I think he's wrong and I think America gave him the benefit of the doubt on his background associations, record appropriately. RRjr: They think Obama is this, this Muslim, Manchurian candidate who is out to impose sharia law and that he doesn't have a legitimate birth certificate and god knows what else ML: It's a tribute to how well Republicans can get their narrative before the public - in nice easy sound bites - most people don't realize that for the average taxpayer their taxers have been cut even relative to the low tax rates under George W Bush, so they're paying less taxes, and yet they think their taxes were raised under Obama - its an amazing piece of mystification. VO: So how have the combined forces of Fox News, The Tea Party, social conservatives and the Norquist tax pledge changed the Republican party? Specter: It is by no means the Party of Reagan, President Reagan welcomed moderates into the White House... Simpson: I though the Republican party was simply government out of your life, the precious right of privacy and the right to be left alone. That sounds like a pretty good clarion call, a certain trumpet. It I had to go before the central committee of 63 people in Wyomning to get on the ballot they wouldn't put me on the ballot. EM: It is correct that the Republican part is more conservative than it was when Ronald Reagan became President and when he ran for the Presidency and I think overall that's a good thing because what the Republicans stand for in terms of limited government, in terms of free markets in terms of individual liberty, in terms of strong national defense - these are important principles and goals for the country. RRJr: It's a different party now and a different agenda. You know, the republican party has always been the party of corporate America, its always been the party of the wealthy and the rich and it was when my father was there too, he didn't think of it that way - he went along with a lot of stuff that helped corporate America and pandered to corporate America but that wasn't what he thought he was doing - these people for the most part and I'm not just talking about the Tea Party but the leadership of the Republican Party - they know exactly what they are doing - they are bought and paid for by corporate America and they are happy about it. JF: The Republican party of the early Reagan era at the time seemed somewhat narrow because the Democrats thought that it wasn't inclusive racially as much as the democrats aspired to be it certainly seems very broad by comparison to the republicans of 2012. ML: The establishment is to the left of the Tea Party but the establishment is to the right of where it was five years ago, ten years ago or twenty years ago... so the entire centre of gravity has been pulled rightwards. PB: Its ah, I think its overall a good thing - politically it could be tough, this is a changed country... this is not the country Ronald Reagan ran in ...people forget, you know, Richard Nixon won California all five times he was on a national ticket - easily - Ronald Reagan won it all four times he ran, no way a presidential candidate of the republican party can carry California now. JF: Because the Republicans of 2012 have essentially alienated Latino's and hispanics through a tough anti-immigration stance, they've alienated black they've alienated a lot of women they've alienated gays and lesbians they've alienated young people and highly educated people. Simpson: I have been called a baby killer and a queer-lover by members of my party - I don't have to take that shit and I don't. VO: Some say the Party of Reagan has changed so much in recent years Ronald Reagan himself wouldn't be welcome. RRJr: Oh he'd be too Liberal, oh he'd never - maybe against a Romney, maybe he and Romney, he could be the Liberal counterpart to Romney perhaps but not no, he signed one of the most Liberal abortion laws in America when he was governor of California - that right there would eliminate him from contention, Michele Bachmann would point her finger and screech at him and that would be it. RP: I don't share that view, I don't share that view. PB: Reagan junior...he's genetically the son of President Reagan, but he aint Ronald Reagan in his views - he's a long, long way from that. I like Ron Reagan Junior but he is so far from his father's views that his father has difficulty seeing that far...ha ha ha. GN: of course it's the party of Reagan, that idea that Reagan couldn't win a primary is silly - Reagan was the most conservative governor he could be within the constraints of his time he was the most conservative President he could be within the constraints of the time - he had a democratic congress. RP: If he were to come back and were to be a candidate in 2012 I think he would fit in very well with where the the bulk of the republican party is ... GN: He was ahead of his time - he supported school choice he supported all sorts of reforms that are today just beginning to happen and its clear tha these were part of the trajectpry of moving towards freedom that Ronald Reagan articulated and envisioned. JF: We're having the worst of both worlds wen it comes to the situation of the current Republican party - their situation is bad from their own point of view because on current trends they're on a path to becoming a permanent minority party for any sort of national election - if the fastest growing demographic groups in the united states are latinos and young people and women and Asian americans and some highly educated people those are all the areas where republicans are at a huge disadvantage relative to the democrats. Simpson: And if we go down in flames this trip it'll be because women and gays and lesbians have looked at a party which is small and shriven. PB: Demographically America is changed and is changing and we're moving toward a time when very soon the Hispanic population which is now at 50 million by the middle of century is going to be 135 million - these folks basically vote two-to-one democratic - there'll be a time when Texas goes the way of California and that's the end of the republican party as we know it. GB: I read a lot of demographic analysis of American politics and you can certainly make that case but as a conservative I believe that ultimately democratic policies don't work - so I think over time no matter what the demographics are Hispanic americans, other kinds of hyphenated americans will look at the record and say well wait a minute I came to America because I wanted a better life for ,my children not because I wanted easier access to food stamps of have a larger welfare cheque, or whatever it is the democrats are using to appeal to those voters - so I'm more confident than my friend Pat Buchanan that this message of smaller government, lower taxes, pro-family, pro-life and an America that's sure of itself and defends freedom around the world that that;s a message that no matter what the color of your skin where you worship or whether you worship or not that is long term going to appeal to the American people. JF: Their path is bad for them, its also bad for the country as a whole because they are likely to retain significant power in the senate so they can maintain this blocking force in the senate so they are putting themselves into a minority but they are also having the power to obstruct the entire country from getting things done, so it would be better, another Reagan - a Reagan with sort of a tent-building, expanding strategy would be better for the party and better for the country. Simpson: It doesn't matter who wins, the real issue is that of people cant step up and be patriots and pull together instead of pulling apart it wont matter whose to blame, but left me tell you the democrats will get just as much of the blame as the republicans because the American people will be so damned fed up with these jerks... that are in office and didn't have the guts to step forward and do something for their country as citizens, American citizens that are cherishing a party - how can you cherish a party over your country? Those people dont deserve any kind of acknowledgement, but only pity. VO: So, what would Ronald Reagan's son like to tell modern-day politicians who are standing in the way of a compromise in his father's name? RRjr: I would probably remind them that he cared more about the country than he did about his own career in politics, I would remind them that he was a grown-up, I would remind them that he was fair-minded and I would advise them to try and aspire to those qualities themselves... Reagan farewell "A final word to the men and women of the Reagan revolution...the United States of America." Fade to black. End credits begin. Simpson: Well the sooner we forget the Republican Party and Democrat Party we may make it... there's no need to talk about who will be president, who is ever the president, this damned things is a mess. Finish credit.	Exterior West Des Moines Church Upsot Pastor Bob Deever Overlay - Bachmann Overlay - Gingrich Exterior Jane and Tim's house. Overlay - Pan across candidates on debate stage. Overlay of Bob listening to question Romney Capitol Building exterior, maybe interior of senate or house from c-span. Overlay - Senate, Senator Mitch McConnell. Overlay - Mitch McConnell. Overlay- Specter as younger man, senator, presidential candidate, older man... Specter with Obama and Biden. erlay - senate vote on stimulus and healthcare Overlay - Capitol Hill Overlay - Senate. Overlay - traffic jam footage. Overlay - tax payer pledge being signed by Reagan. Overlay - Norquists office, bust of Reagan etc. Overlay - Simpson with Obama, Simpson chairing debt commission . Upsot - Simpson and Norquist at commission. Overlay- Norquist testifies at Debt reduction commission . Overlay - Tea Party protests. Overlay - White House exterior, with lights on inside. Overlay - Oval office interior from Reagan library 5D footage. Overlay - Paul Ryan

Script

Visual/Graphics

Music: excited battle music

VO: This is Wilson's Creek Missouri, on the 150^th anniversary of a famous American civil war battle.

It was a war fought over slavery and triggered by the election of the first Republican President...

Man with Moustache: We're trying to teach history, keep the interest in history alive and we enjoy, quite honestly, I;'m in artillery, we enjoy exploding large amounts of black powered in a safe manner.

Man with beard: I think we're really just fighting some of the same battles again, the time of this war, the time of a centralized government, we're talking about a government making decisions that certain sections of the population don't agree with and isn't that where we are today with American politics? Where will our government go, what direction will it take - will it be free spending or will it be economically conservative or will it be socially conservative?

Music: Up-beat campaigning.

VO: "It a five hour drive north from the Wilsons creek battlefield to the town of Ames, Iowa... and here another kind of battle is underway, the campaign is getting underway to see who will be the Republican Presidential nominee in 2012....

But ask the voters, and they can only seem to agree on one candidate

Woman: Ronald Reagan (why?) conservative, wasn't afraid to cut taxes, wasn't afraid to cut the freebies to the people who just thought they deserved ‘em.

Man: He was an Iowa boy and matter of a fact my grandparents knew him and so he was just a good straightforward honest man.

Man: He was my first real exposure to politics, I saw him take us through several crises and just always thought of him as a great figure.

Man: Reagan was a pretty good one.

Sean Hannity : He had every quality of a great leader, strong principles, a good vision, the ability to rally the country, terrific communication skills - remember this is before the internet, this is before Fox, this is before Fox, or talk radio, this is before Rush Limbaugh, you know and he had the ability to go to the nation and say ‘we can do better'.

Jane Neiss: To me he inspired leadership, he always had a positive attitude, he had a good sense of humor, I like the way he treated other people, and I think he did this country a great deal of good and on the world stage too, so yes, he would be my favourite president.

Video: Battle sequence from Wilson's Creek.

Man and overlay of battle.

Driving footage.

GOP candidates group shot on stage.

psot: Reagan.

External Jane and Tim's house.

SH: I see a very similar political situation now evolving, where if anything I would argue Jimmy Carter was the worse President ever - Barack Obama is worse. He adopted the same Keynesian, socialist, redistribution of wealth economic policies that lead to predictable declines in economic growth.

VO: About as soon as Barack Obama arrived in the White House in January 2009, Republicans were vowing to make him in to another Jimmy Carter - the very definition of a failed, one-term Democratic President. B ut of course in order to make Obama another Jimmy Carter, they needed another Ronald Reagan, and they soon found out a Ronald Reagan doesn't come along every day.

Mitt Romney: I have some hymns, some American hymns that I love, one of them is America the Beautiful, I think I like each of those verses, I cant say which I like the best - oh beautiful for spacious skies for amber waves of grain - if corn counts, amber waves of grain right here in Iowa... for beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife, for more than self for country loved more than life....

Tim Pawlenty: Thirty years ago this very day, August 13^th, Ronald Reagan one of the greatest Presidents in the history of our country signed the economic recovery act into law...

Rick Perry: Day 1, I know what I'm going to be doing once I take my hand off the bible, the first thing I'm going to do is take out probably a sharpie like that and sign an executive order that will wipe out as much of Obamacare as I can with one fell swoop.

Rick Santorum: Margaret Thatcher when she left the prime ministership of England sais she was never able to accomplish what Ronald Reagan was able to accomplish, never able to turn the tides of socialism and that's what we're talking about here...never able to turn it back in Britain like Reagan was, what Reagan did...

Herman Cain: Ronald Reagan was a leader and a uniter and that's what I believe that I can do based upon my experiences.

Newt Gingrich: If you take the Reagan recovery and apply it to the current population you would add 25 million jobs, in seven years....

Michele Bachmann: And together we are going to make Barack Obama a one-term-president.

Ed Meese: I think the candidates would all like to be compared favorably with Ronald Reagan and they want to convince the people they follow in the footsteps of Reagan both from the standpoint of philosophy and leadership.

Gary Bauer: And I think it's interesting that in this last cycle, and quite frankly most every election cycle since Ronald Reagan left the scene, every Republican vying for the nomination tries to convince the electorate that they are the true heir to the Reagan mantle.

Montage of candidates saying "Reagan"

Ron Reagan Jr.: Everything was Reagan, Reagan, Reagan, I'm Reagan, I'm the next Reagan - but none of them are...

Pat Buchanan: Everybody wants to be like Reagan because everybody agrees it was a success - good heavens, he leaves office and the whole soviet empire collapses, the economy creates twenty million jobs, the spirit of the country is up, it's morning in America again - I mean, what's not to like?

"It's Morning in America...."

EM: He was the leading proponent of conservative principles; free market economics, individual liberty, strong national defence, traditional American values and limited government.

RRjr: Personally, he was impossible not to like. You couldn't spend five minutes in a room with him without coming away thinking, ‘what a good guy/what a nice guy' and you'd be right.

EM: He was always cheerful and optimistic and that raised the feelings and optimism of the people.

RRJr: He was an honorable man. Very honest, You could hand your watch 10 years ago and 10 years from today and say meet him on a street corner 10 years from today and he'd be there; with your watch. He meant what he said and he said what he meant.

Roger Porter: He had a deep set of principles. That he believed in very fervently that he was reluctant to abandon or compromise. At the same time he had a remarkable capacity to understand the give and take of politics and how one needs to accommodate large numbers of interests, and viewpoints and perspectives.

EM: Ronald Reagan always stood for principle. He never compromised his principles but he would sometimes compromise on issues to get to his objectives to get to his objectives. As he used to say ‘I'll take half a loaf from Congress if that's all I can get and then once I've got that, I'll go back and try and get the rest.

Roger Porter: I remember him saying, ‘Let's see if I've got this right. We've got 80% of what we want. I don't know about you fellas' - and it was always fellas even when there were women in the room, ‘I don't know about you fellas but I think that's pretty good.' And there were always people who were thumping their chest saying we had to go back to the negotiating table and he would come in an disarm the situation by basically saying ‘I think we've got as much as we're going to get' and ‘Let's declare victory'.

PB: Ronald Reagan is the gold standard. Even the liberals have given up trying to finish him off - they really have. He has gone into the pantheon.

Standup in front of White House.

Pawlenty at Ames.

Perry on a stage in front of Rick Perry signage.

Upsot of 1984 campaign ad "Prouder, Stronger Better."

Overlay; Reagan in meetings at White House.

Overlay: Reagan looking triumphant.

RRjr: Ronald Reagan is the guy in the poster, he's the guy with the voice, with the face, with the beautiful words.

"...they left the surely bonds of earth to touch the face of god"

Roger Porter: Ronald Reagan came into office in Jan 1981 at a time that is not unlike the current time, There was a good deal of anxiety. There was what President Carter had called a sense of malaise there was a lack of confidence. Anxiety and that's what we face today.

GB: The United States was being humiliated in Iran, you had a President who didn't believe in the idea of American exceptionalism, didn't seem to be very confident about America's future and in comes this sort of iconic figure already.. somebody known by the conservative movement and there was a remarkable turnaround in the first couple of years of his Presidency

James Fallows: There could hardly be two more different personality types within American politics than Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan: It's significant that Jimmy Carter came to power in the aftermath of the Watergate scandals and so his presentation as a serious, good, overly sincere character who spent his time not as a religious preacher but as a lay preacher - those were all parts of his appeal in 1976 .... Four years later when the US had been battered in so many ways - with oils shocks and economic stagnation, and the Iran hostage crisis and all the rest, those parts of Carters personality seemed overly pious too serious, sort of under-whelming for the forces of what was happening in the world. And the relative jauntiness of Ronald Reagan suggesting that things weren't as hard as they seemed under Jimmy Carter was a part of his appeal... not being any kind of master of the details as Carter was, but a person who could say "look, I have this under control, stick with me and we'll be able to move forward again.

Overlay: Reagan library, portrait, statue, as President - cheerful, waving.

Overlay - newspaper headlines about oil prices, crisis, malaise, Iran hostage crisis

Overlay - headlines about 1979 Iran hostage crisis, Carter looking meek.

VO: Back in Des Moines, Iowa, it's the Sunday before the vote for the Republican presidential candidate .... but there's a split between the state's Christian conservatives...

Steve Deace: I decided to endorse Newt Gingrich for President of the United States.

Bob Deever I have chosen to support Michele Bachmann personally, the reason being that after listening to all the candidates and my conviction is that she really is a solid believer.

SD: I've really been impressed with Newt Gingrich's humility in this process, if there is any candidate who can say "I am a rock star, I'm an icon, I've already been the king of the world, I don't have to do things like the Steve Deace radio program, I don't have to beat myself up about my past and face the accountability for my mistakes, I'm Newt Freaking Gingrich!"

VO: Across town, Tim and Jane have made up their minds too - they'll be voting for Mitt Romney.

Tim Neiss: Which was as big a surprise to us as, ‘cos in the last election we were not impressed at all with Mitt Romney.

Jane Neiss: We really took a look at some of the more conservative candidates, I would say, because I am very conservative in how I live my life and always have been - so he wasn't necessarily the most conservative candidate in my mind, but after seeing him, he comes off as a leader. I think this country is really in need of a good leader and I think Romney could do that.

TN: I know a lot of conservatives have problems that his stance on abortion has changed over the years, the fact that Romneycare in Massachusetts... a realk substantive change for me that came out of this campaign has been that when it gets down to social issues, and I think this has been brought on more influenced by the economy and financially where we are as a country - when it comes to the social issues I have decided that we been shooting too low as a country to deal with those social issues, we have been handing it over to politicians when I've handed those over to God.

VO: Bob Vander Plaats is President of the Iowa christian conservative group The Family Leader, they call him "the King of the Caucuses..." ...he's endorsed Senator Rick Santorum because he says Mitt Romney lacks principles...

BVDP: His record was flip-flopping, he was on both sides of the life issue, he was on both sides of the marriage issue, he was on both sides of the healthcare issue, he was on both sides of about every issue.

TN: I guess where I've gotten to with Romney is that he at least tried to do something on a state level which I believe was probably better done on a state level that it is on a national level...

TN: (upsot) ...we've seen what happens when you take this country and jerk it to the left...

TN: He's obviously someone again who is willing to risk fixing a problem rather than demagoging it and getting nothing done.

TN: (upsot) ...and that's why I'm supporting Mitt Romney. (applause)

VO: But if Republicans like Tim and Jane are in a mood to compromise, the same can't be said in Washington these days...virtually no Republican members of the House or Senate have been prepared work with President Obama since his election...

JF: In 2006, when the Republicans lost their control of the senate and so Mitch McConnell who is the republican senator from Kentucky became the senate minority leader - he essentially said the filibuster was going to be applied to everything that came through the senate, so instead of one out of a thousand measures or one out of a hundreds it was eighty out of a hundred or ninety out of a hundred of insisting on sixty votes to get things through.

AS: Well, that's what he said he would do, I know Mitch pretty well, he keeps his troops together pretty well, he rules with an iron hand, he's very clever, very shrewd, very partisan, and I think he has some allergy towards democrats, I don't know what that is but it was early gained...

Specter; Senator McConnell, the Republican leader said the Republican senate agenda was to defeat Obama in 2012 - now, is that a legislative agenda?

AS: He will tell you, you know, don't work with the other side on that bill any further or try to accommodate, or I might have a new job for you, make you the ranking member of the journal committee or some lesser place in the structure.

BB: The republicans have shown the Democrats exactly what to do should we have a republican president you can be guaranteed that the senate democrats will filibuster every single bill that he proposes they will filibuster every single nominee that he proposes and that the republicans who do that routinely to every one of Obama's proposals and appointees now will scream bloody murder - they'll say this is awful, this is anti-constitutional - they're just hypocritical jerks.

VO: Another battle in congress was looming. Mike Lofgren had been a Republican congressional staff member for 28 years, but began to worry about the Tea Party when they refused to support what had always been a routine increase in America's debt ceiling.

ML: This is about the inherently fragile institutions of our democracy, they are not automatically self-sustaining, they require an informed electorate that makes good decisions based on objective facts and not mystification. And the polarization has become so great that it threatens to simply stop the processes of government.

BB: Its an institutional problem between the presidency and the congress that could ultimately lead to a constitutional crisis of some kind.

VO: Arlen Specter was elected to the United States senate from Pennsylvania as a moderate Republican on the same day Ronald Reagan won the White House...he later became a Republican Presidential candidate himself, but finally left the Party when his fellow Republicans refused to support emergency spending at the height of the global financial crisis... Specter's defection gave Democrats and President Obama a crucial sixtieth senate vote to overcome a filibuster and made possible not just the rescue of the US economy, but landmark healthcare reforms.

Specter: When I cast the vote for the stimulus package there was no doubt that I could not win a Republican primary - you could politely characterize it as ‘irreconcilable differences'... but there was no longer any room for me in the Party.

VO: (STANDUP CAP HILL) It's not just old style republican moderates like Arlen Specter that find they no longer have a home in the republican party - any Republican member of congress now who works across the aisle with democrats to try to get something done can now face a conservative challenger from the Tea Party - the result, the 112^th congress elected in 2010 was officially the least productive and most partisan in American history - quite simply without compromise from both sides, this place doesn't work.

JF: Since the Democrats had sixty votes for any a few months in Barack Obama's time it meant that most of the things they were trying to do they were blocked in doing - they couldn't appoint people to judgeships, they couldn't name ambassadors they couldn't get things done and so you've had kind of a historically unprecedented log-jam in American governance that is really destructive.

RRJr: I mean you've got people now who are willing to - well you've got a Republican party now that has announced that they think that the full faith and credit of the united states is as Mitch McConnell put it - a good hostage to ransom. (edit) And um, I don't think that my father would have thought too much of people like that.

AS: The word ‘compromise' has become a dirty word - a compromise means you are a whimp - if you compromise pffff you're just a whimp. Well let me tell ya, if you cant learn to compromise an issue without compromising yourself, you should never be in a legislative body.

GB: If one side wants the government to be bigger and my side wants the government to be smaller, what is the compromise between those two positions? Anything you agree on is either going to make government bigger or going to make government smaller. And you can go down the list on virtually every issue - either man is between a man and a woman or its something else - it cant be in between something else and a man and a woman, so I think we're going through a period in the United States where unfortunately, probably we're going to see these kinds of bruising battles and perhaps the country swinging back and forth depending on any given election which side prevails.

VO: More than any other issue, modern Republicans wont compromise on tax increases - almost all signing up to a pledge never to increase taxes inspired by Ronald Reagan...

JF: The muscle, or the face of the absolutism about taxes is a man named Grover Norquist.

AS: he's a nice guy with a very bad idea.

GN: The taxpayer protection pledge is a written commitment that a candidate or an incumbent congressman, senator, governor, president, signs and its too the America people and it says ‘I will oppose and vote against any effort to raise your taxes.'

AS: Nice idea, and when he got those signatures unemployment was, you know, 4%, inflation was you know, whatever, we owed four trillion bucks instead of sixteen - and so he's locked these people in and if they say well I'm going to repudiate that the he does a full page ad and he begins to use his money and he'll cremate you in your district.

BB: The no-new taxes pledge has had an enormous impact on federal finances, its really decimated them and made it almost impossible to raise adequate revenue to fund the federal government, and the people who support this idea such as Grover Norquist have this really extremely shallow and naieve view that if you just take away the governments credit card that somhow or another spending will automatically come down - this is just complete and total nonsense, and I think it misunderstands Reagan's record - if you look at his record he did indeed cut taxes sharply in 1981 but he raised taxes almost every other year of his presidency 11 different times he signed into law different tax increases.

GN: Well the taxpayer protection pledge has allowed the modern republican party not only to be the party that opposes tax increases but to be branded like a product that voters KNOW that if you vote for a republican you have ivory soap percentages 99.99% certainty that they wont raise taxes.

JF: After the Reagan era, this goal of "starving the beast" became much more of a fixed ideology of literally no new taxes and so the republicans who had historically prided themselves in the Eisenhower administration and Robert Taft as being the party of fiscal prudence, became the party of gigantic deficits.

GN: We have a spending problem; the government spends too much. We don't have a lack of taxes, its not the problem. It isn't that the peasants aren't bring enough money into the King ITS THAT THE KING IS SPENDING TOO MUCH MONEY - YOU GOTTA KNOCK IT OFF.... So step one, hey hey hey, we're not giving you any more money, step two, stop spending so much...

VO: To try and find a bi-partisan solution to reign-in America's sixteen trillion dollar debt, President Obama appointed former Republican Senator Alan Simpson as co-commissioner for fiscal responsibility, but he soon found Republicans would only consider cuts to spending, not increased taxes... because of Grover Norquist's pledge, half the solution was already off the table...

AS: You can't cut spending you way out of this hole, you cant grow your way out of this hole, you could have double-digit growth for twenty years and not grow out of this hole, and you cant tax your way out of this hole - so you have to have a blend of cutting and revenue...

JF: Something has to give. The tax versus debt tension for the republican party - we had the classic irresistible force and immovable object situation because they cannot plausibly be on the warpath against deficits and on the warpath against ever raising taxes.

GN: The commitment that republicans who sign the pledge is; when I go to Washington I;m not going to raise taxes, I'm going to reform government, what the democrats and people like Simpson want to do is raise taxes so that Washington doesn't have to reform itself.

AS: I mean, what the hell... lets get serious, this guy is a monster... and he is the most powerful person in America today, but Isaid to him ‘you will be irrelevant in two years' cos your country cant exist on this diet of soup...

JF: Its put the republicans in an untenable position - which you saw during the 2012 primaries when there was one debate where the question was suppose their was a budget deal skewed ten-to-one in favour of budget cuts spending cuts versus tax increases would you veto it and every single republican candidate raised his or her hands saying yes they would veto that even a ten-to-one, ten to one bargain... and it became difficult both for them to say debt is this huge menace to the country and we are so unreasonable that even a ten-to-one solution is out of bounds for us, so I think the Republicans, this is one more force pushing them to the extreme.

VO: Another force arguably pushing the Republican party to an extreme position is the anti-Tax Tea Party Movement....and like Grover Norquist, many Tea Partiers take their lead from Ronald Reagan... Matt Kibbe is one of the most prominent Tea partiers, he's with a group called Freedomworks which finances Tea Party Republican candidates...

MK: Go back to Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan said that government was the problem not the solution ... Republicans win when they stand for something that's an alternative to the big government progressivism represented by this President.

GN: The Republican party has become the party that will not raise your taxes, after the Tea party movement, the Republican party became the party that wanted to reign-in spending but that second half only happened more recently and came about as a result of the failure of the Bush administration to focus on restraining spending.

MK: We trace it to the wall street bailout, and particularly when George W Bush said I'm abandoning free market principles to save the free market. Every Tea partier I know again and again and again will quote that verbatim and cite that as the moment they realized they needed to show up and fight against a government that had gotten too big, perhaps gotten too close to Wall Street and too in bed with special interests inside the DC beltway....

JF: The Tea Party Movement simultaneously added fervor and energy to the Republican side while pushing it to the extreme, I think that Mitt Romney in the 2012 general election had a much harder path to follow against Barack Obama than he would have if he hadn't had all of this Tea Party pressure during the primaries that he had to accommodate.

BB: Today's run-of-the-mill, you know, Republican Tea Party member, I mean to them Ronald Reagan is like a face on Mount Rushmore, he is just someone that they worship but they don't really know anything about what he actually did - they just assume that everything he did was great and everything good that happened to the United States in the 1980's was his responsibility...err their knowledge is really very, very shallow.

AS: Ronald Reagan, I knew well, I really did, there were times when he would invite us to the White House just four or five of us for an evening just to tell stories ... no business, Nancy would be off with her mother, her father down in Scotsdale - he'd say come on by, he'd be pouring wine and we'd just tell stories... and none of them are like that, none of them with big, big hearts who listen ... Reagan had democrats in the white house all the time, and republicans and they don't do that.

Specter:, I was a frequent visitor to the President, he had those two chairs in the oval office and would sit down and talk to me about supporting the MX missile or supporting school prayer or supporting his program and there was a attitude that if you didn't vote his way all the time he understood... but that is not the Republican Party that I faced after my vote in favor of the stimulus package.

GN: The Republican Party for 100 years was the party of Lincoln - that's what defined being a republican, it meant being from the north, and people from your state were against slavery and against sucession, well you know what, after 100 years even most democrats are against slavery and against sucession so it doesn't distinguish republicans from democrats from a republican, most democrats are against slavery and against sucession so a Lincoln republican doesn't have any meaning any more - a Reagan Republican defines a modern republican - limited government, maximizing liberty, limiting taxes and spending and control over your life, strong defense, strong enough to keep other clountries from attacking you - not running an empire but having national self defense - that's the modern republican - Reagan and his policies and his writings and his speeches is the model for the next 100 years of how a modern republican party will move forward - I think there'll be others like Ryan who will help flesh out what Reagan republicanism means but we will always go back to Reagan's principles where he talks about "up to liberty instead of down towards serfdom".

ML: The Northeastern Republicans are virtually an extinct species, the old style moderate republican wing.

VO: Almost two years into Obama's term the political tide had turned from Hope and Change to fear and anger over the struggling economy and ballooning debt, Tea party republicans won senate seats including Arlen Specter's and claimed the balance of power in the House of Representatives, handing them huge power to block the President's agenda.

ML: I think by the 2010 mid-terms, once you saw the incoming members, what they were saying, I knew that they would push the debt limit increase into a crisis - they could just not help themselves. US credit rating or no, they would do that and that's what decided me to find an exit strategy.

MK: When it comes to cutting a deal to expand the debt ceiling one more time, the citizens are attacked for holding politicians accountable - I don't think its about holding moderate republicans accountable, I think its about holding all politicians to the same standard.

GB: I've heard for decades that the public doesn't believe politicians - they say one thing when they are running for office they go to Washington they do something else - where here were people, most of them businessmen, or entrepenuers who said look, when I say I;m going to go to Washington lower your taxes and cut government spending you can count on me, that's actually what I'm going to do...

MK: To me, (bi) partisanship is code words for insiders inside the beltway in Washington DC cutting a deal behind closed doors.

AS: I mean these guys are purists, and the thing that will destroy and has destroyed the Republican party through the decades of my existence is that they give eachother the saliva test of purity. And then they lose and then they bitch for four years and wonder how they lost...

BB: The culture of congress was quite different in the 1980's ... remember that the Republicans did control the senate of six of his eight years and the leadership in the house was more ‘old school' - the idea that you opposed what the other party was for but you didn't throw up insurmountable road blocks...Tip O'Neill for example, could have killed the Reagan tax cut (he was the speaker of the house by the way) could have killed the Reagan tax cut in 1981 using parliamentary procedures if he had wanted to but he didn't think that was right, he felt that Reagan's policy proposal, even though it was wrong, was worthy of being voted upon and let the people speak and let the members of congress vote their consciences or whatever...and that view is clearly not the case today.

Specter: There is a general feeling that the United States Government is broken, that the gridlock is intolerable and that Washington is a madhouse mess.

VO: One of the biggest factors in the rise of the Tea Party movement was conservative media in the form of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel...

DS: The media is one of several elements that's created suchan ideologically driven hyper-polarised electorate.

RRJr: Remember that most republicans just watch Fox News ... most of the republican electorate they don't listen to MSNBC they look at CNN, they don't look at ABC or any of that stuff - Fox News...you go to the middle of the country turn on television in a hotel - it'll be tuned to Fox, you might not even be able to GET other cable networks in the middle of the country - it's all Fox. So these people are getting their news filtered through Rupert Murdoch's weird little universe.

DS: We all want to talk to, read from and listen to the smartest people in the word. Who are the smartest people in the word? The people who agree with me. And if cable television and talk radio and the internet can provide me with an information environment that only reinforces what I already believe rather than challenge it, what you do end up with is these two ideological cul-de-sacs in which somebody with whom you disagree is no longer your opponent but your enemy. And as we saw in the debate over the federal debt limit not too long ago, it took the prospect of absolute apocalypse to get people to put aside the caricatures of their opponents and actually find a way to work together.

SH: I think Barack Obama's biggest problem is that he's never run a business, he's met a payroll that I know of, ~~he votes ‘present' in the state senate in Illinois~~, he hung out with a lot of radical people, I think he's a rigid ideologue and I think he's wrong and I think America gave him the benefit of the doubt on his background associations, record appropriately.

RRjr: They think Obama is this, this Muslim, Manchurian candidate who is out to impose sharia law and that he doesn't have a legitimate birth certificate and god knows what else

ML: It's a tribute to how well Republicans can get their narrative before the public - in nice easy sound bites - most people don't realize that for the average taxpayer their taxers have been cut even relative to the low tax rates under George W Bush, so they're paying less taxes, and yet they think their taxes were raised under Obama - its an amazing piece of mystification.

VO: So how have the combined forces of Fox News, The Tea Party, social conservatives and the Norquist tax pledge changed the Republican party?

Specter: It is by no means the Party of Reagan, President Reagan welcomed moderates into the White House...

Simpson: I though the Republican party was simply government out of your life, the precious right of privacy and the right to be left alone. That sounds like a pretty good clarion call, a certain trumpet. It I had to go before the central committee of 63 people in Wyomning to get on the ballot they wouldn't put me on the ballot.

EM: It is correct that the Republican part is more conservative than it was when Ronald Reagan became President and when he ran for the Presidency and I think overall that's a good thing because what the Republicans stand for in terms of limited government, in terms of free markets in terms of individual liberty, in terms of strong national defense - these are important principles and goals for the country.

RRJr: It's a different party now and a different agenda. You know, the republican party has always been the party of corporate America, its always been the party of the wealthy and the rich and it was when my father was there too, he didn't think of it that way - he went along with a lot of stuff that helped corporate America and pandered to corporate America but that wasn't what he thought he was doing - these people for the most part and I'm not just talking about the Tea Party but the leadership of the Republican Party - they know exactly what they are doing - they are bought and paid for by corporate America and they are happy about it.

JF: The Republican party of the early Reagan era at the time seemed somewhat narrow because the Democrats thought that it wasn't inclusive racially as much as the democrats aspired to be it certainly seems very broad by comparison to the republicans of 2012.

ML: The establishment is to the left of the Tea Party but the establishment is to the right of where it was five years ago, ten years ago or twenty years ago... so the entire centre of gravity has been pulled rightwards.

PB: Its ah, I think its overall a good thing - politically it could be tough, this is a changed country... this is not the country Ronald Reagan ran in ...people forget, you know, Richard Nixon won California all five times he was on a national ticket - easily - Ronald Reagan won it all four times he ran, no way a presidential candidate of the republican party can carry California now.

JF: Because the Republicans of 2012 have essentially alienated Latino's and hispanics through a tough anti-immigration stance, they've alienated black they've alienated a lot of women they've alienated gays and lesbians they've alienated young people and highly educated people.

Simpson: I have been called a baby killer and a queer-lover by members of my party - I don't have to take that shit and I don't.

VO: Some say the Party of Reagan has changed so much in recent years Ronald Reagan himself wouldn't be welcome.

RRJr: Oh he'd be too Liberal, oh he'd never - maybe against a Romney, maybe he and Romney, he could be the Liberal counterpart to Romney perhaps but not no, he signed one of the most Liberal abortion laws in America when he was governor of California - that right there would eliminate him from contention, Michele Bachmann would point her finger and screech at him and that would be it.

RP: I don't share that view, I don't share that view.

PB: Reagan junior...he's genetically the son of President Reagan, but he aint Ronald Reagan in his views - he's a long, long way from that. I like Ron Reagan Junior but he is so far from his father's views that his father has difficulty seeing that far...ha ha ha.

GN: of course it's the party of Reagan, that idea that Reagan couldn't win a primary is silly - Reagan was the most conservative governor he could be within the constraints of his time he was the most conservative President he could be within the constraints of the time - he had a democratic congress.

RP: If he were to come back and were to be a candidate in 2012 I think he would fit in very well with where the the bulk of the republican party is ...

GN: He was ahead of his time - he supported school choice he supported all sorts of reforms that are today just beginning to happen and its clear tha these were part of the trajectpry of moving towards freedom that Ronald Reagan articulated and envisioned.

JF: We're having the worst of both worlds wen it comes to the situation of the current Republican party - their situation is bad from their own point of view because on current trends they're on a path to becoming a permanent minority party for any sort of national election - if the fastest growing demographic groups in the united states are latinos and young people and women and Asian americans and some highly educated people those are all the areas where republicans are at a huge disadvantage relative to the democrats.

Simpson: And if we go down in flames this trip it'll be because women and gays and lesbians have looked at a party which is small and shriven.

PB: Demographically America is changed and is changing and we're moving toward a time when very soon the Hispanic population which is now at 50 million by the middle of century is going to be 135 million - these folks basically vote two-to-one democratic - there'll be a time when Texas goes the way of California and that's the end of the republican party as we know it.

GB: I read a lot of demographic analysis of American politics and you can certainly make that case but as a conservative I believe that ultimately democratic policies don't work - so I think over time no matter what the demographics are Hispanic americans, other kinds of hyphenated americans will look at the record and say well wait a minute I came to America because I wanted a better life for ,my children not because I wanted easier access to food stamps of have a larger welfare cheque, or whatever it is the democrats are using to appeal to those voters - so I'm more confident than my friend Pat Buchanan that this message of smaller government, lower taxes, pro-family, pro-life and an America that's sure of itself and defends freedom around the world that that;s a message that no matter what the color of your skin where you worship or whether you worship or not that is long term going to appeal to the American people.

JF: Their path is bad for them, its also bad for the country as a whole because they are likely to retain significant power in the senate so they can maintain this blocking force in the senate so they are putting themselves into a minority but they are also having the power to obstruct the entire country from getting things done, so it would be better, another Reagan - a Reagan with sort of a tent-building, expanding strategy would be better for the party and better for the country.

Simpson: It doesn't matter who wins, the real issue is that of people cant step up and be patriots and pull together instead of pulling apart it wont matter whose to blame, but left me tell you the democrats will get just as much of the blame as the republicans because the American people will be so damned fed up with these jerks... that are in office and didn't have the guts to step forward and do something for their country as citizens, American citizens that are cherishing a party - how can you cherish a party over your country? Those people dont deserve any kind of acknowledgement, but only pity.

VO: So, what would Ronald Reagan's son like to tell modern-day politicians who are standing in the way of a compromise in his father's name?

RRjr: I would probably remind them that he cared more about the country than he did about his own career in politics, I would remind them that he was a grown-up, I would remind them that he was fair-minded and I would advise them to try and aspire to those qualities themselves...

Reagan farewell "A final word to the men and women of the Reagan revolution...the United States of America."

Fade to black.

End credits begin.

Simpson: Well the sooner we forget the Republican Party and Democrat Party we may make it... there's no need to talk about who will be president, who is ever the president, this damned things is a mess.

Finish credit.

Exterior West Des Moines Church

Upsot Pastor Bob Deever

Overlay - Bachmann

Overlay - Gingrich

Exterior Jane and Tim's house.

Overlay - Pan across candidates on debate stage.

Overlay of Bob listening to question

Romney

Capitol Building exterior, maybe interior of senate or house from c-span.

Overlay - Senate, Senator Mitch McConnell.

Overlay - Mitch McConnell.

Overlay- Specter as younger man, senator, presidential candidate, older man...

Specter with Obama and Biden.

erlay - senate vote on stimulus and healthcare

Overlay - Capitol Hill

Overlay - Senate.

Overlay - traffic jam footage.

Overlay - tax payer pledge being signed by Reagan.

Overlay - Norquists office, bust of Reagan etc.

Overlay - Simpson with Obama, Simpson chairing debt commission .

Upsot - Simpson and Norquist at commission.

Overlay- Norquist testifies at Debt reduction commission .

Overlay - Tea Party protests.

Overlay - White House exterior, with lights on inside.

Overlay - Oval office interior from Reagan library 5D footage.

Overlay - Paul Ryan

Print

Film: The Party of Reagan

http://www.journeyman.tv/film/5808

Transcript