What Sarah Palin forgets (or never knew) about Ronald Reagan

She warbles a macho fantasy about our 40th president. But the real Reagan wanted a world free of nuclear arms
By Joe Conason
Salon.com

Listening to Sarah Palin, it is often difficult to determine whether her remarks demonstrate ignorance or dishonesty. She frequently waxes on about Ronald Reagan, for instance, revered ancestor of today's far right, whose real record bears little resemblance to the fantasies of extremists like her.

While attacking President Obama's nuclear weapons policies the other day -- and the strategic arms reduction treaty that he signed with Russia -- Palin said, "We miss Ronald Reagan, who used to say, when he would look at our enemies, he would say: 'No. You lose. We win.' That's what we miss. And that is what we have to get back to."

Now, Palin usually sounds bereft of even the most basic knowledge of history, let alone diplomacy, but in this case she had already graduated from college by the time Reagan decided to encourage peaceful change in the Soviet Union and rid the world of nuclear weapons entirely. In other words, she might be expected to remember those events, however vaguely, without reading a book.

Reagan's utopian aspirations were never achieved, of course, but the elimination of nuclear weapons was certainly what he proposed, more than once, in negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The actual history of the Reagan era is worth recalling for the edification not only of Palin but of the many right-wing politicians and commentators who blather on in the same clueless (or disingenuous) way.

(Original here.)