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Funny story about this "there you go again" Reagan meme. He said that cutesy phrase in the process of telling a transparent lie about his record.
Jimmy Carter pointed out that Reagan had long been an opponent of government funded healthcare programs, including Medicare in 1961. Reagan then shrugs that off as if it wasn't true and claims, falsely, that in 1961 he favored an alternate solution.
Here's the transcript of the exchange.
In 1961 Reagan made a record explaining why Medicare would turn America into a totalitarian state. If it passed, we will "spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free."
Like many Republicans since the 1960s, Reagan said what he knew citizens wanted to hear--that he supported the idea of everyone having access to medical care. But this claim was largely rhetoric which he never seriously tried to back with action.
And whenever people tried to put together actual policy that would achieve the goal that he claimed to share, Reagan would roll out the apocalyptic, slippery slope language so central to the American right. "First comes X policy, next thing you know you're in a gulag."
Here's what I'd say to 1980 Ronald Reagan. "There you go again, saying with a smiling face that you support things that the majority of your fellow citizens want, while with every cent of your political capital you fight against it."
In today's context, I believe we would call that "gaslighting." Reagan stands before the American people and pretends like he's been fighting for them to have health care access his whole career, when the truth is the exact opposite of that. Spoiler: He won in a landslide.
And how about this for a kicker? The current GOP President is acting like the unaccountable leader of a totalitarian state where he gets to nullify election results he doesn’t like. Meanwhile, Medicare has put exactly zero people in a gulag. Funny how that worked out.
