(Photo) Libertas Magazine Cover: Sarah Palin & Dick Cheney Headline Reagan 100th

On February 4 and 5, Young America’s Foundation held an historic celebration to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth. Students, loyal Foundation supporters whose generosity made the event possible, and luminaries from the Conservative Movement gathered together for the gala event. Governor Sarah Palin and Vice President Dick Cheney headlined the weekend-long program as the keynote speakers for Friday and Saturday evenings, respectively. Their presence, combined with the celebration itself, led to the largest event held at the Reagan Ranch Center in Young America’s Foundation’s history. Overflow seating was opened up to accommodate more than 350 attendees at the Reagan Ranch Center.

Press from across the country vied for coveted spots in the main ballroom, with Fox News, C-SPAN, and CNN broadcasting Governor Palin’s and Vice President Cheney’s speeches live. Additional press reporting on the weekend included Time magazine, CBS News, New York Times, ABC Radio, AP, Bloomberg, Christian Broadcast Network, Politico, Reuters Photo, Santa Barbara News-Press, Los Angeles Times, Washington Examiner, Washington Times, and other outlets. 

Prior to her evening address, Governor Palin and members of her family visited Rancho del Cielo with Young America’s Foundation President Ron Robinson, Vice Presidents Andrew Coffin and Kate Obenshain, and President Reagan’s close friend, riding partner, and retired Secret Service agent John Barletta. 

During her rousing speech in the David Louis Bartlett Outreach Center, Governor Palin reflected on her afternoon at the Western White House: 

I cannot tell you how really humbling this is for my family and for me to get to be here. Today, out at the Ranch, it was simply overwhelming and inspiring…There we were riding horses along the trails that he had cleared, feeling the breeze in my face, being able to feel that warm southern air overhead...I knew instantly why Ronald Reagan loved that Ranch. I knew instantly why it was he felt so inspired in that place. 

The Ranch is unmistakably the home of a western conservative who celebrated our pioneering spirit. 

Today, there are hundreds of places that bear his name, but the Ranch is one of the few where truly, when you are there, you can distinctly feel his spirit. This is his home of course. This home was his refuge—his still point in a turning world. 

Young America’s Foundation was also honored to welcome Reagan administration alumni, including Attorney General Ed Meese, Frank Donatelli, T. Kenneth Cribb, Judge Bill Clark, and Michelle Easton for the program. 

Other special guests included authors who have written extensively on President Reagan: Peter Schweizer, Lee Edwards, Lou Cannon, Wynton Hall, and Craig Shirley. Best-selling novelist Brad Thor, movie director Stephen K. Bannon, talk radio host Mark Larson, Foundation Director and Washington State GOP Chairman Kirby Wilbur, the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund, and President Reagan’s close friends Dennis LeBlanc and John Barletta also participated in the weekend’s events. 

Surprise guest and occasional Reagan-nemesis Sam Donaldson arrived at the gate to Rancho del Cielo in hopes of being able to commemorate the anniversary. He was greeted by Foundation President Ron Robinson who noted that Donaldson’s presence was a testimony to President Reagan’s broad appeal, both as an individual and a visionary. 

As part of the Reagan 100 Celebration Weekend, Young America’s Foundation also welcomed more than 40 students from across the country to learn how they can become stronger activists on their respective college campuses. 

The Summit to Restore Freedom on Campus, sponsored and attended by Bill and Nan Bensyl, drew students from Furman University (South Carolina), Santa Fe College (Florida), Indiana University, DePaul University (Illinois), the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, University of California, Los Angeles, and other campuses nationwide. Participants attended the Reagan 100 Celebration panels and dinners and also gained valuable campus activism advice from Foundation President Ron Robinson, Foundation Director Peter Schweizer, Vice Presidents Kate Obenshain and Patrick Coyle, and Reagan Ranch Board of Governors member Mark Larson. 

The weekend concluded with the screening of Young America’s Foundation’s inaugural film, Still Point in a Turning World: Ronald Reagan and His Ranch (see related story above)—which Governor Palin referenced in her speech. 

The Reagan 100 Celebration Weekend provided an inspiring and memorable weekend for all involved, and Young America’s Foundation especially thanks the supporters who made the weekend’s events possible. 

To view videos from the Reagan 100 Weekend Celebration, visit www.yaf.org

Source:

Young America’s Foundation Libertas Magazine

(Video) Michael Reagan On Fox: Gov Palin Grass Roots Advantage, Speaks w/ Passion Like Dad

(Video) Sarah Palin: 23 years ago today, Reagan At Brandenburg Gate, Wall Torn Down 2 Years Later

Twenty-three years ago today, Ronald Reagan delivered this famous address at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate. Two years later, the Wall he insisted be torn down, came down.

“Berlin Wall Speech - President Reagan’s Address at The Brandenburg Gate - 6/12/87

President Reagan's remarks on East-West relations at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, Germany on June 12, 1987. For more information on the ongoing works of President Reagan's Foundation, visit us at http://www.reaganfoundation.org/

Sarah Palin Will Announce Her Candidacy On Feb 6th 2011 In Tampico, Illinois

Sarah Palin will announce her candidacy for President in Tampico, Illinois (or maybe Dixon or Eureka) on February 6, 2011, Dutch Reagan's 100th birthday. That is not just my prediction/fantasy; others thought the same after her Wednesday address in Chicagoland's suburban Rosemont, where she unabashedly took charge of the then erupting Highland Park school debacle.

Palin fired up the Chicago crowd, citing Ronald Reagan as a driving influence in her life and political career. […]

A Palin announcement on the Gipper's 100th birthday would be that day's Alaska-icing on the Conservative cake. Statues of Ronald (Dutch) Reagan will be unveiled in London, U.K., and in Tampico, Ill. The Tampico statue will be erected in Reagan Park across from Dutch's Diner (best pies in the Midwest). Lowell Park will install a replica of Dutch's lifeguard stand/chair where teen-aged Ronald Reagan saved 77 lives as the lifeguard on the Rock River's right bank, notching his log-chair for each save. Eureka College, Reagan's alma mater, will conduct a program reflecting on his Midwestern roots and values.

The Gipper's big 100th birthday falls on Super Bowl Sunday, 2/6/11! Parties everywhere! What better day for Sarah to announce her candidacy!

Original Post:

Will Palin use 100th birthday of Reagan to announce for the presidency?

Wall Street Journal: ‘Rather Have Sarah Palin In Oval Office Than Obama’

Norman Podhoretz, of the Wall Street Journal, wrote an interesting piece on why some GOP intellectuals do not understand Sarah Palin: In Defense of Sarah Palin 

Nothing annoys certain of my fellow conservative intellectuals more than when I remind them, as on occasion I mischievously do, that the derogatory things they say about Sarah Palin are uncannily similar to what many of their forebears once said about Ronald Reagan.

It's hard to imagine now, but 31 years ago, when I first announced that I was supporting Reagan in his bid for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination, I was routinely asked by friends on the right how I could possibly associate myself with this "airhead," this B movie star, who was not only stupid but incompetent. They readily acknowledged that his political views were on the whole close to ours, but the embarrassing primitivism with which he expressed them only served, they said, to undermine their credibility. In any case, his base was so narrow that he had no chance of rescuing us from the disastrous administration of Jimmy Carter. […]

What I am trying to say is not that Sarah Palin would necessarily make a great president but that the criteria by which she is being judged by her conservative critics—never mind the deranged hatred she inspires on the left—tell us next to nothing about the kind of president she would make.

Take, for example, foreign policy. The left has tried to convince America she knows very little about international affairs, but expertise in this area is no guarantee of wise leadership. After all, her rival for the vice presidency, who in some sense knows a great deal, was wrong on almost every major issue that arose in the 30 years he spent in the Senate.

What she does know—and in this respect, she does resemble Reagan—is that the United States has been a force for good in the world, which is more than Barack Obama, whose IQ is “RUMORED” to be higher than hers, has yet to learn. Jimmy Carter also has a high IQ, which did not prevent him from becoming one of the worst presidents in American history, and so does Bill Clinton, which did not prevent him from befouling the presidential nest. […]

I think that this is what, conversely, also accounts for the tremendous enthusiasm she has aroused among ordinary conservatives. They rightly see her as one of them, only better able and better positioned to stand up against the contempt and condescension of the liberal elites that were so perfectly exemplified by Mr. Obama's notorious remark in 2008 about people like them: "And it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

But how do we explain the hostility to Mrs. Palin felt by so many conservative intellectuals? It cannot be differences over policy. For as has been pointed out by Bill Kristol—one of the few conservative intellectuals who has been willing to say a good word about Mrs. Palin—her views are much closer to those of her conservative opponents than they are to the isolationists and protectionists on the "paleoconservative" right or to the unrealistic "realism" of the "moderate" Republicans who inhabit the establishment center.

Much as I would like to believe that the answer lies in some elevated consideration, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the same species of class bias that Mrs. Palin provokes in her enemies and her admirers is at work among the conservative intellectuals who are so embarrassed by her. When William F. Buckley Jr., then the editor of National Review, famously quipped that he would rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the combined faculties of Harvard and MIT, most conservative intellectuals responded with a gleeful amen. But put to the test by the advent of Sarah Palin, along with the populist upsurge represented by the Tea Party movement, they have demonstrated that they never really meant it.

Whether Buckley himself really meant it may be open to question, but it is certain that his son Christopher (who endorsed Mr. Obama) does not now and probably never did. Listen to the great satirist who blogs under the name of Iowahawk, writing in the fictional persona of T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII, son of the founder of The National Topsider, which he describe as a "once respected conservative magazine" now controlled by a bunch of "state college neanderthals." […]

As for me, after more than a year of seeing how those "prodigious oratorical and intellectual gifts" have worked themselves out in action, I remain more convinced than ever of the soundness of Buckley's quip, in the spirit of which I hereby declare that I would rather be ruled by the Tea Party than by the Democratic Party, and I would rather have Sarah Palin sitting in the Oval Office than Barack Obama.

Original Post: 

In Defense of Sarah Palin

She understands that the U.S. has been a force for good in the world—which is more than can be said of Obama

Thanks To Obama And McCain: The Reagan Revolution Continues!

Gene Schwimmer, at The American Thinker, wrote an interesting article on how McCain and Obama have revitalized the Reagan Revolution:  Praising McCain 

All of our current political debate, when reduced to its essence, is centered on answering a single question: Is the Reagan Revolution permanent? By this time next year, after the 2010 midterm election results are in, we will know. I predict that We the People will affirm the election of 1980 as a political realignment with a resounding "yes!" And for enabling us to finally answer that question -- and for the answer itself -- one man will deserve our special thanks: John McCain.  Friends, Americans, countrymen, lend me your eyes. I write to praise John McCain, not to bury him. No, seriously.  [...]

Today, we see conservatives marching on Washington. Conservatives are making their voices heard at town hall meetings, tea parties and -- soon -- at the ballot box. Indeed, in one poll, the "tea party," though not officially a party, garnered more support than the Republican Party.  [...]  None of this -- none of it -- would be happening if McCain had won.

Praiseworthy item number 2: ObamaCare proponents like to brand Republicans as the "Party of No," accusing them of opposing the Democratic plan without proposing a plan of their own. Never mind that anyone with a computer and internet access can read the Republican proposals online.  [...]

And last, but certainly not least (if you'll forgive the cliché), there is Sarah Palin. McCain really earned his maverick stripes when he overrode the advice of the "experts" to make her his VP pick. Former McCain campaign insiders openly rue the day McCain picked Palin, and apparently the only thing that delights these hacks more than condemning McCain's choice is attacking Palin herself, which they do at every opportunity with unseemly zeal.  [...]

For if the 2008 election and its aftermath have proven anything, it's that liberalism as a governing political philosophy -- that is, a philosophy that the American people believe in and embrace -- is dead. One of the hands holding the hammer that pounds the last nail into liberalism's coffin will be John McCain's.

Yes, the sting of political defeat is painful, but "no pain, no gain," as the saying goes. So rail at him if you must, but in the fullness of time, John McCain's losing presidential campaign of 2008 may turn out to have been to the 21^st century what Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign was to the 20^th.

Thank you, John McCain.

Full Article At:

Praising McCain