

Bill Maher started his New Rule with a quote from a Bob Dole interview. Dole said the Republican Party had become a party of idea free ideologues who obstructed too much. He also stated that Ronald Reagan himself could not have made it as a Republican. Bill Maher took exception to that statement. In fact Maher laid out a pretty detail factual observation that would lead anyone to come to the conclusion that in fact Reagan was pretty much the pre-incarnation of the Tea Party.

Bill Maher: Ronald Reagan was an anti-government, union busting, race bating, anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-intellectual who cut rich people’s taxes in half, had an incurable case of the military industrial complex, and said Medicare was socialism that would destroy our freedom. It sounds to me like he would fit in just fine. …

Even though Reagan did a few things today’s GOP would not like, he wrote the playbook for them for every issue of consequence. Sure he raised taxes a few times, but when you look at where he started with taxes and where he ended, this is where our income inequality problems began. He invented voodoo economics. ...

On race his ideas could not be more ‘Tea Party’. He ran on states’ rights. He invented the notion that black people get all the breaks. …

He described the New Deal as Fascism, Medicare recipients as waiting for handouts, unemployment insurance as prepaid vacation for freeloaders. When they hold up signs that say no socialized medicine, where do you think they got it from? …

Ronald Reagan: And if you and I don’t do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free. …

Bill Maher: Worst of all Reagan inspired a whole generation of people who hate government to get into government. …

Stop agreeing he was a saint especially when his two miracles were turning water into polluted water and walking on the poor.