In my post about Mike Huckabee being the Elephant in the Room, I made reference to Patti Davis’ article, “In the Name of the Father” where she lamented the fact that the Republican field is obsessed with who is the most like Reagan. It seems that this love is not restricted to the Republican party, with Obama comparing himself to Reagan in that they both are agents of change, unlike Nixon or Clinton.

He was chastised for his remarks in progressive circles with Edwards saying, “I can promise you this: this president will never use Ronald Reagan as an example for change.”

But Reagan’s son himself had this to say about the matter,

If I understand what he was saying I can’t entirely disagree with it. They both came along at times when society was on the cusp of change and they are both agents of change,” Ron Reagan told the Huffington Post. “As far as Barack Obama being a similar agent of change, that remains to be seen. But what I do see him saying is that we are in a historical moment right now like the 60s and 80s. And I think he’s right. We are overdue for a cultural shift.

Many aides of Reagan say they see a lot of Reagan-like qualities in Obama, but Obama’s invocation of Reagan’s name is nothing compared to the Reagan invocation(and harking to the Reagan coalition) that went on in the January 10th South Carolina Republican debate. Check out this mashup from TPMtv.

Also check out this tag cloud of the debate:

america (21) american (27) applause (33) believe (45) border (24) change (40) continue (18) country (29) cut (26) economy (28) foreign (20) giuliani (20) going (68) goler (19) government (36) governor (49) huckabee (39) hume (38) illegal (24) important (21) iran (19) israel (18) jobs (25) lot (21) mccain (37) money (25) paul (33) people (84) policy (18) president (31) question (23) reagan (38) recession (20) republican (31) ronald (20) senator (32) spending (28) state (50) support (21) sure (20) talking (18) tax (54) thank (19) things (30) think (76) thompson (24) washington (19) work (26) world (31) year (22)

created at TagCrowd.com

So I guess Reagan was out said by change(the empiest word in politics, said 90 times at the recent Democratic debate in NH only out said by going, Obama, Clinton and think), the buzzword of this campaign, but his name was mentioned more times than government, world, recession, and even republican. The debate transcript was taken from the Council on Foreign Relations, and TagCrowd was used to generate the cloud.

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