Nancy Reagan to Bush: 'We Don't Support Your Re-Election'

[Guest guest]

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_4935.shtml

 

Nancy Reagan to Bush: 'We Don't Support Your

Re-Election'

By TERESA HAMPTON & WILLIAM D. McTAVISH

Capitol Hill Blue Staff

Jul 30, 2004, 08:12

 

 

The widow of former President, and Republican icon,

Ronald Reagan has told the GOP she wants nothing to do

with their upcoming national convention or the

re-election campaign of President George W. Bush.

 

Nancy Reagan turned down numerous invitations to

appear at the Republican National Convention and has

warned the Bush campaign she will not tolerate any use

of her or her late husbands words or images in the

President’s re-election effort.

 

“Mrs. Reagan does not support President Bush’s

re-election and neither to most members of the

President’s family,” says a spokesman for the former

First Lady.

 

Nancy Reagan

Reagan’s son, Ron, spoke at the just-concluded

Democratic National Convention and writes in next

month’s Esquire magazine that “George W. Bush and his

administration have taken normal mendacity to a

startling new level far beyond lies of convenience.

They traffic in big lies.”

 

Ron Reagan is joined by his sister Patty in opposing

Bush’s re-election effort. Only brother Michael

Reagan, a conservative talk show host, supports the

President and claims Ron is manipulating his mother.

 

Unlike, Michael is not Reagan’s biological son. He was

adopted by Reagan during the actor’s first marriage to

actress Jane Wyman and often complains that his

stepmother, Nancy, likes Ron best.

 

“He is her favorite,” Michael Reagan told Fox News.

“Ron can do no wrong. I mean, basically that's it, Ron

can do no wrong.”

 

Ron, however, claims George W. Bush has destroyed the

Republican Party his father helped build.

 

“My father, acting roles excepted, never pretended to

be anyone but himself,” Reagan writes in Esquire. “His

Republican Party, furthermore, seems a far cry from

the current model, with its cringing obeisance to the

religious right.”

 

The Reagans’ split with Bush and the party centers

around stem cell research which many believe can help

find a cure for Alzheimer’s, the disease that crippled

President Reagan in his final years. Bush and the

ultra-conservative wing of the Republican Party oppose

use of new stem cells. The Reagans, with the exception

of Michael, support such use.

 

There’s more to the feud than that, however. Nancy

Reagan has told close followers she believes Bush and

the current Republican leadership have divided America

with their extreme views. She has told Republican

leaders she wants nothing to do with the party or

Bush.

 

During the week of Reagan’s funeral, the former First

Lady “went ballistic” when she learned the Bush

campaign was test marketing new ads that used Reagan’s

photos and speeches in an effort to show he supported

Bush and his re-election. She personally called

Republican Party Chief Ed Gillespie to demand the ads

be destroyed.

 

Republican strategists admit the ads were produced but

never ran. They were pulled after scoring poorly with

focus groups where viewers found them in “poor taste.”

 

“Mrs. Reagan doesn’t care why the ads were pulled. She

just wanted to make sure they never went on the air,”

says a spokesman for the First Lady. “She does care

about whether or not the memory of President Reagan is

used for political purposes.”

 

© Copyright 2004 by Capitol Hill Blue