A Hilarious No Spin Zone Between Bill O'Reilly and George Will

You know how it is when GOPers run for President. They all fight and vie for the one who is the true heir of that conservative Saint, Ronald Reagan.

Well, based on a new book by Bill O'Reilly called Killing Reagan it seems that this year's GOP candidate that can most fairly call himself the next Ronald Reagan is actually: Ben Carson.

Yes-that Ben Carson.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/losing-it--5

Look, I've never been a O'Reilly man-hopefully that's obvious-but I kind of like his style here-not having yet read his book, though after this segment I'm more likely too.

http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Reagan-Violent-Assault-Presidency/dp/1627792414/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1446908607&sr=8-1&keywords=o%27reilly+killing+reagan

But I found this No Spin Zone pure gold. It was well worth the eight minutes in watching it which ends with O'Reilly telling Will to get lost and that he's a hack. I have to say, that whatever accuracy or inaccuracy there is in his book, on this O'Reilly was dead right. He also called Will a liar earlier in the segment for good measure.

Background is that O'Reilly wrote this book, Killing Reagan, that made some claims that gave Reagan hagiographers like Will a conniption fit. Well played, Mr. O'Reilly.

O'REILLY: OK, my name is O'Reilly. Do you want to deny that Clemente -- do you want to say that he is not telling the truth.

WILL: I'm saying there was a misunderstanding, I've said that Mr. Clemente is a tremendously honest man.

O'REILLY: OK good, because I -- we have it in writing that you were supposed to call me, and did you not call me. And by writing a provocative column like this, you had an obligation as a journalist to do that. Alright, page 245 in Killing Reagan is what your real beef is about. It's a meeting on March 2, 1987, the meeting was called by Howard Baker, then the new chief of staff for Ronald Reagan. Before the meeting took place, Howard Baker asked his assistant, James Cannon to investigate Ronald Reagan, to investigate him. Are you denying any of that is true?

GEORGE WILL: Of course not. You say that that memo he wrote is the centerpiece of a book. It's a memo that you have never seen. It's a memo that you didn't even ask to try to see from the Reagan library, until after the book was in print. It's a memo that the Reagan library doesn't have, and you should know it doesn't have, because the author was not a member of the White House staff.

[...]

WILL: The memo was presented to Howard Baker, Howard Baker took one look at it and said to the man who wrote it "This is not the Ronald Reagan I know," and that was the end of the influence the memo ever had.

O'REILLY: That was not the end of it. You're not telling the truth. You are actively misleading the American people, you are lying."

http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/11/06/youre-a-hack-foxs-bill-oreilly-and-george-will/206695

Aw, Bill. You already have me at you are lying.

But the real news here is the fact that this memo whatever the exact details of it were, exists at all. No wonder it's not in the Reagan Library. That even his own staff worried about his mental capacity and fitness for office. That Howard Baker whatever he said when he saw that memo felt the need to investigate him in the first place.

It sounds like old palace intrigue. You know the old British Monarchy where the courtiers themselves have to worry about what the people would think if they could see what they see every day.

Ok, so now you see the correlation I'm drawing between Ben Carson and Reagan. O'Reilly insists that this book is a very positive Reagan book and Will says no way.

O'REILLY: Okay. Here it is is Edwin Morris, quote: "During one unhappy period, when the Iran-Contra scandal coincided with prostrate problems for Mr. Reagan, the president was so withdrawn and confused that papers were surreptitiously drawn up, by staffers concerned he might have to be declared disoriented." OK? Now that is from the guy who wrote the bio. You want L.A. Times, you want New York Times quotes on it? I got them, I can read them to you.

WILL: You who began this interview by saying I had a moral obligation to call you by fore-writing about your book, wrote a book without feeling any obligation to talk to Ed Meese, George Schultz, Jim Baker, any of the other people who could have refuted the thesis.

O'REILLY: And why did I not talk to them?

WILL: Because they would have refuted the flimsy thesis you have.

O'REILLY: No, because they have skin in the game. We don't talk to people when we're writing our books, to --

WILL: You mean they have knowledge of the game.

O'REILLY: They have skin in the game, emotion in the game, spin in the game. We don't talk to anybody who was derogatory to the Reagans, or anybody who was laudatory. We do our own investigation. You want me to read more? I got more. This meeting absolutely took place on page 245. It was absolutely taken seriously by Mr. Baker and everybody else. And, the conclusion of the meeting was the president was fine. He was capable. And Killing Reagan is a laudatory book toward Ronald Reagan, and you didn't even mention that.

WILL: It is not a laudatory book.

O'REILLY: It is a laudatory book, or you can't read.

WILL: It is doing the work of the left, which knows that in order to discredit conservatism, it must destroy Reagan's reputation as a president. And your book does the work of the American left, with its extreme recklessness.

Here I have to agree with Will. O'Reilly is deluding himself that this is a laudatory book. Ok, maybe he means it to be and maybe much of the rest of the book is positive. But this whole memo thing is going to stand out. Thats going to be a major takeaway.

But on the other hand, what Will says about conservatism is very troubling. He seems to think that we liberals are combing over Reagan manuscripts to discredit conservatism. To me it's axiomatic in a very troubling way that all conservatives can talk about 30 years later is Ronald Reagan.

This was also kind of the thesis of Michael Lind's Politico piece yesterday.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/days-of-desperation-213329

It kind of admits conservatives have nothing much to brag about since. Indeed, what I take from this whole memo thing, was that even as a teenager who hated Reagan, my lying eyes weren't lying to me. Reagan was out there,

One great line from Last Men and OverMen extraordinaire, Tom Brown, is that Reagan always sounded like a child molester to him.

Then we have the recent book by George Bush, Sr. What has been talked about are his accurate criticisms of his son's Administration. But what's also interesting is that Sr admits something that looked true at the time: that after the Gulf War, he kind of mailed it in-remember him checking his watch at that debate with Clinton and Ross Perot?

All of which kind of lends to a thesis I've been developing: the Dems are the governing party and the GOP is the party of opposition.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/10/has-modern-gop-reached-limits-of.html?showComment=1444441587728#c1460648126903104314

The GOP itself doesn't seem to like governing and does a poor job when Americans make the mistake of letting them run things.

The Reagan-Bush years were a successful time for the Republican party-since then they have won the popular Presidential vote just once in 20 years.

Yet, even these standard bearers-Reagan and Bush-had some real issues. Bush got sick of the job and Reagan got to the point where his own higher staff begun to worry if he was still fit for the office. 

P.S. Give it to O'Reilly he won that round. I just bought his book on Amazon Kindle.