After lying in cryonic suspension for some time, popular folk hero and Republican legend, Ronald Reagan, has returned from the dead and is finally running for the Republican nomination. There is, however, one problem. The other candidates do not want anything to do with the former hero, whom they are now calling a “center-leaning, extremist-leftist, Marxist, liberal, Muslim socialist!”
In fact, the backlash against Reagan has been so strong, Fox News hasn’t even dropped the merest hint of Reagan’s return from the dead or his campaign to be the 2016 Republican nominee. A general conspiratorial silence has meant that only the following confidential leak will prove that Reagan has indeed been running for President and that the GOP is having none of it!
The following is a transcript of this rather uncivil and angry nomination debate:
REAGAN: I believe that the only way America can preserve our freedom, prosperity, and progress is to halt the onward march of ISIS by using containment in the first instance, followed by rollback. We must contain them, frustrate them, and in the long run, bring about their absolute delegitimization and ultimate collapse. This is simply the only way to defeat these enemies who hate our liberties. Freedom is only ever a generation away from extinction. Let us make sure that such an unhappy generation will never be ours and that not one American citizen in the years to come will have cause to look back with tearful regret and say, “we just didn’t know!”
SANTORUM: Oh c’mon Reagan, it’s not the 80s, is it? Or the 60s! You are no Barry Goldwater, Reagan! Let’s have less of this sentimental, hippy, liberal nonsense! Containment?
CARSON: You cannot just “contain” ISIS, Reagan! ISIS is worse than Hitler! Or the Khmer Rouge! Or the Democrats! Hell, they’re even worse than the Soviet Union! You are out of your element, Reagan! ISIS is worse than… well, pretty much anyone! I mean, these cynical, scheming, authoritarian clerics are even more evil than the Episcopalians!
HUCKABEE: Look, God knows I don’t mean this in an offensive way, but your weak-kneed policy compromises are marching America to the very front porch of the ISIS worker’s commune!
CRUZ: Well, I sure don’t trust this Reagan and his inflated claims about how he single handedly ended the Cold War. Look at this pathetic cryonically frozen failure! I mean, he couldn’t even make it to this debate without getting some help from foolish mainstream scientists who probably believe in anthropogenic climate change, Darwinism, or other stupid ideological stuff like that! Who are you, Ronald Reagan? You aren’t half as accomplished as you think you are!
Now, if I were living in the 1980s, I wouldn’t have said, “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Uh-uh-uhhh! Don’t think so! Do you know what I would have said? I would have said, “Backward Soviet technology isn’t going to help the Kazakhs and the Mongols find out whether the steppes can glow in the dark or not! Well, I think maybe we should just help them out with that one a little bit!”
TRUMP: Ohhh, just forget Cruz! Let me tell you people, I am just going to drop a humongous nuke on our enemies, and it’ll be the greatest goddamn nuke in American history! How many Cold War Presidents can say that, huh?
PERRY: Well, this guy sure can’t! “Containing” ISIS? “Hippy rollback?” Some damn stupid idea of dealing with our enemies! Well, hm! JFK, anyone?
At this, all of the other candidates left the room in disgust, leaving Reagan alone to contemplate how frail and fleeting the glories are of any leader’s past.
It seems Reagan has already decided that he will not be running for the nomination in the future. Still, he exuded the resignation that would generally be expected from most elder statesmen who have just returned from many frustrating and disheartening years of cryonic suspension. Yet, a mild trace of bitterness and disenchantment in his voice was detected. Reagan confided, “You see all these current candidates? I once knew the Republican Party. Believe me, this is not the Republican Party I once knew!
Author: Wallace Runnymede
