Jack E. White

In the 20 years since his death, journalists have praised Ronald Reagan as a way to disparage today's conservatives. But a look at the record shows the media routinely derided both Reagan and his policies.

It’s one of those rhetorical devices you often hear on the liberal networks: media condemnations of “today’s Republican Party,” suggesting that if only Ronald Reagan, George Bush, or Mitt Romney were in charge instead of Donald Trump, journalists would be brimming with respect for the Grand Old Party. But it’s all convenient revisionism; the same media aggressively trashed yesterday’s…

25 years ago, the U.S. Senate voted to acquit President Bill Clinton at his impeachment trial. At the time, journalists sneered that the trial of was a pointless waste of the Senate’s valuable time, while viewers heard it was an attempted “coup,” something “Stalinist” that evoked memories of Nazi Germany. Republicans were like KKK “night riders,” motivated by racism in their vendetta against a…

The sweeping conservative victory in the 1994 midterms shocked liberals, but within weeks the media elite were fully engaged in disparaging the new Republican majority as mean-spirited, racist, dumb and dangerous.