Republicans thrown by 'greatest living president' question | MSNBC

[Panich52]

A large group of Republican presidential candidates gathered in South Carolina over the weekend for the “Freedom Summit” event, and a CNN correspondent asked much of the field an interesting question: Who do you think is the greatest living president?

“Obviously the greatest president of my lifetime is Ronald Reagan,” said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

“I’ll leave that to the people to decide,” said Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, which is his guaranteed go-to line for questions he doesn’t want to answer. “Certainly the greatest president of recent generations was Ronald Reagan.”
 
“I was a big fan, a very big fan of Ronald Reagan,” real estate mogul Donald Trump said.

The problem, of course, is the degree to which the answer doesn’t match the question. Reagan can’t be the greatest living president because, as a factual matter, Reagan died in June 2004.
 
No, Republicans, “alive in our hearts” is not an acceptable answer.
 
There’s arguably a small flaw in the question itself: we’re dealing with a very small universe of options. There are, after all, only five living presidents.
 
I imagine if the question were posed to Democrats, Presidents Clinton and Obama would both fare pretty well. President Carter might struggle, but Clinton and Obama are very popular figures in their party.
 
For Republicans, it’s far trickier. Their choices are limited to George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. The former was an unsuccessful one-term president who raised taxes; the latter was a failed two-term president, generally considered one of the worst in American history.

More
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/republicans-thrown-greatest-living-president-question?cid=eml_mra_20150513



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And it wasn't supposed to be a trick question. Seems many Repubs simply don't listen. But since the majority of Americans don't want the policies their leaders ... er ... representatives push, that's hardly surprising news.

[elleng]

1. Either DON't or CAN't listen,

either way is no good!

[underpants]

3. Now now, in Jeb's case it is understandable

He misinterpreted that amazingly simple question from his home turf network because he's Hispanic. Says so on one of his voter registrations.

[underpants]

2. Just because it "Gotcha" doesn't mean it's a "Gotcha question"

- Jon Stewart

[HassleCat]

4. And the best part is...

The all use the Ronald Reagan dodge for every occasion, and Reagan committed the worst violation of our constitution in the history of the country with the Iran-Contra business. Essentially, he set up a shadow government that used illegal means to fund itself and use that funding to finance projects that would never be approved by the people or Congress. You can add up all the other constitutional violations you want, from Lincoln's abuse of habeus corpus, to Roosevelts' internment of Japanese Americans, to Nixon's coverup of the Watergate burglaries, and they don't even come close to hat Reagan did. It was breathtaking.