Ken Bryan: A Reagan Conservative?

During a forum for Republican candidates, vying for the District 5 seat on the St Johns County Commission, incumbent commissioner, Ken Bryan, told members of the Republican Club of Greater St Augustine that he is a Ronald Reagan follower — misrepresenting himself to be like the late President in his conservatism.

His exact words were, “I think he (President Reagan) was one of the most conservative individuals in the country — I follow many of the things he’s done.”

Really? You do?

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Do you think that the Gipper, a conservative man of principle, would have pushed with such brute force to pass last year’s property tax millage rate increase; the way incumbent commissioner Ken Bryan did?

Do you think our 40th president, a man well known and recognized for his sunny disposition, would have attacked, to the point of having to be physically restrained, an ordinary citizen who attended a “Town Hall” meeting to speak against a proposed budget increase; the way that the incumbent commissioner Ken Bryan did?

Or, do you think President Reagan is looking down from heaven, shaking his head, and saying, “Well, there they go again.”

Tax-and-spend liberals have been trying to hijack Ronald Reagan’s conservative legacy for some time now. If Ken Bryan feels that he needs a presidential figure to liken himself to, he should be looking at Barack Obama.

Unlike Commissioner Bryan, who came to St Augustine from inside the beltway, President Regan left his home to go to Washington; to restore opportunity and get our economy moving again.

“We do not face large deficits because Americans aren’t taxed enough,” Regan said. “We face those deficits because the Congress still spends too much.”

By the way, years before he was elected president, Ronald Regan was a Republican — about 9 years, to be more precise; not closer to 90 days like Ken Bryan who became a Republican in name only, merely for political expediency.

Regan became a Republican because he could see that the liberal, tax-and-spend agenda of the Democratic Party could not succeed. His conservative view of smaller government, less government spending, and greater liberties for American people, led him to an informed decision to join the GOP.

And, why does Commissioner Bryan say that he became, and remained, a Democrat — all of his adult life? In his own words, Monday night, because he is an African-American, raised by Jesuit priests and nuns, “That’s what they told me to do when I went to register”.

Could Bryan possibly be perpetuating a worse, negative stereotype of a black person, than to describe himself as voting the way someone “told” him to? Absolutely shameful.