History
The phrase derives by analogy from the earlier phrase What would Jesus do? and its related initialism WWJD, coined in the 1890s and repopularized during the 1990s.
While the phrase "What would Reagan do?" has existed since at least the early 2000s, it attained greater prominence during the 2008 Republican party presidential primary, and in particular at a debate held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
The phrase has also been promoted by the Heritage Foundation, in partnership with radio talk show hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, aimed at promoting policy in line with Ronald Reagan's, as well as preserving Reagan's legacy. The organization maintains a website named for the phrase, featuring video and audio archives, transcripts of Reagan's speeches and other resources.
Read more about this topic: What Would Reagan Do?
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art’s audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.”
—Henry Geldzahler (1935–1994)
“English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.”
—Malcolm Bradbury (b. 1932)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)