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:
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“History takes time.... History makes memory.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)