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 foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of a completely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)