PALIN CHANNELS SAINT REAGAN

(h/t Paul Waldman)

In the Vice-presidential debate, Caribou Barbie said this:

It was Ronald Reagan who said that freedom is always just one generation away from extinction. We don't pass it to our children in the bloodstream; we have to fight for it and protect it, and then hand it to them so that they shall do the same, or we're going to find ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children and our children's children about a time in America, back in the day, when men and women were free.

Guess when Raygun said this? 1961
What was he referring to? The passage of the Medicare bill!!!

Here's how Paul Krugman described Reagan's remarks:

It was on a recording he made for Operation Coffeecup — a campaign organized by the American Medical Association to block the passage of Medicare. Doctors’ wives were supposed to organize coffee klatches for patients, where they would play the Reagan recording, which declared that Medicare would lead us to totalitarianism.

In "Ronald Reagan and “Operation Coffeecup”:A Hidden Episode in American Political History," Max J. Skidmore gives the entire text of this early piece of wingnut agit-prop.