The race for the Republican presidential nomination once again runs through the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California
The race for the Republican presidential nomination once again runs through the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.
For the fifth time dating back to the 2008 election cycle, a GOP primary debate will be held at the library, which is located high over Simi Valley, California.
Reagan Presidential Foundation president and chief executive officer David Trulio pointed to the library's 1991 dedication, noting in a Fox News Digital interview that when President Reagan launched it, "he said he wanted it to be a dynamic intellectual forum — those are his actual words — and that he wanted it to be a place where policymakers debate the future."
"So, it’s the perfect place for candidates to debate and to make their case as to why they should attain the highest office in the land," Trulio said.
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The site is a repository of records from the Reagan administration, and the museum contains memorabilia and exhibits of Reagan's life and his two-terms in the White House, including an Air Force One pavilion. It's also the burial place of the late president and his wife, the late first lady Nancy Reagan.
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Trulio highlighted that the site is "extremely special for everybody. Right off the bat it’s a spectacular physical setting. It’s on a hill, just like the city on a hill that President Reagan would talk about it. It has sweeping views, beautiful gardens. Crucially, it has the final resting place of the President and Mrs. Reagan."
"This is place that is all about President Reagan’s values. So it’s a place where people can come to learn and go deeper on his core cherished beliefs which are timeless. What are they – individual liberty, economic opportunity, limited government, freedom and democracy, peace through strength, and national pride," he said.
"Those are timeless, those are relevant today, and also President Reagan was unquestionably successful two-term president and the lessons from his time in office deeply applicable to today," Trulio, a former high ranking official in the administrations of then-Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump who later served as a top executive at Fox News Digital, emphasized.
The foundation has played a role in shaping the 2024 race for the GOP presidential nomination, hosting a nearly two-year long "Time for Choosing" speaking series, which attracted some of the eventual White House contenders as well as other leaders in the modern Republican Party.
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"Time for choosing" was a line that Reagan famously used in a 1964 speech in support of conservative Barry Goldwater's presidential bid. That address has long been seen as a key moment in Reagan's transformation from Hollywood actor to politician, and eventually president and conservative icon.
It's also a line that former Vice President Mike Pence - one of the White House contenders on the stage at Wednesday's debate - incorporated into a recent speech in New Hampshire titled "Populism vs. Conservatism: Republicans' Time for Choosing."
Pence, in his address, argued that former President Donald Trump and some of others in the Republican nomination race "are walking away from core conservative values" that Reagan advanced four decades ago.
Asked if Reagan's legacy is still as relevant today as it was prior to Trump's transformation of the GOP, Trulio pointed to the debate.
"I think the debate stage will be a perfect place and time for candidates to articulate what their vision of the future is, how they are embracing or aligned or not aligned with President Reagan and his values and his legacy… Let’s have the debate. Let’s have that dynamic intellectual forum that President Reagan talked about. And have the voters decide."
