[MRM]

Reagan is the Republican Kennedy. You have to have been a Republican in the dark 70s to fully understand. Watergate followed by Carter and 15% inflation, 20% interest rates and 12% unemployment. The Soviet Union looked imnipotent and the Western powers seemed impotent. Those were bad days. I was a kid then, but I remember.

Reagan promised and delivered a new morning in America. Like him or not, much of the good stuff we take for granted today came because of or as a result of his policies.

But it goes deeper than that. Reagan is a symbol to Republicans that means different things to different people. Conservative icon Bill Bennett recently pointed out that Reagan wasn't always Reagan - his views and policies evolvedover time. He was very pragmatic. He mostly had Democratic controlled Senates and Houses to deal with and he figured out a way to work with Tip O'Neil when he could and appeal to the American people when he needed to.

He cut taxes but he signed into law the biggest single tax hike to that time. He cut spending but he oversaw ballooning budget deficits. He was a law and order hawk but he sponsored amnesty to illegal aliens. He was a military hawk but he pulled us out of Lebanon.

Invoking Reagan also harkens back to a more innocent time for Republicans when we were used to being out of power and therefore had few scandals. It used to be an article of faith to Republicans that they were not corruptable because they believed in smaller government and lower government spending, so it was hard to be corrupted by spending the government's money to receive some personal benefit. Lyndon Johnson and Jim Wright grew rich on the government payroll and were held in contempt by us. Iran Contra was a rude awakening, but even then Republicans believed it was an error in judgment of too much patriotism rather than some petty corruption for personal gain.

By the standards of the 70s Reagan was a radical, revolutionary conservative. By today's standards he would be a middle of the road Republican. So when someone says he is a Reagan Republican, it says more about the speaker than it does Reagan.