The Reagan Myth

As we near the Gipper's centennial, we will hear a bunch of crap - most of it false - about Reagan's legacy.

Read Will Bunch to see how wrong most of it is:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2011/02/04/ST2011020403674.html?hpid=topnews

The fact is that Reagan would be a moderate Republican if he were alive today.  And if Tim Pawlenty were alive today, he would be, too.  (Ba Dump Bump)  For all the incessant fluffing of Reagan by Limbaugh, Palin and every living member of the GOP's right wing, he was a rhetorical conservative, but a governing moderate-conservative.

Now, what he did do was change the acceptable parameters of debate about government.  But he didn't follow through, as Bunch notes, in shrinking anything about the federal government.  In fact, movement conservatives take almost the opposite lessons from Reagan than the historical record suggests.

Take abortion rights.  Via Bunch, Reagan signed legal abortion into law as governor of California, and while he spoke out against it, he didn't make it the centerpiece of his agenda.  Look at the House today.  In the presence of 9% unemployment, a declining infrastructure and faltering education, the House is obsessed with redefining rape to make it harder for victims to get abortions.

Now, maybe if Reagan were a modern Republican, he'd hold the same positions as Jim DeMint or Michelle Bachmann.  Maybe his comparative moderation is a legacy of his being an old New Deal Democrat.  If he were born into Goldwater's Republican party instead of Dewey and Eisenhower's GOP, maybe he'd be a frothing wingnut, too.  But frankly, the contemporary equivalent of Reagan would be Boehner.  Speak Right, but understand that you have to govern.

This speaks to how the times shape attitudes and ideas.  The Right has spent two decades making Reagan into the litmus test of modern conservatism, but they have also shaped his legacy into something more attune with Michael Reagan's ideas than Nancy's.  In fact, the real Father of Modern Conservatism is not Reagan and his deal to save Social Security, but Newt Gingrich and his government shutdown.

And I don't mean to say that Reagan was some swell moderate centrist.  What he did was transfer the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class and created the modern environment of deficits and stagnant wage growth for the overwhelming majority of Americans.  I think his ideas sucked, but they are not the ideas of the Tea Party Express.

In some ways, this is why history and historical accuracy is so important.  We currently have one of our two parties swearing fealty to the ideas of a man who never possessed those ideas.

Reagan is the Man Who Wasn't There.