St. Ronnie
There they go again: Every presidential cycle, all the Republican candidates try to convince their party that they are the next Ronald Reagan. That's right—the guy who left office in 1988. What that really means is that Republicans haven't had a truly original thought in three decades. (
Except for Dick Cheney: he does seem to really march to the beat of his own drummer ... who's drumming in some completely alternative reality in a faraway land where reality has been wrestled to the ground by the dark, ominous force that has overtaken Cheney's frontal lobe.)
Anyway, the other Republicans—they will all want to prove their Reagan cred when they step on the debate stage Wednesday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California, reports the Washington Post:
Donald Trump will be the exemplar of American strength and vigor. Ben Carson is the sunny optimist who discovered his calling for politics late in life. Scott Walker sees himself as the conservative revolutionary, while John Kasich will be the principled pragmatist. [...]
Yet in their rush to fashion themselves as Reagan heirs, many of the candidates seem blind to the full picture: A president who signed a law granting amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants, befriended Democrats to forge compromises, expanded Medicaid health coverage for the poor and denounced the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” while still negotiating with its leaders.
While Reagan was surely no progressive, he also
raised taxes 11 times and closed tax loopholes for the wealthy.
Even Jeb! "I'm my own man" Bush would likely rather be Ronnie than Daddy.
In contrast to Reagan, none of the 2016 candidates are prominently trading on the legacies of the two more recent Republican presidents, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush — not even Jeb Bush, their son and younger brother, respectively.
So do any of the current GOP candidates even faintly resemble the cherished and vaunted Republican icon?
Lou Cannon, a former Post reporter who covered Reagan and has written five biographies about him, said three main qualities made Reagan successful: his charm and ability to inspire; his brand of conservatism; and his willingness to compromise.
Of the current crop of candidates, Cannon said: “These guys aren’t clones. They don’t come out of a factory mold. . . . I just don’t see a Reagan among them.”