Not Too Liberal...Just Too Old

Could Reagan lead the GOP today? Can anyone, for that matter? To hear the liberal Democrats tell it, we're all a crazy bunch of extremely crazy extremists. We're just so EXTREME! (Which is just code for "you disagree with us").

Reagan, extremely pointing his finger

Too little attention is paid to the basic fact that Reagan was a man of his times and the times have changed. For instance, much of the GOP’s “extreme” opposition to tax increases stems from lessons learned from Reagan’s experience. Democrats promised to cut spending if Reagan raised taxes. They didn’t cut spending. Reality-based Republicans don’t want to repeat that mistake. Likewise, Reagan agreed to amnesty for illegal immigrants in 1986. Rather than be a one-time deal, it proved to be an incentive for more illegal immigration. And so on. The upshot of so much of the “Reagan was too reasonable for today’s GOP” blather assumes that Reagan wouldn’t have learned from what turned out to be mistakes — and that today’s Republicans shouldn’t either.

It's like Lucy, Linus and the football. The Republicans have landed on their backs one too many times as the Democrats yank that darn football away. We're plenty gullible, but we're not stupid. We DO learn eventually. But then, of course, we become EXTREME!

I'll take extreme over gullible any day.