the deification of Reagan

[jnala]

From Salon: When Reagan was (much) less popular than CarterIt's been widely observed that Reagan, a radical conservative in his day, would be considered far too liberal to be nominated by today's GOP, despite the extent to which current Republicans genuflect before his memory. Raised taxes, grew government, borrowed and spent, amnesty to illegals

Comments

[jpmassar]

To be fair, if they had asked about how people viewed each person's Presidency, they would have probably gotten much more similar ratings (at that point).

As the article notes, Carter was doing lots of 'good' stuff at that point in 1992 so his favorability was high, while Reagan was doing lots of 'bad' stuff, so that probably compounded whatever blame he was getting for the deficit and the recession.

Nonetheless, you have to give a lot of credit to the right for their ability to deify Reagan and make him the patron saint of policies he might have paid lip service to but never, ever, followed.