Glad he's gone. Would be nice if you had a president like Nixon these days (who was phenomenal in office and went down because of his paranoia) but I guess settling for Obama isn't that terrible.

Disagree strongly on Reagan those dramatic tax cuts directly caused the out of control deficit that is destroying the country. It's a nice message, but when the tax cuts aren't accompanied by spending cuts (and they weren't) it doesn't work.

" Many Republicans would express support for Ronald Reagan’s
obs"ervation: “Growth, prosperity and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the bottom up, not the government
down.”45

Unfortunately, after Republicans are elected to political office they tend to fall into the Washington trap of assuming that higher federal spending will solve the nation’s problems.

Harvard economist Jeffrey Frankel argues that we should not be surprised by the discrepancy between the rhetoric and the actual policies of Republicans. Frankel even argues that “the Republicans have become the party
of fiscal irresponsibility, trade restriction, big government and bad microeconomics.”46"

http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp87.pdf

45 and 46 are:
45 www.reaganesque.com (Ronald Reagan, September 1981)

46 Jeffrey Frankel, “Trading Places: Republicans’
Economic Policy Is Now Closer to That Associated
with the Democrats, and vice versa, Says Jeffrey,”
Financial Times, September 13, 2002, www.cid.harvard.
edu/cidinthenews/articles/FT_091302.html.