Happy Fourth!

Independence Day is here... its sunny, hot and very summery outside.  Everyone is asleep still, except for me and Jake, and we're wondering what fun we can squeeze in on a tight budget (payday isn't till Friday).  Whatever it is, it will be with my family and in my yard.  It isn't often that someone in this industry gets July 4th off... so I'm going to enjoy it.

I was thinking of Ryan yesterday as I was driving home.  I had Levin on the radio, and a caller had said that he was sick of the "progressive" Republicans that always seemed to fill the GOP ticket spot come every election cycle.  I could tell from the way he spoke that he was a Glenn Beck fan of monumental proportions, quoting tid-bits from the GB show in almost everything he said... and MAN did that piss off Levin.  It was amazing... Levin ranted for a full segment, not only on how much he didn't care if he was voting for a "progressive" Republican or Ronald Reagan himself... anything to get Obama out of office.  THEN he'd would worry about fixing the GOP.

What made me think of Ryan was how he continually says that the Party (GOP) needs to "get back" to its roots within the Reagan-era.  "Reagan Republican" is the adjective so often employed by those longing for the heady days of 1982, when the top marginal rate went from 70% to 28%, capital gains fell to a low of 20% (lowest since 1928), and the government spending rate went from 4% of GDP to 2.5%.  I, too, think this is a model the modern GOP needs to adopt... and not just the GOP, but all of Government.

This thinking wasn't "Republican" though... and Levin might as well have come out and said it last night.  Reagan was NOT "embracing" some forgotten truth lost by the GOP since the Depression... he was re-thinking and re-inventing how government should operate in the modern world, and it worked.  In less than 18 months, Reagan had us out of the recession that Carter and Congress had dropped us into so deeply, and that all the progressives before them had begun.

This is my point:  "All the progressives before them" means everyone from FDR to Gerald Ford... every single one.  Nixon, Eisenhower, Ford, LBJ, Carter, Kennedy... ALL progressive, all following a New Deal paradigm.  When Reagan was taking his message to the streets, everyone from Bush Sr., Gerry Ford and Fed Chairman Paul Volker mocked him mercilessly for his "trickle-down" economic theory.  Almost no one within the Party was willing to back Reagan up with any showing of public support.

To take it even further, once Reagan got his 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act in place, Congress (with a GOP majority most of his first term) worked tirelessly to erase it from the books.  And every GOP Congress and President since Reagan has ignored or forgotten what he showed to be true, as well.

So, I maintain that Reagan wasn't a "Republican"... he wasn't espousing anything the GOP wanted to support, either before his terms or after.  Thus, if someone is going to claim to be a "Reagan Republican" than they are claiming to be something other than a traditional GOP politician, in the same way that "Blue Dog" Democrats are not Democrats at all, either.

Having said that, what are the chances that "Reaganomics" can be brought back into the equation via a GOP candidate, Romney or otherwise?  Will it have to be someone from a third party?  Other candidates are far closer to Reagan's model than Romney or McCain, yet these are the last two candidates that the primaries have produced.  Why is that?  How does that change?