Yglesias trys to explain Reagan worship:
Scratch a liberal, and he’ll find some good things to say about FDR. Some good things to say about JFK. These days there’s more and more appreciation of the fact that Lyndon Johnson did some very great things along with some very bad ones. Jimmy Carter’s not so popular, but there’s still stuff to like in his legacy. Bill Clinton’s administration was in many ways a disappointment but also in many ways an exemplar of successful governance. And so it goes. History is a mixed bag, and major historical figures in the progressive tradition all have their praiseworthy aspects along with their shortcomings.
In the conservative official view, by contrast, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George HW Bush, and George W. Bush were all big government sellouts who strayed from the True Path as defined exclusively by Ronald Reagan. And yet at the very same time we’re supposed to believe that America is an intrinsically conservative country that years for hard-right policies. There’s an obvious contradiction. And the portrait of Reagan as a down-the-line man of the right isn’t even accurate. The whole thing is bizarre, and there’s genuinely nothing like it on the left.
Anyone who posts on the internet or even talks to conservatives runs into Reagan worship, conservatives seem to believe that Reagan was perfect, even though he left the country in a financial mess and at least partially created the situation we have today in Afganistan. Not to mention the whole Iran-Contra mess.
Reagan was a master of saying one thing and doing another and somehow conservatives are stuck with the the myth that Reagan did waht he said, while they try to do what he did. In some ways Reagan is a senile Albotross hanging around the neck of te Republican party until they get over their Reagan myths they will be innefective at governance and unable to create new policies or ideas.
The main problem with the “Reagan Cult” isn’t that Reagan is merely seen as an important contribution to modern conservative policy (even that is a moot point) but that staunch movement conservatives view Reaganism as the bonified foundation of their entire worldview, especially in the modern Republican Party. The Obama victory heralded in a new faithful commitment to the failed policies of Reaganism, which even now as their popular support is wavering, the party faithful must publicly proclaim their support the Reagan legacy.
Any deviation from what Reagan is thought to have done is treated with scorn. Reagan and the people around him were a little more pragmatic, I think Reagan even raised the SS tax.
The few positive things Reagan did are ignored like raising the social secuirty tax and immigtation reform and instead the really bad ideas like deregulation and high deficits are the part that is “worshipped”. Not to mention the drug war escalated under Reagan.