Is it time to consign Reagan to the dustbin of history?

From Examiner.com:

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels elicited several hushed gasps and raised eyebrows late last week as he lectured a conservative crowd that it was “time to let Ronald Reagan go.”

The governor delivered his remarks to a room full of fellow red-staters at the Fund for American Studies’ annual conference and donor retreat at the Newseum.

“Nostalgia is fine and Reagan’s economic plan was good,” Daniels said. “But we need to look towards the future rather than staying in the past.” Daniels added that the GOP needed to work on uniting behind Sen. John McCain instead of constantly comparing the Arizona senator with the Gipper.

While he prefaced his remarks with the disclaimer that his thoughts were “somewhat controversial,” he hoped that he “would not be misunderstood.”

Incidentally, applause was somewhat less enthusiastic as he left the stage than when he began by poking fun at Barack Obama.

In reference to Obama’s recent comments about “bitter” small-town folks, Daniels remarked that he had to “release the iron grip from [his] gun” in order to make the flight into D.C. from the Hoosier State.

This is why I am so strident in my opposition to John McCain. The McCain candidacy represents a deliberate attempt by the old Rockefeller wing of the Republican party to take the GOP back to what they consider to be the "good old days".

These people despise Ronald Reagan because he brought people these elites consider to be low-lifes into the party. Reagan attracted not only fiscal conservatives but people who were pro-gun and anti-abortion. He even lured Evangelical Christians into the GOP. The "blue-blood country club elites" (as Rush Limbaugh calls them) are deeply embarrassed by these new Republicans and desperately wish to be rid of them.

That taking the GOP back to that supposed golden age would mean taking it back to the time when Republicans held maybe 150 seats in the House and 35 seats in the Senate matters not at all to them. After all back then the Democrats weren't so rabid. Holding an unshakable hold on power calmed them down and they didn't constantly attack their Republican colleagues. Republicans could attend dinner parties or play golf or go out for cocktails with Democrats and everybody got along just fine.

It was only when that #!&%#$@! REAGAN [spit] came along and turned the GOP into a majority party by consistently applying conservatism across the board (social, foreign policy and economic) that Democrats went bat-shit crazy and started trying to tear Republican's throats out with their teeth.

The Northeastern elite Republicans miss the good old days when they didn't have to pretend not to think the NRA were all a bunch of insane knuckle-draggers and when they didn't have to campaign at NASCAR events (make sure you get your shots before you go).

John McCain means to these people what Ronald Reagan meant to conservatives - he represents their chance to gain control of the party and mold it into their image.

Under normal circumstances McCain could be expected to lose and lose big. After all liberal Republicans don't win national elections. However this election the Democrat party is cursed with two candidates who are almost evenly matched in their voter support and are so close in the delegate count that neither of them are going to have enough delegates to lock up the nomination by the time of the convention.

This is focusing a great deal of attention onto the two Democrats and is bringing to light the fact that both of them are obnoxious ultra left-wing loons who have no business being allowed any closer to the White House than the guided tour. By the time November rolls around whichever Democrat finally wins the nomination will go down in flames in the general.

The only thing that this has to do with John McCain is that he is so far to the left that many Democrats will consider him to be an acceptable consolation prize. McCain's probable landslide victory will come only because of the historical accident which will place either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton opposite him. He will win simply because he is the one who will make most people want to vomit the least.

The left wing of the Republican party will not see it that way, however. They will take McCain's forty state electoral landslide as an indication that the Republican party and the nation has decisively rejected conservatism. McCain, who hates movement conservatives with every fiber of his being, will lead the effort to purge every last shred of movement (Reagan) conservatism from the GOP.

The message from the elites to the conservatives will be that they are welcome to stay in the GOP as long as they shut the hell up about God, guns, gays and abortion. Shut up and vote for whichever liberal the party chooses to run for House, Senate or the presidency.

Conservatives will not take that and will either start staying home on election day or will migrate to a third party. After McCain's term the GOP will be too fractured and conservatives will be too bitter to unite and the next quarter century will belong to the Democrats.

The trouble is that the nation has already gone too far down the road toward socialism to be able to withstand a quarter century of more "progress" toward socialism. By that time the USA will be too damaged to recover.

Letting a Democrat win in 2008 is a dangerous strategy. Either Obama or Clinton can and will inflict a great deal of damage. However the possibility of a united and energized conservative Republican party coming back to re-take the House in 2010 and the White House and Senate in 2012 is worth that risk.