Ronnie the RINO

West coast liberal, gay rights advocate, card-carrying Democrat and union boss Ronald Reagan (Courtesy Ronald Reagan Library)

Newsdesk has been commenting for a while on the ongoing Republican civil war (the one that lost them one Congressional seat so far). Even we weren't too serious about an orthodoxy test. That, we left to the GOP.

Earlier this week, MSNBC got hold of a draft resolution being circulated to Republican National Committee members. Written by RNC Committeeman and National Right to Life general counsel Jim Bopp, Jr., and entitled "Resolution on Reagan’s Unity Principle for Support of Candidates", it sets out ten agenda points. If adopted by the RNC, any Republican candidate will have to meet a minimum of eight of them, or lose all central funding.

It's an interesting thought experiment, because it enshrines what seem to be base Republican beliefs (guns first at home and overseas, guv'ment is evil, Ronald Reagan was right about everything).

What's so fun about it? Saint Ron of California would have failed this litmus test on at least five items. Want proof?

"(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes"
In 1982, Reagan passed the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, the biggest tax increase in American history to that point. According to the US Treasury, he saw the public debt treble between 1980 and 1988.

"(2) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants."
Reagan signed the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, which provided an amnesty for workers present in the US for more than four years.

"(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat."
Since Reagan's best defense of his administration's involvement in Iran-Contra Affair was that he didn't know what was going on, that's probably another big fail for him.

"(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act."
There was no DOMA under Reagan, but he did come out against California's homophobic Prop. 6 in 1978. Yes, Reagan sided with Harvey Milk against the social conservatives. He may even have discussed such issues when White House interior decorator Ted Graber and his partner Archie Case stayed over in the guest quarters.

"(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership."
Not only did Reagan support the Brady Bill and passed legislation banning the manufacture and importation of "cop killer" armor-piercing rounds and undetectable guns, but as governor of California he signed the 1967 Mulford Act, outlawing the public carrying of firearms.

Reagan's policies, rather than being the simplistic bedrock of conservative principles, were sometimes complicated. His political career came with enough backstory that it would have been very easy for a primary opponent to run from the right, with some pretty vicious attack ads.

Now no one is going to claim that he was a screaming liberal. However, the one-time Party of Lincoln now loves to describe itself as the Party of Reagan. In fact, that party is arguably far to the right of where it was in the mid '80s and no more diverse (ever met the Republicans in the state Mexican-American Legislative Caucus? No? There's a good reason for that).

The problem is that this kind of orthodoxy plays very well among hardline party faithful, but it's a greater variable amongst the general electorate. For example, by tacking to the right, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison has probably seen any hope of anti-Gov. Rick Perry Democrats holding their nose to vote for her in March's Republican gubernatorial primary evaporate. Meanwhile, defecting ex-Dem Rep. Chuck Hopson, R-Jacksonville, has acquired a primary opponent: Jacksonville dentist Michael Banks who is running, not because Hopson is ineffectual in the lege, but because he's not conservative enough.