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Romney’s feeling the heat in Iowa. From CNN:

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney blasted a rising challenger in the Iowa caucuses Monday, painting former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as a tax-raising, illegal immigrant-coddling liberal and defending his own commitment to conservative causes.

“He may be conservative on social issues, but when it comes to economic issues like immigration, he’s a liberal on immigration. He fought for tuition breaks for illegal aliens. He raised taxes time and time again as governor of Arkansas,” Romney told CNN.

[...]

“I must admit that I find the vision and the direction that Ronald Reagan laid out for this country to be very powerful and very compelling,” Romney said. “And I’ll tell you, Ronald Reagan would have never raised taxes like Mike Huckabee did…Ronald Reagan would have never stood by and pushed for a budget that more than doubled during his term as president.”

Uh, Mitt?

Critics argue that his [Reagan's] economic policies caused huge budget deficits, quadrupling the United States national debt…

Moving on…

“Ronald Reagan would have never said let’s give tuition breaks to illegals like Mike Huckabee did. “

Uh, Mitt??

In 1986, Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). The act made it illegal to knowingly hire or recruit illegal immigrants, required employers to attest to their employees’ immigration status, and granted amnesty to approximately 3 million illegal immigrants…Upon signing the act at a ceremony held beside the newly refurbished Statue of Liberty, Reagan said, “The legalization provisions in this act will go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows, without access to many of the benefits of a free and open society. Very soon many of these men and women will be able to step into the sunlight and, ultimately, if they choose, they may become Americans.”

[Emphasis Added]

Mitt Romney’s ignorance–willful or otherwise–about Reagan’s legacy speaks volumes about the Republican Party. There is so much misty-eyed hagiography about Ronald Reagan that Republicans can no longer distinguish between what he actually did and what they ascribe to him in order to to peel off a bit of his dwindling legacy.

Ronald Reagan was not a great president. He racked up up huge deficits and quadrupled the national debt–debt we’d still be paying off if it weren’t for Bill Clinton. He had a ruinous foreign policy of allying himself with oppressive dictators and murderous regimes, as long as they were sufficiently anti-communist. He ignored AIDS. He caved in to terrorists by pulling American troops out of Lebanon after the Marine barracks bombing, which killed 241 American servicemen. He sold arms to terrorist-allied Iran to fund the murderous Contras. He backed Saddam Hussen and Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war, going as far as providing Hussen weapons (and a promising young envoy by the name of Donald Rumsfelt). The list goes on and on.

So why does the GOP constantly eulogize him? Well, he was the only successful post-war Republican besides Ike Eisenhower–Nixon and Ford were both world-class flops. He was also the first neoconservative president, laying the foundation of the modern Republican Party (as well as George W. Bush and Iraq).

Some words of advice to Republicans: move past Reagan. The rest of us don’t see him with the same misty-eyed reverence as you do, and it’s really starting to disturb us. And the more time you spend looking back toward Reagan, the less time you spend looking forward to the problems our country faces right now. The more you navel-gaze and wax poetic about the 1980’s, the more out of touch you look.

If the best you hope to produce is another Reagan, than color me (and, judging by the polls, the American people) unimpressed. We don’t want another George W. Bush-esque Reagan clone–unless you can offer us something else, you’re in for a big surprise come 2008.

Just my thoughts.

UPDATE: More from Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger Report.