I think you have missed the point. The comparison is, one:
The former position of the Republican party vis a vis the current party's position on the strength of the central government,two: The President's expressed drive to remake other nation's political structures, a position that flys in the face of Republican party history.Three: The President's dismissive attitude toward American workers when he seeks to favor illegal immigrants over American workers via the presentation of legal status to illegals.
The President is more of a Wilson Democrat than a Reagan Republican.
with the exception of your third point, on which I concur, i disagree. The author is contemptuous of the President, of our foreign policy, ergo of the National Interest and National Defense needs of the current day.
His use of historical themes is shallow - Jacobins were not champions of liberty and freedom save only in their own minds - and to mangle this fact so that he may impugne our efforts to get at the root of the problem in the arab world is the height of sophistry.
And true, traditional Republican values emphasize the kind of co-existence that dances on the edge of isolationism - said paradigm went down in the dust and screams of two towers on the 11th of September.
To win this war, we need a september 12th approach, not a september 10th world-view - and if we all know that the enemies of our country are grown from the rot within an arab world dominated by tyranny, then I for one completely believe that planting the seed of self-determination among those peoples offers an excellent chance to not just defeat our those enemies, but seriously nullify the reasons they exist as well as the wellspring from which they draw their cannon-fodder from.
Reagan would never say or do the things that W is doing.
President Reagan would know that neither he nor we have the wisdom neccessary to remake such countries.
I agree with your entire comment.