I know the gipper was great.
But nobody ever talks about his inability to retain the GOP majority in the Senate in 1986.
How come this is overlooked?
Because with exception of Clinton in 1998 and Bush in 2002 every President's party has lost seats in the midterms since the 1930s.
Oh yeah, right. That was all Reagan's fault.
Didn't have something to do with the self-satisfaction of many supposed Reagan supporters who after the 1984 landslide and the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (that got us two simplified 15% and 28% tax brackets) just got (1) Overconfident and (2) LAZY and simply decided to stay home on election day?
Do you remember how close so many of those races for the Senate were that were lost? Most were by less than 1%!!
The crime was the abandonment by a fat, dumb, happy, and unappreciative base that allowed the Dems to retake the Senate and thus make havoc for the remaining two years of Reagan's term.
Makes one wonder how Reagan felt to have been abandoned by those who claimed to be his electoral friends and allies. Had the evangelical Christian base showed up at the polls like it is their duty to do, the Senate would not have fallen into enemy hands.
The battles still raged, Reagan continued to fight for all of us, in spite of the betrayal by his base, but so many had already started enjoying their personal cuts of the economic recovery, left the fray, and retreated to a pre-1980 style non-involvement in politics.
Even though the base quit, we ought to be thankful that Reagan's resolve didn't weaken. In 1987, he stared down Gorbachev at Reykjavik, and Reagan won when GHWBush reaped the prize of Presdential victory and we witnessed the fall of Soviet Communism only 2 years later.
So many -- particularly in the conservative Christian community -- failed to remember that, "Eternal vigilence is the price of Liberty," and we got Dem control that ultimately economically skewered the GHWBush presidency.
Get some perspective. If you happened to be among those who didn't vote in 1986, the finger points at you, not Reagan.