Said it before, I believe there are actually "conservatives" these days who are so suffering from "battered voter syndrome" that they would sit at home and let Barry Soetoro win a second term rather than vote for Reagan now, what with his record on selling arms to terrorists, cutting and running from Lebanon, signing amnesty for 3 million, allowing 12 million abortions in his eight years, and saddling us with a New World Order "read my lips" liar who got us Bill Clinton.
I think Edmund Burke would be labeled as a hypocritical Irish drunk.
The constant flow of information from the internet has changed how we look at things. It's moved the goalposts quite a bit.
The passage of time hasn't helped people's memories either. Reagan was a great President and a popular one. He was also a deal maker and a compromiser from way back. There's no question that if we held him to the same standards we use today, he'd be considered a RINO sellout on FR by his second term. His ability to speak over the media against their bias created a mythology of its own, but that wouldn't work in an internet age.
He'd have gotten off much better than many of his contemporaries. Having an alternate source of media would have been far worse for the Democrats than the Republicans. Still, we're probably best to remember that things weren't always as rosy as we remember them.
Exactly why we need to step back and gain perspective.