I was right when I said this “ Reagan was the right winger of his time, he would be much farther right now, since he would not be alone, living in a world totally run by the left.” Reagan became a formal endorser of Republican presidential candidates in 1952, he was there in 1956, and in 1960, formally changing parties in 1962.
Reagan became the greatest conservative leader, and then president, today Reagan would be much more conservative, he would be part of a giant movement with it’s own media, and with a much wider, powerful Republican party, rather than his having to operate in a totally democrat world. Reagan would have the tea party and Governor Palin, and most Governors, state houses, the Congress, and so on.
Romney is anti-conservative, voted against Reagan, campaigned as against Reagan, attacked republican senators as “Jesse Helms types”, Romney came out against Gingrich and the Contract with America.
Romney is of the left, he is anti-conservative.
The Democrats weren’t the left in the 1950’s or even the 1960’s.
The Democrats today are nothing like the Democrats of that time, certainly not in a cultural sense and for the most part not even in an economic sense either.
The usual 1950’s-1960’s Democrat would find the current types ideological obsessions bizarre.
Reagan entered politics when Democrats were running the House Un-American Activities Committee. Democrats started many of their now pet leftist institutions like the Peace Corps and Amnesty International mainly as deniable counters to Communist infiltration. John Kennedy cut taxes and raised the defense budget. The mass media environment was much more politically balanced in 1960 than in 1980.
I find your analysis ahistorical.
As for Reagan specifically, the important point concerns his character - his optimism, his pragmatism, his generous spirit. I like to think that today he would be making friends and thereby influencing people, and not pronouncing anathemas and scourging the heretics.