by Rod D. Martin
May 26, 2013
Bob Dole says "Reagan couldn't make it in today's GOP," which is his way of saying the Party's gone far to Reagan's right. Uh-huh.
It would be easy to dissect that statement from a policy perspective, or from an electability perspective. And given that nearly all the GOP Presidential contenders in 2011-12 were pretty Reaganesque -- except the one guy who got nominated, who divided the conservative vote like McCain and Dole before him, but at least did a fine job of speaking "conservative as a second language" -- one could make a case that Reagan couldn't get nominated now because he wouldn't stand out from the crowd. But of course that's not what Dole was saying.
Bob Dole pretends to be pro-Reagan, hoping we'll ignore that his entire career was in opposition to Reagan, needless to say from Reagan's left. He was actually on the anti-Reagan ticket in 1976, worked against key parts of Reagan's agenda as Senate leader in 1985-89, ran to the left of Bush (!) an…
