Progressives love to chortle over the idea that the GOP would prefer Zombie Reagan to any living politician. One representative satiric example in The Huffington Post sees the very conservative former Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann, fed up with her choices in this election, endorsing the reanimated corpse of Ronald Reagan for president.
"Yes, the Constitution says you can't serve more than two consecutive terms in the White House," the make-believe version of Bachmann says. "But it doesn't say anything about ghosts or zombies having a third term, and I'm pretty sure since he's been dead for almost 12 years, and out of office for 25 years, that the consecutive part doesn't count either. He's going to be more respectful of the Constitution than Obummer was, I can promise you that!"
Yes, yes — we get it. It's a semi-clever way of saying Republicans lack brains or new ideas.
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And indeed, many Republicans really do venerate the 40th president, resulting in a sizeable cottage industry of all things Reagan. Republicans hold dinners and give speeches and write books in his honor. They preserve Reagan's ranch and other places where he hung his cowboy hat.
They also name an astonishing number of things for him. Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist launched the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project in 1997 — aimed at having a "statue, park, or road named after Reagan" in every county in the United States and having his Feb. 6 birthday declared "Ronald Reagan Day."
This year, 35 states, including five with Democratic governors, issued Reagan Day proclamations. You can drive on the Ronald Reagan Memorial Highway in Alabama, have mail mishandled at the Ronald Reagan Post Office Building in Florida, go to the Ronald Reagan Fundamental School in Arizona, fly into Reagan National Airport in Virginia, or even hike up Mount Reagan in New Hampshire.
"Each one of these dedications serve as a teaching moment for those who were not yet alive during his presidency or to grant those who remember him the opportunity to reflect on his accomplishments," the RRLP website effuses.
Conservatives' dedication to Reagan's memory may be a bit much. Yet there is a real reason for conservatives' stubborn attachment to the man. Every Republican presidential nominee since Reagan left office has been awful. They only won, when they managed to squeak out a win, because the Democrats put up weird and weak opponents such as Michael Dukakis — a man who answered a question about the possible rape and murder of his own wife by piously mouthing his death penalty abolitionism.
So of course rock-ribbed Republicans are going to venerate a successful two-term president from their tribe. Who else of recent vintage are they supposed to hold up as an alternative role model? Dick Cheney? Everett Dirksen? Richard Nixon? Newt Gingrich?
The Bushes managed to get elected three times but, as we're seeing with Jeb's faltering campaign, conservatives are starting to understand those victories as Electoral College wins only. The Bushes made deals with conservatives, and didn't deliver much of lasting consequence. Reagan was a conservative, and did.
Reagan fundamentally restructured the economy by removing the distortions and deadweight losses that come along with a top marginal tax rate of 70 percent. He told the truth about the horrors of Communism, forced the Soviet Union to the bargaining table, and set the Evil Empire on its starvation march — all while keeping the country out of any major wars.
The 40th president spoke up for the unborn eloquently, fired striking air traffic controllers, feuded with Congress, and took a bullet in stride — joking on the way into surgery that he hoped the good doctors charged with digging the lead out were Republicans.
The question shouldn't be "How can Republicans still worship Zombie Reagan?" but rather, "How could they not?"
