Agree. Reagan took Goldwater and Buckley's rigid and bombastic views and took them mainstream and molded them in a manner that worked for the country. More than anyone, I blame GHWB for soiling the movement by faux conservative moves. There is at some awful point that it became acceptable to be an entitlement junkie in this society. Being a leach used to be looked down, where now it is the accepted norm.
And honestly, it seems like a runaway train, with no solution. Some dips here, may call me a one issue (trick) pony, but beleive me once the bottom falls out of this economy, nothing else will really matter.
I think there is another very important reason to call Reagan the standard. What ever else he did, he gave Social conservatives a seat at the conservative table... And in that, covered something that had been missing in American political Conservatism... A moral substance to align American Conservatism to the likes of Burke. Most of the moral imperative - the moral inclusive of Conservatism - Most of that is found in Judeo-Christian principles.
Not that they were absent in Goldwater, but they were not necessarily defined. And in the era that began the socialist march toward legitimizing SIN, those principles sorely needed defining.
