@Sled Dog
People have to remember that you can't just someone by the things they did in "real life" 40 or more years ago. You to judge their actions by the reality they lived in then,NOT the reality of today.
Reagan grew up in a world were it was the Democrats that were conservatives,and when they switched over to being internationalists,Reagan switched over to being a Republican.
He also grew up in an era where most people who gave their words on something in public,tended to try to keep their words. Lying wasn't easily shrugged off in the world he grew up in. By the time he became President,the world had swapped ends,and lying and breaking promises were just peachy-keen.
His "fault" was that he was from a younger generation and fairly new to national politics,so he was guillible. He trusted people,and when they gave him their word on something,he believed them.
Of course they did. Internationalists and homosexuals. Babs was the only man in that family,and she ran it with vigor.
The Rodents were never "conservative" in the modern usage of the word.
When Reagan was playing second-rate movies, FDR was busy shredding the Constitution and having commies on his staff. Reagan may not have known about the commies, but the shredding was obviously unconstitutional. FDR first floated the idea of packing the Court to "make" his socialism constitutional. Reagan couldn't have missed that.
The Rodent party became openly "globalist", to use a modern term, under that racist Woodrow Wilson, when Reagan was a child.
What didn't exist when Reagan was growing up was William Buckley and the modern conservative movement.
People calling the Rodents of the 1930's conservative is like people today calling Putin conservative.
Reagan was the governor of freaking CALIFORNIA before running for president. He was shafted by the RINOs in 1976, and they tried to screw him, and us, over again in 1980. To claim he was some innocent lad, Mr. Smith visits Washington, when he was elected was ridiculous. If he didn't know, he should have.
Reagan was a good president. One of the very best, right behind Lincoln and Washington. Maybe behind Trump. Hard to tell since Trump's second term has been a real disaster for the United States, through no fault of his own.