Reagan would be shredded as a candidate by many FReepers today.
Without a doubt.
Reagan promised he would end the Departments of Energy and Education while also balancing the budget.
He didn’t do any of those 3 things.
Instead he created a whole new federal department (Veterans Affairs) and grew the federal workforce by 200,000.
He gave amnesty to 3 million illegal aliens in 1986.
The national debt TRIPLED in size.
Reagan and romney should not be mentioned on the same page. Reagan kept his promises and did not lie when he said he was 100% pro-life and traditional family. Reagan did not lie to win the primary, only to flip back to the liberal he used to be. Reagan was a pro-life, pro-family, Christian conservative. The gop and romney would akin him if they could because he was the real thing; a true conservative. Romney is all about romney. Reagan was about doing what is right, even when he was attacked for it.
Reagan would have been shredded by these new Romney rule changes. If they had been in place, we would have had Bush Sr. as the republican nominee in 1980. The GOP elites would never have given Reagan a chance.
Put up Ronald Reagan as a candidate again, with the tea party behind him and a conservative media on radio and internet, we don’t know how far right his agenda would be, but it would be far to the right of where he was in 1979, the year that Mitt left the GOP.