Regan is not the Conservative hero everyone makes him out to be. Abandoning tradional education in favor of “workforce” education, green initiatives, and the agenda 21 project were all begun under his administration. His administration was packed with one-worlders, esp. in the Dept of Ed.
No politician is perfect. But Reagan wasn’t just conservative, he was A conservative. He was a movement conservative who, to their horror, bucked the republican establisment and the normal established way of doing things and tore them asunder.
In the long line of repulican nominees from the Depression to today (Landon, Willkie, Dewey, Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Bush, Dole, Bush, McCain, Romney), only two stand out that either shook things up or would have (Goldwater and Reagan). The rest were the same old thing.
You forgot to mention Reagan and his GHWB, O’Connor, Kennedy, Jas. Baker, III, it’s not as long a list as the bushes have, but it is there. The late Howard Phillips was warning about Reagan asleep at the switch as early as 1982.