Letters to the Editor
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Reagan, the Republican who was a Democrat
Essentially, Reagan "Democratified" the Republican Party. The iconic Democrats of the Roosevelt-Truman-Kennedy era were optimistic, big-spender fans of war and imperialism, whereas the Republicans tended towards paranoia, isolationism, tight budgets and hard money. For most of that era, the Bible-beaters and snake-handlers, as well as blatant Southern racists, were on the Democrats' plantation. Nixon began the transformation of the Republican Party, but his personal failings laid him low, and it was up to Reagan to finish the work and triumph. Under Reagan, Republican government learned to be a big daddy who knew how to throw money around, took over and extended the vast imperial project started by Truman and Acheson, and sucked in the backwoods fundamentalists (without giving them anything), leaving the real Democrats nothing but the ever unhappy and resentful Negroes, intellectuals, big-city hipsters and the State of Vermont. (There had to be some kind of outgroups for Reagan's tribalistic working-class followers to define themselves against.)
Of course every victory has within it the seeds of its own destruction. Reagan's and the Republicans' historical nemesis is George W. Bush, who took Reagan's "ideas" -- better call them instincts -- and drove them all over the cliff. But that's another story.
You traditional Democrats -- when you look at Reagan, you should say, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."