do today's Republicans not understand?
Ronald Reagan was a terrible President, whose karma still infects every part of our governance, from his racist Southern Strategy and theocratic Religious Right pandering to our gerrymandered, benighted, obstructionist Congress, by way of the multiple disasters and Constitutional failures of Iran-Contra. Not the least of his diseased legacy was bringing Dick Cheney to even greater prominence as the apostle of the Imperial Presidency, and thus (with the connivance of a Supreme Court packed with Reagan and Bush I ideologues who have no business being judges at all) stumbling into 9/11, and creating disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq, including ISIS.
We do not need to beat the greasy spot on the pavement where that dead horse used to lie any further in this Diary. But Reagan's legacy was not all evil. He was at one time a flaming FDR Liberal, and even at his worst he was quite serious about arms negotiations and treaties with the Soviet Union. He also signed the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
But that is not the St. Ronnie that Republicans think they remember. Let us review further, below the Great Orange Satanic cloud of forgetting.