Why do Republicans worship Ronald Reagan ??

[RFKHumphreyObama]

92. He made all their right wing extremism marketable

People like Barry Goldwater had tried to get their right wing agenda across before and had failed. Richard Nixon governed to the left on several issues in the interests of triangulation. Gerald Ford was a moderate who didn't believe in much of the right wing agenda and actually wanted to govern in the best interests of the nation

Then came "the Great Communicator". Affable, good at one-liners, adept at managing and controlling the press and possessed with the ability to cloak extreme right wing measures in rhetoric that would appeal to the masses. Right wing welfare reform was justified on the basis of dealing with "welfare queens", anyone who criticized American foreign policy was "blaming America first" (in all fairness, the words of Reagan's UN Ambassador, not Reagan himself but was reflected in Reagan's marketing of his foreign policy agenda. Funding contra rebels was equivalent to aiding the founding fathers in America's revolutionary wars. And so on and so on. Reagan's ability to sell his right wing bullshit behind a mask of marketable rhetoric galvanized the success of the right wing agenda in many ways. And despite all the evidence of the corruption and ethics problems in the administration, Reagan still managed to con the American public into giving him high approval ratings and electing his VP when he left office