You’ve probably heard this gem and if you haven’t, I swear, I can’t make this up.

Republicans who are bolting from George W. Bush are saying that he’s betraying the legacy of Ronald Reagan. When I first heard this, I thought it was just naivety from young neo-cons who can’t remember any of the Reagan years but it’s now made its way into the mainstream media.

Check out what this columnist from the Boston Globe of all places had to say:

Reaganite conservatives have been the mainstay of the GOP for more than 20 years, and many of them are disgusted with the abandonment of Reaganite principles at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. If they had wanted skyrocketing budgets, new federal bureaucracies, more regulation of political speech, and stalemates on immigration, energy, and Social Security, they say, they would have voted for Democrats. Instead they voted for Republicans — and what did they get? Skyrocketing budgets, new federal bureaucracies, more regulation of political speech, and stalemates on immigration, energy, and Social Security.

WHAT?

Are they perhaps talking about the same Ronald Reagan who DOUBLED the size of the federal government? And they’re angry that Bush is swelling the federal ranks too and are accusing Democrats of these things?

I’m sorry — I lived through it and this tripe is simple revisionist history. In my entire adult life it was the Republicans who talked about trimming government but always demanded to bring home the bacon and swell the size of the government. The only person who reversed that trend was the only Democrat elected since I’ve been an adult — Bill Clinton. Clinton trimmed the federal government and sacked a bunch of the Reagan and Bush Sr. job beneficiaries who have been sucking off the federal teet. It was Reagan, Bush Sr., and now Bush Jr. who have swelled the federal budgets and increased beaurocracies.

As for regulating speech, again, it is the Republicans who want that. Do you think those crazy lefties at Kent State were screaming against the Vietnam war because they wanted their own words to be silenced before they were shot? Was it the abortion rights advocates in the 80′s and early 90′s who created a chain of bodies in front of clinics that opened up every time a woman who was being screamed at by evangelicals that she was killing her baby wanted curtailing of speech? No, those same people supported the Republican evangelical right to say what they needed as long as it didn’t involve kicking these women, and screaming. If stopping Republican anarchist freaks from handcuffing and beating pregnant women was stiffling speech, then perhaps, but that requires a complete redefinition of what speech is.

And speaking of redefinition, speech is now equated as money by the GOP. Is that what they’re talking about? Liberals wanting to regulate big business and political slut legislators whoring themselves to special interest groups for the money that’s being handed out by fat cats and big businessmen?

Another part I’m not gettin’ here is the whole “stalemates on immigration, energy, and Social Security.” thing. Have these neo-cons, these self-described followers of Reagan, deluded themselves into thinking that Reagan had an energy policy, that he had an immigration policy, or that he stood up and fixed the impending problem of Social Security that everyone told me in 1980 wouldn’t be around by the time I retired?

No, these new Republicans are not embracing the reality of their own party. They’ve rejected even the concept that they and their ideas might be to blame.

Perhaps Reagans legacy as the Teflon President extends to his followers who have deluded themselves into thinking their beliefs are always the best and any detriments that result from these same neo-con policies will simply fall away and be rewritten in the annals of history.