What is the difference between the Reagan Republican Party that he would take hold of and really shape having cut the deal with the moral majority on abortion and for the first time putting that plank that social plank in our more

Libertarian-oriented platform

in the 1980 race.

And today's GOP, for example, which

has cut a deal with Trump on things like tariffs and Putin?

Well, I think the essential paradox of Ronald Reagan

which really helps to understand why he was who he was and why Trump is very different.

I think the essential thing to focus on is the fact that there was a big difference between Reagan as the campaigner and

Reagan as somebody who was in office as governor and as president. As a campaigner he was

often quite far to the right and he accused Democrats of marching America towards communism.

He claimed that Medicare and Medicaid and other social welfare legislation was going to lead to the complete loss of freedom in America. He opposed civil rights legislation and you know he talked about welfare queens and law and order and as you referenced in 1980 he talked about states

rights at the in the show book county fair in Mississippi just a few miles where

civil rights workers had been slain in 1964 and so a lot of that convinced obviously conservatives in America, the right in America, that he was sort of the right man, that he was their man, that he shared their beliefs and he largely did but now here's the key

turn when he was actually in office he showed that he was not just an

ideologue he was also a pragmatist. He was able to pivot to the center and get things done.

And he had nothing but contempt for conservatives who go over the flag, who go over the cliff with their flags flying and that's a quote from Reagan and he often said

if I get 80% of what I want that's a victory I don't have to get a hundred percent. So he was able to compromise with Democrats in Sacramento and Washington and able to do things that if anybody else had done it would horrify Republicans. He signed, for example, the most liberal abortion law in the country as as governor of California. He raised taxes and raised spending. He cuts, he cuts taxes and spending in some ways, but he also raised it in other ways.

He in 1986 as president, he signed an immigration bill that legalized millions of

undocumented immigrants, what Republicans the day would call an amnesty bill. And of course, his crowning a immigrants the he wound up spending his second term as president working with the world's

leading communist Mikhail Gorbachev to in the Cold War and reform the Soviet Union

even at a time and a lot of conservatives said that he was being snooker that that Gorbachev was taking him for a ride but he was convinced that Gorbachev was somebody he could do business with and he was right. So at the end of the day what I would argue is what made Reagan a successful

campaign or a successful candidate was that he was able to cater and

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