You can count on one thing every time Republican candidates for president get close to a caucus or a primary or a debate: The name of Ronald Reagan will be invoked.
Countless times on this campaign the candidates have competed for the mantle of being most like the Great One (not Gretzky). Unfortunately, once the comparisons start being made, you never know where they will lead.
ThinkProgress thinks the comparisons lead straight to the White House. In this short video, they have Reagan and President Obama both talking about eliminating tax loopholes that sometimes allow the wealthy to pay a smaller portion of their income in taxes than the not-quite wealthy.
So, in honor of Reagan’s 101st birthday:
Quoting Reagan from the video:
We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. In theory, some of those loopholes were understandable, but in practice they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying ten percent of his salary, and that’s crazy. […] Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver or less?
Earlier in the campaign, The Colorado Independent published the following video showing Reagan and George H.W. Bush discussing immigration in tones that would have gotten them booed at this year’s debates.