Jennifer Rubin calls on GOP to stop 'clinging' to Reagan

Washington Post Republican blogger Jennifer Rubin is out with a very, very bitter pill for the GOP. In her Friday column she argues that Republicans have wrongly assumed the successful Reagan-era policies as a one-size-fits-all template for conservatism in the 21st century.

"America is no longer Reagan's America," she says:

After the top sliver of the Bush-era tax cuts expired, tax increases could not be part of a budget because, as we know, Republicans are opposed to taxes. Same-sex marriage must be opposed, because Republicans defend “traditional marriage.” And despite Reagan’s spearheading of immigration reform in 1986, Republicans have to oppose that, too, because they were the party of law and order.

In fact, these “conservative” positions are not necessarily conservative; they are part of an effort to avert the party’s eyes from the dramatic economic, social, demographic and cultural changes that have taken place over the past 30 years. They confuse the Reagan-era expression of conservatism with conservatism itself. In clinging to it three decades later, the Republican Party has become not conservative but reactionary.

Rubin does, however, name names of elected Republicans not "trapped in a time warp": Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez. "They are problem-solvers and party-builders, not groundskeepers for a Reagan monument," she writes.

@eScarry