http://frum.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWQyYjc1ZjNjZTc5ZTcxODM1NDQ5ZDhhODZjZTU5YmQ=

Republican voters are right to ignore him as a fringe candidate.

I’ll just paste what I wrote about Sully’s stupid rantings about Reagan and torture:

Well, let’s look at how he approached the wars in El Salvador and Central America. Liberals criticized him extensively for allowing American Special Forces to train and cooperate with “death squads.” This was considered a great moral failing of America and the seeds of “another Vietnam.” Bush is no Reagan, but Bush’s willingness to be aggressive in the war on terror is not one of the reasons. People forget that Reagan’s “optimism” was a function of his belief in America and American power. It stood in contrast to the dim pessemism of the Democratic Party, which was dejected after Vietnam and willing to accomodate Soviet expansion globally.

No one quite knows what Reagan would have thought about torturing a small number of guys like Khalid Sheik Mohammad and Ramzi bin Alsheib. But his record shows he wasn’t Pollyannaish about the bad guys, nor was he particularly wary of engaging in extra-legal activities behind closed doors–e.g., arms-for-hostages—to accomplish the broader mission. Among other events, he bombed Libya without Congressional authorization in response to terrorism and was also known for his rough treatment of hippie rioters as Governor of California. Reagan likely would not have shied from “waterboarding” or anything else he deemed necessary to win the war against al Qaeda.

Libertarians and moderate conservatives are enamored of an imaginary Ronald Reagan, a sainted figure misconstrued through the distortions of gauzy nostalgia.

The Soviet Union was a real threat. Islamofascism is not, unless we let them into our country voluntarily, which we are doing. The leading neocons don’t have a problem with that, however.

Also, Reagan got out of Lebanon, had interest in the gold standard and talked about killing the IRS.

I would say more similarities than differences.

It doesn’t seem like freedom has ever been high on Buckley’s list of priorities for good government. During the Cold War he said that an intrusive domestic bureaucracy might be necessary (and therefore acceptable) in the fight against the communists. He has supported every major American intervention abroad since National Review was founded, and despite his comments that the war in Iraq was, with the benefit of hindsight, a mistake, he favors staying. He supported Lieberman in 2006. His magazine opposed the civil rights movement because he thought letting blacks participate fully in civic and political life would cause upheaval. He supported Pinochet by drawing an analogy to the American Civil War: You have to break a few eggs, after all…

Reagan was more talk than action. And have antiwar conservatives forgotten Grenada? Or the aid to the brutal Contras? (You don’t have to like the Sandinistas–I don’t–to think Nicaraguan politics should have been left to the Nicaraguans.) And that’s before we even get started talking about Reagan’s disgusting bear-any-burden-pay-any-price approach to the war on drugs.

Goldwater is the most plausible candidate for comparison to Paul. But even he was pretty hawkish on Vietnam. Even the most anti-authoritarian strain of post-Taft Republican politics has had troubling simply saying no to war.