On July 4, U.S. officials, foreign dignitaries and conservative luminaries gathered outside the American embassy in London to unveil a $1 million statue of Ronald Reagan. As it turns out, the timing was more than a little ironic. Because even as the Gipper was honored in Britain, it's increasingly clear he would have no place in today's Republican Party.

From Grover Norquist's anti-tax promise and the Republican Study Committee's "cut, cap and balance" pledge to the draconian anti-abortion oath of the Susan B. Anthony List, hardline conservative litmus tests are proliferating at a dizzying pace. And Ronald Reagan would have failed them all.

If a reanimated Ronald Reagan suddenly appeared in 2011, there is little question his GOP descendants would brand him a Republican In Name Only (RINO) and cast off him off into the wilderness. (As California Rep. Duncan Hunter put it, "a more moderate/former liberal like Ronald Reagan...would never be elected today in my opinion.") Here's why:

1. Reagan tripled the national debt
2. Reagan raised taxes 11 times
3. Reagan expanded the size of government
4. Reagan supported the "socialist" Earned Income Tax Credit
5. Reagan negotiated with terrorists in Tehran
6. Reagan sought to eliminate nuclear weapons
7. Reagan gave amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants
8. Reagan approved protectionist trade barriers
9. Reagan signed abortion rights law in California
10. Reagan eventually debunked AIDS myths Republicans continued to perpetuate

1. Reagan Tripled the National Debt
As most analysts predicted, Reagan's massive $749 billion supply-side tax cuts in 1981 quickly produced even more massive annual budget deficits. Combined with his rapid increase in defense spending, Reagan delivered not the balanced budgets he promised, but record-settings deficits. Even his OMB alchemist David Stockman could not obscure the disaster with his famous "rosy scenarios."

Forced to raise taxes twice to avert financial catastrophe, the Gipper nonetheless presided over a tripling of the American national debt to nearly $3 trillion. By the time he left office in 1989, Ronald Reagan more than equaled the entire debt burden produced by the previous 200 years of American history. It's no wonder Stockman lamented last year:

"[The] debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts."

And that would be a big problem for Utah Senator Mike Lee and the Republican Study Committee now pushing the government-gutting "cut, cap and balance" plan. With its draconian limit on federal spending at 18% of GDP, President Reagan would have broken that promise every year he was in office. And the supposed great tax-cutter would have been in violation of the Constitution's new balanced budget amendment eight years running.

2. Reagan Raised Taxes 11 Times
As ThinkProgress noted, the inedible image of Ronald Reagan the tax cutter is "false mythology." (It is also worth noting that it was President Obama and not Reagan who delivered the largest two year tax cut in American history.) While Governor Reagan doubled California's state spending and signed the biggest tax hike up to that point, as President he raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan "a dear friend," told NPR, "Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration -- I was here."

His hagiographer Grover Norquist may be the man behind the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project to "to encourage the naming of landmarks, buildings, roads, etc. after the Gipper." But as he did with Oklahoma reactionary Tom Coburn, Norquist would have to conclude that the tax-raising Reagan "lied his way into office."

3. Reagan Expanded the Size of Government
Marking Reagan's 100th birthday earlier this year, Sarah Palin told the Reaganauts assembled by the Young Americans for Freedom, "We need to stop spending and cut government back down to size." If that's the case, her role model should be Democrat Bill Clinton and not Republican Ronald Reagan.

As USA Today pointed out five years ago, measured as a percentage of gross domestic product, average annual federal spending dropped far more under Bill Clinton (-1.8%) than Ronald Reagan (-0.6%). And as Slate's Michael Kinsley explained ten years ago in marking Reagan's 90th birthday:

Federal government spending was a quarter higher in real terms when Reagan left office than when he entered. As a share of GDP, the federal government shrank from 22.2 percent to 21.2 percent--a whopping one percentage point. The federal civilian work force increased from 2.8 million to 3 million. (Yes, it increased even if you exclude Defense Department civilians. And, no, assuming a year or two of lag time for a president's policies to take effect doesn't materially change any of these results.)

Under eight years of Big Government Bill Clinton, to choose another president at random, the federal civilian work force went down from 2.9 million to 2.68 million. Federal spending grew by 11 percent in real terms--less than half as much as under Reagan. As a share of GDP, federal spending shrank from 21.5 percent to 18.3 percent--more than double Reagan's reduction, ending up with a federal government share of the economy about a tenth smaller than Reagan left behind.

As the Gipper's biographer Lou Cannon aptly summed it up, "He was no Tea Partier."

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This weekend, Republicans marked the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan with speeches celebrating his small government philosophy, anti-tax fervor and hard-line foreign policy. But if Reagan was a GOP candidate today, he would doubtless fall victim to violations of his own 11th Commandment, "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican." Because despite all of the right-wing hagiography, Ronald Reagan ballooned the national debt, repeatedly raised taxes, signed abortion rights legislation and negotiated with terrorists in Iran. For those and so many other perceived offenses, the GOP rank and file - and especially its purity-demanding Tea Partiers - would today brand a reanimated Ronald Reagan a Republican in Name Only.

Meet RINO Reagan:

1. Reagan tripled the national debt
2. Reagan raised taxes 11 times
3. Reagan expanded the size of government
4. Reagan supported the "socialist" Earned Income Tax Credit
5. Reagan negotiated with terrorists in Tehran
6. Reagan sought to eliminate nuclear weapons
7. Reagan gave amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants
8. Reagan approved protectionist trade barriers
9. Reagan signed abortion rights law in California
10. Reagan eventually debunked AIDS myths Republicans continued to perpetuate

1. Reagan Tripled the National Debt. As most analysts predicted, Reagan's massive $749 billion supply-side tax cuts in 1981 quickly produced even more massive annual budget deficits. Combined with his rapid increase in defense spending, Reagan delivered not the balanced budgets he promised, but record-settings deficits. Even his OMB alchemist David Stockman could not obscure the disaster with his famous "rosy scenarios."

Forced to raise taxes twice to avert financial catastrophe, the Gipper nonetheless presided over a tripling of the American national debt to nearly $3 trillion. By the time he left office in 1989, Ronald Reagan more than equaled the entire debt burden produced by the previous 200 years of American history. It's no wonder Stockman lamented last year:

"[The] debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts."

Sarah Palin's revisionist history Friday notwithstanding, it was Reagan who put the United States on "the road to ruin."

2. Reagan Raised Taxes 11 Times
As ThinkProgress noted, the inedible image of Ronald Reagan the tax cutter is "false mythology." (It is also worth noting that it was President Obama and not Reagan who delivered the largest two year tax cut in American history.) While Governor Reagan doubled California's state spending and signed the biggest tax hike up to that point, as President he raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan "a dear friend," told NPR, "Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration -- I was there."

3. Reagan Expanded the Size of Government
On Friday, Sarah Palin told the Reaganauts assembled by the Young Americans for Freedom, "We need to stop spending and cut government back down to size." If that's the case, her role model should be Democrat Bill Clinton and not Republican Ronald Reagan.

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Lots of Arizona politicians were upset by President Obama's speech on immigration last week, but apparently none more so than Crazy Sheriff Joe Arpaio:

Arpaio: Right now, because of that speech, we're going to get more and more people crossing that border. They want to get here quick so they become U.S. citizens if we have amnesty. So stay tuned for more people coming in because of the president speaking out.

Yeah, because all these people are coming here not for jobs and work but for citizenship and freebies and handouts, right?

Fact is, the economic downturn and the lack of jobs has dramatically slowed immigration rates for over a year now -- and it won't be rising because people watched Obama's speech. No doubt Arpaio is perfectly aware of this, but he has to keep coming up with justifications for his Bull Connor policies.

One hopes that DOJ investigation into his racial-profiling practices wraps up soon -- along with the FBI's abuse-of-power probe. He's been forestalling the inevitable for too long now.

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Here, as promised, is my interview with Roy Beck of NumbersUSA, at yesterday's March For America in D.C. Judge for yourself how the exchange went.

A couple of the more interesting exchanges:

Beck: But the fact is, is that the amnesty that's being promoted here allows the people to steal the thing they came to steal. People come here illegally --

Me: So you're calling them thieves.

Beck: They are thieves.

Me: [Laughter]

Beck: Of course they're thieves. No look. What is a thief? A thief is somebody who takes something that does not belong to them. They come here and take jobs that do not belong to them. They take wages from the most vulnerable members of the society.

So the thing is -- I'm not saying -- I think most of them are probably good people. I think most of them don't even think of themselves as thieves. They've been taught since they've been young that that border isn't really that important. I don't blame them, I blame our government. But the fact is, those are people who came to steal a job, and what everybody's lobbying for today is to keep the job that they stole.

This, from a guy who leads off the "About Us" section of the NumbersUSA website proclaiming: "No to Immigrant Bashing."

Dunno about you, but calling 200,000 people -- no, make that 12 million -- "thieves" sure sounds like immigrant-bashing to me.

Also, I got a kick out of this exchange:

Me: Do you guys think you could get 100,000 people out here to rally against amnesty?

Beck: No. See, the trouble is, there's no amassed money to be made from bringing immigration back down to traditional levels. The uh -- I mean, the kind of money it takes to put on one of these things is just gigantic.

There's so many people making money off of high immigration, they can afford to do that. Our people are just unemployed people all up and down the line. And they would have to pay for it all themselves. Now they could get here, but they couldn't do this kind of -- this kind of expensive thing.

Yeah, because those 100,000 and more are drawn from all over the country just because their costs get covered.

Talk about extreme makeovers! No, I'm not making this up. It'll be a lot of fun to watch the right-wing exploding heads:

Former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, pondering a future in politics, is trying to wipe away his image as an enemy of Latino immigrants by positioning himself as a champion of that fast-growing ethnic bloc.

Mr. Dobbs, who left the network last week, has said in recent days that he is considering a third-party run for a New Jersey Senate seat in 2012, or possibly for president. Polls show voters unhappy with both parties, and strategists believe Mr. Dobbs could tap populist anger over economy issues just as Ross Perot did in the 1990s.

First, though, Mr. Dobbs is working to repair what a spokesman conceded is a glaring flaw: His reputation for antipathy toward Latino immigrants. In a little-noticed interview Friday, Mr. Dobbs told Spanish-language network Telemundo he now supports a plan to legalize millions of undocumented workers, a stance he long lambasted as an unfair "amnesty."

"Whatever you have thought of me in the past, I can tell you right now that I am one of your greatest friends and I mean for us to work together," he said in a live interview with Telemundo's Maria Celeste. "I hope that will begin with Maria and me and Telemundo and other media organizations and others in this national debate that we should turn into a solution rather than a continuing debate and factional contest."

Mr. Dobbs twice mentioned a possible legalization plan for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., saying at one point that "we need the ability to legalize illegal immigrants under certain conditions."

Mr. Dobbs couldn't be reached Tuesday. Spokesman Bob Dilenschneider said Mr. Dobbs draws a distinction between illegal immigrants who have committed crimes since arriving in the U.S. and those who are "living upright, positive and constructive lives" who should be "integrated" into society. He said Mr. Dobbs recognizes the political importance of Latinos and is "smoothing the water and clearing the air."

Boy, some political consultants are really going to earn their pay on this one!

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[Video from BlueStemPrairie, at their YouTube page.]

The teabaggers are getting ready for the next round of wingnuttery against the Obama administration. It sure looks like they lost on health-care reform, but they have already been organized for a long time around the issue of immigration, so they are ready and rarin' to go careening off the far-right cliff.

This weekend, the nativist right-wingers at ALIPAC and the National Policy Institute organized a series of "Tea Parties Against Amnesty.

However, at the rally in Minneapolis, the demonstrators got punk'd by a young man who called himself "Robert Erickson".

"Erickson" got up and delivered a rant against European immigration. At first the crowd was whooping and hollering as he talked about the rights of "real Americans" -- but then it gradually tapered off as he went on and they realized they'd been had.

Here's the speech:

Hi, my name is Robert Erickson and I’m really excited to be here. Its people like all of you, and events like this that make our country great! Give yourselves a round of applause!

I just want to talk about a couple themes this afternoon because I love this country and I want to see America be the best place it can be.

Mr. Gutierrez is getting ready to propose an immigration bill in just a few short days, and we have to make sure he knows that we want a bill that's tough on immigration. Now is the time for us to stand up and make our voices heard!

In Minneapolis, where I’m from, we have a huge immigrant population that’s been causing a number of problems. With the economy in recession, and so many people getting laid off, and unable to find work, immigrants should not be competing for the few jobs that are out there. It's just not fair to the folks who have a claim to this land and the right to be here. All across America, they are contributing to the flooding of our job markets making it hard for Americans to find jobs. Well, I'm fed up, and it's time to let our politicians know that enough is enough, and we're not gonna take it any more!

We need to secure our borders to protect our country. We need to restore order and put an end to the anarchy that's sweeping the nation. We need tougher immigration laws to make sure that we send these people back where they came from. We need to protect the sovereignty of the real Americans. We need to hold our politicians accountable.

It's no secret that with an invasion of immigrants comes waves of crime. We see them involved in massive theft, in murder, and bringing diseases like smallpox, which is responsible for the death of millions of Americans. These aren't new problems, though -- they have been going on for hundreds of years, and continue to this day.

I say it's time for us to say enough is enough! Are you with me? Are you with me? Let's send these European immigrants back where they came from! I don't care if they are Polish, Irish, English, Italian, or Norwegian! European immigrants are responsible for the most violent and heinous crimes in the history of the world, including genocide and slavery! It's time to restore the sovereignty of people native to this land!

I want more workplace raids, starting with the big banks downtown. There are thousands of illegals working in those buildings, hiding in their offices, and taking Dakota jobs. Let's round them up and ship them out. Then we need to hit them at home where they sleep. I don’t care if we separate families, they should have known better when they came here illegally!

If we aren't able to stand up to these European immigrants, who can we stand up to? We need to send every one of them back home, right now.

Thank you very much, and we'll see you in the streets!

Columbus Go Home! Columbus Go Home! Columbus Go Home!

Not surprisingly, the organizers were pissed. Sally Jo Sorensen at BlueStemPrairie was there to watch, and she reported that some of the nativists started getting violent:

Most of the MINN-SIR supporters were slow to catch the satire, and so the cheering from that side of the crowd took a while to subside. As they realized they'd been punked, they stood in a cold, stunned silence, while the 30 or so counter-protesters urged Columbus to go home.

Unfortunately, some of the pro-MINN-SIR audience made up for what they lacked in humor through the use of violence. Both Danielson and I saw middle-aged men attack young protesters, knocking one off a bike before he started throwing punches at the young man.

Just as shocking was the reaction of the state police working the rally, who pushed back those being attacked, rather than those attacking the counter protesters.

Neither of us have ever witnessed violence at rallies and events we've attended in the past. The attacks formed a sharp counterpoint to Hendrycks' shrieked claims from the podium that MINN-SIR "patriots" had "respect" while the young protesters were rude.

I've been warning for awhile that there is a violent element already involved in the immigration debate, and when they become empowered by the "tea party" types, it's going to get ugly. Looks like the debate hasn't even started yet, and it already is.

If you thought the town-hall teabaggers went nuts over health-care reform, just wait.

[H/t Matt Ortega.]

skippy wrote to remind me that today is Blogroll Amnesty Day. A day MBRU celebrates the year round.

Seeing the Forest: Hillary and Obama. Robert Parry has more...

The Carpetbagger Report: Lieberman shill imagines burying the "angry left."

The Opinion Mill: Sunday Bookchat. How Martin Amis lost his marbles! How the South won the Civil War, and more!

Balloon Juice: Liberal terrorist hippies on the loose...

distributorcap NY: Can't buy me love...

Daily Howler: Cheers for C&L's John "Damato"

This Modern World: When so-called conservatives ask, "If lraq is such a disaster, what's your solution?"...here's the answer

Prairie Weather: The authorization of war crimes, torture, and illegal wire-tapping by this administration needs to be thoroughly investigated in order to hold more than a few scapegoat grunts responsible. The question of how far political leaders will go to protect themselves brought to mind the death of Alexander Litvinenko. Might be time to take another look into Putin's soul

Eteraz.org: Western Muslim opinion of the war in Iraq

The Orstrahyun: One of Australia's most respected SAS officers has revealed that teams searching for Saddam's WMDs' regarded their mission as a "standing joke." He said the Government had broken a moral contract with its defense force in sending it to an "immoral war".

Dept Of Homeland Conspiracy: Shut Up & Buy!!!

The Lebanese Bloggers: To hell in a handbasket

Media Bloodhound: Interview with Larry Cox, Director of Amnesty international

JC Christian:

As a Republican, I don't think I've ever been prouder of one of our senators than I was today when you rose to address the terrorist amnesty issue. Like you, I don't think the US Senate should condemn the Iraqi Prime Minister for offering amnesty to terrorists who kill our soldiers. Why waste time on it? It's not like our military is staffed with College Republicans...read on