"Abandon Reagan, all of him, and save your party."

Who was it that nailed the Laffer Curve to the doors of the cathedral? It was Ronald Reagan -- and, elsewhere, Maggie Thatcher -- and I don't recall any great howls of Papist outrage from Sullivan back then, when everything the pope condemns today was just winding into its political strength.

The primary problem for any Republican who genuinely wants to reform his party is to disenthrall it from the mythology that has metastasized within the conservative movement that has been the only real energy in the party since its primary power centers moved south and west. One of the founding myths is the notion of what the pope called out, by name, as "trickle-down economics." It does not work but, most important of all, it never has worked. It didn't work for Reagan any better than it worked for younger Bush, whose eventual unthinking rise to power the Reaganauts made inevitable every time they covered for the dim old cowboy in charge and the fairy tales he used to get elected. Sooner or later, if we followed their path, we were going to get a know-nothing president who also was a political maladroit. Abandon Reagan, all of him, and save your party. Cling to the myth, and we're going to see impotent appeals for party reform every three or four years for the three or four decades.