David Brooks laments, "Conservatives have allowed a simplistic view of Ronald Reagan to define the sacred parameters of thought. Reagan himself was flexible, unorthodox and creative. But conservatives have created a mythical, rigid Reagan, and any deviation from that is considered unholy."
The transmogrification of Reagan into a hardline conservative is a rather impressive bit of PR work. As Josh Green detailed in his seminal Washington Monthly piece, "[f]ederal government expanded on his watch. The conservative desire to outlaw abortion was never seriously pursued. Reagan broke with the hardliners in his administration and compromised with the Soviets on arms control. His assault on entitlements never materialized; instead he saved Social Security in 1983. And he repeatedly ignored the fundamental conservative dogma that taxes should never be raised." The guy was a conservative, sure, but he was a conservative in tension with a Democratic Congress. He didn't touch entitlements, didn't arrest government growth, didn't -- in other words -- actualize any of the policies we associate with Reaganite conservatives.
The leader who did give those approaches a shot was Newt Gingrich. But you rarely hear any Republicans yearning for a leader from the Gingrich school of policy thought. Turns out that when you actually try and cut Medicare, you lose all your seats in Congress. That's the great Republican shell game: Reagan can be idolized because the Democratic Congress helpfully kept him from legislating out his small-government conservatism. When Republicans try, as Newt Gingrich did in the 90s and Bush did with Social Security privatization, they get murdered. So it's back to believing in Reagan, who never really tried, and thus never really failed, but he sure did sound nice talking about it.
