Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has

delighted the establishment media with his comments about
Ronald Reagan and the modern Republican Party. 

The son and brother of Presidents Bush and Bush claims The
Gipper “would have a hard time” in a contemporary GOP that is
hamstrung by “an orthodoxy that doesn’t allow for disagreement.”
According to Bush, Reagan “would be criticized for doing the things
that he did.” 

While this kind of skylarking should always be viewed with
suspicion, Bush is accurate in saying presumed Republican
presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s immigration stance is
far more punitive than Reagan’s was. According to his own
literature, Romney mildly supports skilled-worker immigration
and not much else. Romney’s plan: 

• Raise visa caps for highly skilled workers
• Grant permanent residency to eligible graduates with advanced
  degrees in math, science, and engineering
• Secure The Border
• Turn Off The Magnets
• Enforce The Law
• Oppose Amnesty

In a 1980 debate, Dutch is very far from this law and order
view. In clear agreement with the “sensitive” policy and looser
work rules favored by George H.W. Bush, his last primary opponent
(who would soon become his running mate and vice president), Reagan
says he wants to “open the border both ways.” 

“That’s foolish,” Norquist told TPM in an interview. “It’s
stup—it’s bizarre.”

Norquist, a prominent critic of the senior President Bush but a
frequent ally of the second President Bush, seemed less than
impressed by Jeb Bush.

“There’s a guy who watched his father throw away his presidency
on a 2:1 [ratio of spending cuts to tax increases] promise,”
Norquist said. “And he thinks he’s sophisticated by saying that
he’d take a 10:1 promise. He doesn’t understand — he’s just agreed
to walk down the same alley his dad did with the same gang. And he
thinks he’s smart. You walk down that alley, you don’t come out.
You certainly don’t come out with 2:1 or 10:1.”

This is the part that the media love. It’s a favorite
refrain of the
left that Reagan wouldn’t be rightwing enough for today’s
Republican extremists. 

But the idea that immigration divides along left/right presumes
there is only a two-dimensional continuum in political thought. On
immigration, Reagan was more liberal than today’s Republicans (and
every era’s labor unions) because he was more libertarian on
freedom of contract and the right to work. Interestingly, in 1980
it was George Bush who made this point more clearly.