Republican candidates seem to invoke President Reagan's name a lot, except when it comes to torture, immigration, or nuclear weapons. Then, they quietly ignore President Reagan's public policies.
Regarding torture, for example, the Ron Paul campaign has an interesting website, quoting President Reagan. I wonder how the other Republican presidential candidates would respond to the former president's statement?
On the other hand, Democrats do the same with President Kennedy's name. By the time many Democratic candidates are done quoting the former president, one would conclude he was a pacifist. Actually, President Kennedy was a cold warrior, who actively strove to defeat communism. In fact, he criticized the Eisenhower administration for not being aggressive enough in its foreign policy. As a result, the US increased its military presence in Vietnam. The rest is history. Again, Democratic candidates quietly ignore President Kennedy's public policies.
This leads me to conclude that a rule of political campaigning is that politicians can't allow facts get in the way of their political invocations.
