Alternate headline: Guy who violates Reagan’s 11th commandment by spending tens of millions of dollars on negative ads against fellow Republicans has Ronald Reagan’s sunny temperament.  I remember when I had my first beer.

I’m hoping Republicans will soon wake up, stop fighting among themselves, and realize that Mitt Romney has the best chance of becoming the nation’s next Ronald Reagan.

Everybody remembers Reagan for his single-mindedness in cutting federal spending and taking the government out of the central position in everyone’s life. What they forget is that it was Reagan’s temperament that made all this possible.

Think back to Reagan’s famous rejoinder to Jimmy Carter in their first and only debate, “There you go again!” What was the significance of that? Carter had just finish a long, beady-eyed recitation about national health insurance, which, he said, promised “not inpatient care but outpatient care” with “an emphasis on hospital cost containment,” and how Candidate Reagan, of course, was opposed to all this because he had opposed Medicare in 1964. Reagan stood shaking his head and laughing the whole time and when it finally came his turn, he sighed, “There you go again.”

The audience laughed and why not? Carter’s expressionless, robot-like recitation typified his whole presidency. He was obsessed with details. Reagan’s genial response was that when he opposed Medicare in 1964 it was because he favored another piece of congressional legislation that relied less on government. But in a single moment, Reagan had also revealed Carter as a narrow-minded pedant while he was an affable, good-natured leader capable of keeping things in perspective. Voters liked what they saw and that ended Carter’s Presidency.

Mitt Romney has a very similar temperament. In fact he had a “There-you-go-again” moment in the last debate when Rick Santorum launched into his inevitable fulmination about how Romney will never be able to debate President Obama on Obamacare because of Romneycare. Romney gave his usual rejoinder but then added, “It’s nothing to get angry about.” That’s the kind of perspective a President needs.

Right.  Romney’s “expressionless, robot-like” attempt to change the subject from Rick Santorum’s masterful evisceration of RomneyCare by claiming government imposed individual mandates are “nothing to get angry about” immediately reminded me of Reagan.  So vivid was the memory that I momentarily thought I’d been transported back to 1980 on Emmett Brown’s DeLorean. It’s getting pretty deep at the American Spectator, folks.

Oh, one last thing.  For those who may have forgotten, here’s what the Mittster had to say about Reagan:

Obviously Reaganesque, that Mitt Romney guy.

(h/t Karl Rogue)