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As John McCain closed in on the Republican nomination, his ultra-conservative critics accelerated their denigration of him. Often, this took the form of pitting him against Ronald Reagan. The idea is that Reagan represents the conservative ideal and McCain falls far short of it.

"McCain's recent legislative record wouldn't exactly make Reagan proud," wrote conservative columnist Brent Bozell.

Tom Bevan at RealClearPolitics scoffed at the notion that McCain could be " the successor to Reagan and Reagan's principles."

At RedBlueAmerica, a commentary is headlined, "McCain vs. Reagan; McCain's no conservative, hardly a Reagan foot soldier."

Even on the other side of the ocean, social conservatives are taking aim at McCain. Scottish conservative politician Brian Monteith wrote, "McCain is no Reagan that unites the party and can be expected to see tax cuts as a tradable commodity for policies he feels more strongly about, such as security."

"Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory," John Kenneth Galbraith said, and a short memory is helpful in digesting the version of Ronald Reagan that social conservatives have rewritten. They portray Reagan in confrontational and adversarial terms, always the target of Democratic hatred and the natural spiritual ancestor of the younger George Bush. Thus McCain cannot walk in Reagan's steps.

But when Reagan became president, it was not the Democrats who tried to block his successes. It was the New Right, the spiritual successors to today's Bozell, Limbaugh, and so on. When Reagan's budget was hanging fire in his first Congress, ultra-conservative senators like Charles Grassley stopped the budget cold because they thought it was too liberal. More than $40 billion in cuts and for the rightists it wasn't enough - they blocked the Reagan budget in the Senate budget committee, prompting the administration to send Vice President George Bush and cabinet members out on the road to try to arouse moderate opinion on Reagan's behalf. (Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said "The president, if he can't support us, ought to keep his mouth shut.")

By contrast, 44 pro-Reagan Democrats in the House were part of his successful coalition, and far from being adversarial, Reagan reached out to them regularly. In the weeks after he became president and before he was shot, he met with most members of the House and all of the senators. "I've been spending some of my time trying to meet the Democratic members of Congress halfway, and the halfway house I've found is Tip O'Neill's office," Reagan said, in a reference to the Democratic House speaker. Later, he said, "I'll come up to the hill as often as necessary."

Now look at the advice Rush Limbaugh recently gave John McCain: "The lesson is, liberals are to be defeated. You cannot walk across the aisle with them, you cannot reach across the aisle, you cannot welcome their media members on your bus and get all cozy with them and expect eternal love from them. You are a Republican. Whether you are a conservative Republican or not, you are a Republican. And at some point, the people you cozy up to ... are going to turn on you."

That's the kind of advice that helps a president fail, but it is typical of social conservatives who really do not believe in working relationships in government, only in adversarial conquest.

It's worth noting, also, that conservatives remember Reagan policies that never existed. They see him as far more hard-line right than he was. "Reagan's Disciple," a new book by former Nevada reporter and Reagan biographer Lou Cannon and his son Carl, makes the case, pointing out that Reagan exasperated the New Right with actions like lifting a grain embargo against the Soviet Union and negotiating arms control agreements. Lou Cannon in previous books has also noted that Reagan was never comfortable with the gay- bashing rhetoric and activities of the New Right.

All this is not to say that Reagan was some kind of liberal, but that people like Brent Bozell and Rush Limbaugh, as the spiritual successors of those far rightists who plagued Reagan, lack the credentials to award or withhold his mantle.