To those GOPsters trying to cling to a Ronald Reagan connection, don’t forget this. When Reagan launched his presidential campaign in 1980, he didn’t come gliding down, deus ex machina-like, on a skyscraper escalator. He wasn’t a “populist” nativist ushering in a new ICE age. He did it in front of the Statue of Liberty, where he praised generations of immigrants for their role in building America. “We all came from different lands, but we share the same values, the same dream.”
That was then.