The 11th commandment

The Republican Party has recently been indulging in immolation of its heretics, which if you're into that sort of thing, asI am, is highly amusing for its ideological inconsistency.

When the Lord High Ronald Reagan arose in the West to spread his cloak across the land, he uttered unto the faithful what he called the party's "11th commandment" -- Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill of Another Republican.

For much of the past 30 years, the party operated under that cardinal principle, that no matter how idiotic another Republican may seem to another, they were all made men, and the country-club/Kiwanis/model-car-club omerta was in force. It allowed them to make immense progress on their agenda, which was to strangle democracy and capitalism in the cradle while promulgating the fantasy that Anyone Can Succeed in America, no matter who they are or where they were born. What has been most notable about Republicans in the past three decades is that they have taken Reagan's morning-in-America aspiration for a description of real life and concluded that if you got your American Dream by the sweat of your Ivy League brow, then by golly, the urchin in public housing ought to be able to succeed just as handily.

Perhaps the 11th commandment was a joke, Reagan's Screen-Actors-Guild way of keeping the troops in line. For sure, it rested entirely on his personality, and both Bushes attached themselves to him; so did Clinton, for that matter. But eventually, as with everything on the planet, entropy sets in, and today, people who have liberated themselves from the Reagan rules of engagement are swinging away, seeing conspiracies everywhere, even in their own house.

So, all you Reagan-lovers, please explain.