Commentary: Listening " What GOP should have been doing all along

If some media reports are correct " a dangerous assumption nowadays " former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush says the GOP needs to abandon nostalgia for the Reagan era.

I'm inclined to doubt the accuracy of that report since Jeb Bush was probably the best governor Florida ever had, and one who clung ferociously to the Republican principles exemplified by my father, Ronald Reagan.

Even if he did say that, my argument with him and Mitt Romney and the other participants in the so-called listening tour is not about my dad, but about the absurdity of a listening tour designed to tutor Republican bigwigs on what the public really wants from government.

My short answer to that question is that I want the government to get the hell out of our way and let us act like the free people our Founding Fathers wanted us to be.

The listening tour is nothing but Republican gimmickry. The reality is that had they been listening over the past four years of the Bush presidency they would have seen the disasters of 2006 and 2008 coming.

Instead, they turned a deaf ear to the Republican conservatives not only on Capitol Hill, but to those across America.

They lost in 2006 and 2008 because they stopped listening to the "nostalgia" for the conservative principles which guided my dad's administrations.

If Republicans had really been listening, they'd still be in control of the House and Senate and there would be a Republican in the White House.

They didn't listen then, and they aren't listening now. If they start listening, what they'll hear is a demand that the Republican Party get back to the principles and beliefs embodied by Ronald Reagan, and get back to the principles of genuine conservatism.

- Mike Reagan, the elder son of the late President Ronald Reagan. E-mail comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com.