Enough about President Ronald Reagan!

In a recent LA Times Sunday editorial, reporter Doyle McManus asked this question of all of the Republican Presidential candidates. "What do you think your hero Ronald Reagan would do to increase the popularity of the GOP?"

Rand Paul has proclaimed that "every Republican who's running for President thinks that he or she is Ronald Reagan." Mr. McManus contends that there is little consensus among conservative about what Reaganism means in 2015 beyond the basic principles of small government and lower taxes.

Many of the present GOP candidates all claim to own a portion of the Reagan mantra, but differ on many attributes of his very conservative agenda. The following is a look at some of the candidates as provided by Professor Henry Olsen, a conservative scholar at the Ethics and Public Center.

Jeb Bush is campaigning as Reagan the conciliator, an optimistic conservative who reached out to nonbelievers. His measured tone and last name has reduced his appeal to the right wing base. Mr. Olsen continues, there's an element of anger among conservatives that wasn't present 15 years ago and Mr Bush finds this incomprehensible.

Marco Rubio, the Senator from Florida is campaigning as Reagan the innovator, whose done more to roll out new proposals than any other contender. He co-wrote, with Senator Mike Lee of Utah, a tax reform plan that would lower taxes for families with children which has angered many right winged conservatives and was billed by the Wall Street Journal as a plan for "redistribution".

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is campaigning as Reagan, the combative candidate who made his state's government smaller. He compares his fight with the public employee's union to Reagan's breaking of the air traffic controllers strike in 1981.

Mr. Olsen continues with one of his most damning assertions and they pertain to one of the most outspoken Republican Presidential candidates of them all, Ted Cruz. "Texas Senator Ted Cruz as Reagan the ideologue, a conservative who - unlike the real Reagan - disdains the idea of compromise even in his own party. (He's proposed a flat tax which would lower taxes on the affluent but raise them on lower income taxpayers.) "Nobody quotes Ronald Reagan more and understands him less."

More Republican candidates for President include Ohio's John Kasich a relatively moderate and oppressor of voter rights, and Rand Paul, a Libertarian. Reagan's White House contained many types of conservative from the very pugnacious Patrick J. Buchanan to the very pragmatic James A. Baker III.

Today's GOP is more fragmented than ever and at present, there is no light at the end of the tunnel or remotely in sight which will make the winner of this party's nomination a relative suicide mission because he or she will not only be challenged to run the country but also bring together a group of misguided malcontents who refuse to accept a changing America.

As these ruthlessly, unethical and prejudiced candidates continue their quest to win their party's nomination for President, one can only imagine what will happen because Ronald Reagan, with his "trickle down economy" and policies that closed all mental institutions left America in pretty bad shape and in Mad Man's opinion, that would be a set back of major proportions.

Mad Man