There’s a fight ongoing on the right about the legacy of Ronald Reagan and — improbably enough — the legacy of Richard Nixon. The short of it is that the ascendant factions on the right seem to look at Reagan with disdain while idolizing Nixon.

Ostensibly some of this hostility toward Reagan is on policy grounds — objecting to his support, at various times in his career, for immigration amnesty, free trade, and abortion — and surely much of it can be traced to a sort of negative polarization against establishment conservatives who cite Reagan against Trump-era nationalists.

Of course this misses the forest for the trees. No, Reagan wasn’t perfect policy-wise, but his victory was seen at the time as a clear repudiation of go-along-to-get-along northeastern Republicanism, on one hand, and seemingly unprincipled Nixonianism, on the other. He also had to deal with a strongly Democratic House for all of his presidency and a Democratic Senate for some of it. And, at the end of the day, he successfully focused on beating international communism, which was an existential threat to America and its way of life.