In 1980, Ronald Reagan won the first of two elections on a platform sometimes called “The Three Legged Stool” or “The Gipper’s Stool.” Family, budgeting responsibility with lower taxes, and American strength around the world became the party’s message, and Reagan fused social, fiscal, and foreign policy conservatives into a landslide-winning coalition.

Since then, there have been some shifts and nuances, and the last 40 years are definitely littered with Republican failures to live up to those planks. Donald Trump’s populist following, in some respects, constitutes a personality cult, and that often means the party stands for whatever Trump thinks about something today. But overall, the Republican Party in 2024 still largely espouses Reagan’s three planks.

In the meantime, Democrats have gone from a pro-worker and pro-border security party to one of open borders. They’ve changed from advocating that abortion be “safe, legal, and rare” to demanding any and all abortions for any reason at any point in the pregnancy; all objectors are bigoted adherents of the patriarchy. They went from “get your laws off my body” to “take this vaccine or lose your job.” They turned MLK’s colorblind dream into a race-obsessed nightmare. They went from champions of free speech to Big Brother censors and historical revisionists. Arguably, the biggest shift of all is on sex. Once advocates of women’s rights, Democrats no longer even know what a woman is. The Rainbow Mafia dictates Democrat Party positions today, grooming and recruiting young people at an alarming rate.

Yet, according to The Washington Post’s token conservative scribe Jennifer Rubin, “Democrats have to move to the center to get bipartisan support; Republicans have become radicalized and unmovable.”

What alternate universe does she inhabit?

Trump is, to put it charitably, unorthodox. He often behaves like a Democrat, in fact, but he fights fire with fire in a way that other Republicans are only beginning to learn. That has utterly deranged people like Rubin, who was never what we’d call a true ideological conservative but who has become, er, radicalized by Trump’s mere presence.

She offers a litany of legislation Republicans opposed that she thinks they should have supported — the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, to name a couple. She laments the GOP’s “phony, baseless impeachment hearings” but says not a word about the two phony, baseless impeachments orchestrated by radical Democrats. Rubin accuses Republicans of having “blocked a bipartisan Jan. 6, 2021, commission.” That is false. Nancy Pelosi rejected GOP nominees for that committee, ensuring that it would be rigged with nothing but Democrats like Liz Cheney, who covered up the truth to make Trump look worse.

On the other side, Rubin praises the current White House occupant. “Biden has actually stood up to the far left in his own party,” she falsely insists. Biden can hardly stand up physically, much less oppose the radical leftists. Instead, he’s done their bidding.

Rubin’s fellow Trump-deranged fanatic, columnist David French, is even arguing that Nikki Haley’s supporters should vote for Biden. Over the last several years, French went from being a thoughtful and articulate evangelical conservative to deciding the “conscientious” thing to do was accept a new job blistering his own side to the delight of the Democrats who run and read The New York Times.

“Biden’s economic stewardship has been sound,” he writes. Biden’s approach to foreign policy “has made America stronger.” Biden demonstrates “decency,” French says, and upholds “democracy” and “the rule of law.” He even runs a Biden campaign ad by blaming Trump for the Democrat crime wave in 2020 and crediting Biden for its slight reduction.

Again, what alternate universe does he inhabit?

Back to Rubin, she concludes: “The MAGA Republican Party has become shockingly irrational and radicalized, fully embracing totalitarianism, white nationalism and radical isolationism. America is divided not by some free-floating condition of ‘polarization’ but by one party going off the deep end.”

One party has gone off the deep end, but it’s not the GOP.

In fact, political analyst Mark Hemingway wrote a column titled, “2024 Is Shaping Up To Be The ‘We Were Right About Everything’ Election.” His subtitle more or less says the rest: “Crime, Covid, the economy, immigration, foreign policy, education — Biden’s poor ratings show voters are starting to ask if Democrats have gotten any issue right in the last four years.” It’s a thorough rebuttal of French and Rubin without even mentioning their names or columns.

The real issue here is that radicalized Democrats rigged the 2020 election, not just beating Trump and his outstanding record but then waging outrageous lawfare against him. They have thus created an angry countermovement to set things right. If a less-hated Republican were running this year on Reagan’s stool instead of Trump campaigning on a personal vendetta, Democrats would’ve already kicked the decrepit Biden to the curb in favor of someone younger and capable of putting two sentences together, all in a desperate attempt to stave off a well-earned election drubbing. Even still, if the election is decided on policy outcomes, Trump should win in a Reagan-like landslide because his term was dramatically better than Biden’s.

Instead, we’re going to spend 2024 arguing over which candidate in a razor-thin election is more nuts. Democrats are relying on Trump-deranged “conservatives” to help make their case that somehow the last three-plus years haven’t been a dumpster fire of left-wing radicalism all because the Orange Man is bad.