These are heady days for us liberal warriors and the news just keeps getting better. Today, I give thanks for James Bopp Jr., vice chairman of the Republican party and his new G.O.P. litmus test.

Between RNC Chairman and the token negro, Michael Steele, the pasty, white, religious fanatics on the RNC committee and Rush Limbaugh, the Republican party is thoroughly fucked.

Real conservatives love purity and loyalty tests and Bopp’s Litmus Test 1.0 does not disappoint. But as Republicans LOVE TO DO, Bopp’s test will be predictably followed by 2.0 and 3.0 each freakier than the last as this tactic has become the preferred method for establishing one’s conservative bona fides these days.

But Bopp’s ‘purity’ test doesn’t just escalate the Republican circular firing squad, it widens the circle to include the dead and this time, Reagan gets it between the eyes.

…the measure would likely have screened out President Ronald Reagan, under whose watch the US deficit ballooned. The federal deficit mushroomed from 2.7 percent of gross domestic product in 1980, to 6 percent in 1983.

Reagan also agreed to a $165 billion bailout of Social Security, in contradiction of conservative orthodoxy. – Raw Story

Of course the side benefits of Republican oneupsmanship is the necessity of throwing Ronald Reagan (may he rest in peace…in hell) under the bus. In the last election cycle, we saw candidates climbing over each other to associate with the ‘Gipper.’

I predict: In the next cycle, we will see Republicans DISTANCING themselves from Ronald Reagan as Republican institutional memory suddenly recalls the fact that Ronald Reagan more than DOUBLED OUR NATIONAL DEFICIT.