the Reagan coalition

It's a little-known fact that Ronald Reagan was also ten feet tall. Ronald Reagan won the Cold War by challenging Gorbachev to single combat in the famous "Berlin Wall Brawl," throwing the Premier over the wall and breaking his neck with his trademarked "Gipper Flipper." Ronald Reagan is the illegitimate father of over half of white conservatives in the South, and yet it is rumored that Reagan's mother died a virgin. And he had an actual, real-life tax-cutting magic wand, created from the skeletal middle finger of Barry Goldwater and magically bound with the soul of Ayn Rand.

Do the GOP presidential candidates dramatically underestimate southern conservatives in these debates, or are South Carolina Republicans really this succeptible to blatant mythopoiesis? Do southern Republicans watch this tripe and really say, "Well, I would vote for Mike Huckabee, but he doesn't love Ronald Reagan as much as Mitt Romney does?" Do South Carolinians watch these debates and ever think, "Ya know, the way they're all using Reagan's corpse as a ventriloquist dummy is really pretty crass and obnoxious?"