To be clear and to be honest, all of this sudden Reagan-love surrounding the Gipper’s 100th birthday disgusts me.

This is pretty much the worst possible time for all things Ronald, given the need for, oh I don’t know, jobs? Better healthcare reform? Something the GOP promised in the midterm elections? The last thing this country ought to do is to stop and reflect on its 40th president.

And even after the last thing we shouldn’t do is compare a conservative icon to the most left-of-center president this nation has ever seen.

To see the media compare Obama and Reagan, I can only conclude that they’re in bed with the former’s administration. Of all Reagan quotes, none is so final an argument against comparisons to Obama as this: “Government is the problem.”

Our current president simply does not agree with that statement, made in Reagan’s 1981 Inaugural Address. Disagreement on the point between the two is fine, but its very existence disqualifies Obama from these ridiculous juxtapositions.

But the media will work tirelessly to contort his face into Reagan’s, and yet the mask will not stay on forever, nor will the sheets. Sooner or later they will both be pulled back to reveal that Obama is only acting the part, and that his administration and the media are not so strange bedfellows after all.

The comparison is also a jab at conservatives, to be sure. Nothing mocks them more than comparing their greatest idol with their greatest opponent. Such jabs are expected; the media has proven time and again that they have no stake in placing conservatives in positive light, from calling their most active members “teabaggers” to openly wilding one of their first strong female figures. It comes across as a low blow, one in a long line of many.

Beyond that, it’s just an exercise in pre-re-election campaign tactics. I really can’t think of a single commonality between Reagan and Obama, except that both men wore suits. History will not be rewritten to cast Reagan as a closet liberal, nor even a “bipartisan healer,” as the Obama administration would desperately love, though that may be the goal of the political arena, media included, by the end of 2012.

That’s really all this is: just political posturing. And what it tells me is simple. The incumbent Democrats fear 2012. It may not be the end of the world, nor the end of them, but they fear it still.

They believe they will not win as they are. They must re-posture, must change themselves and what their plan is for this nation to see victory come election season. It’s despicable and yet entirely expected.

But what I absolutely despise is that Democrats are, by paying attention to this Reagan-love, looking into the past at a point when the country should be looking forward.

To those unaware, Reagan is dead. No speeches will dig him up and no politicians will resurrect him. We do ourselves no good wondering what he would do or think were he alive. He served two terms, left his legacy, and four presidents later, our country continues on its course.

This Reagan malarkey — I can think of no other honest, printable term for it — fails to do any good. The Democrats will come off as the liars they are for trying to tell us a left-wing apple is a right-wing orange, and the Republicans who draw comparisons between Reagan and themselves not only look wistfully stuck in the past, but play directly into the Democrats’ hands.

I have made clear before that Republicans are like Mr. Magoo; they must be gently guided into the correct direction or they will stupidly wander the length of their current path.

Why is there no strong Republican voice in the sea of Democratic clamoring? So long as they invoke Reagan’s memory, they will curse themselves to live in his shadow.

And, even though I think him a great president, we must let Reagan go. We must now look forward to the challenges ahead for which there will be no Gipper to guide us.