If some media reports are correct -- a dangerous assumption nowadays when media skepticism has given way to unquestioned Obama worship -- former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush says the GOP needs to abandon nostalgia for the Reagan era.

I'm inclined to doubt the accuracy of that report since Jeb Bush was probably the best governor Florida ever had, and one who clung ferociously to the Republican principles exemplified by my father, Ronald Reagan.

Even if he did say something silly like that, my argument with him and Mitt Romney and the other participants in the so-called listening tour is not about my dad, but about the absurdity of a listening tour designed to tutor Republican bigwigs on what the public really wants from government,

My short answer to that question is that I want the government to get the hell out of our way and let us act like the free people our founding fathers wanted us to be, and not like subjects of an all-knowing, all-powerful federal government.

The listening tour is nothing but Republican gimmickry. The reality is that had they been listening over the past four years of the Bush presidency they would have seen the disaster of 2006 coming and they would have seen the catastrophe of 2008 coming.

Instead, they turned a deaf ear to the Republican conservatives not only on Capitol Hill, but to those out across America.

They lost in 2006 and 2008 because they stopped listening to the "nostalgia" for the conservative principles which guided my dad's administrations.

They receded backwards to the principle of losing elections, a habit that gripped the GOP until Newt Gingrich came along and showed them how to win congressional elections by standing for something, and my dad showed them how to win gubernatorial and presidential elections by championing the principles that made us the wealthiest and most-powerful nation in world history. Continued...