Ronald Reagan argued that consequences of a debt default would be devastating to the United States. | AP 
 
 WASHINGTON -- Democrats have a new icon these days: Ronald Reagan. 
 
 That's because, unlike many Republicans in the House, the fiscally conservative late president believed it was essential for the United States to make good on its all obligations and raise the debt ceiling. 
 
 And Democrats across the spectrum on Wednesday have been holding the conservative hero up to Republicans as an example they should follow. 
 
 "I find myself these days quoting Ronald Reagan," said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) at a news conference Wednesday. "'The full consequences of a default,' he said, 'or even the serious prospect of a default by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United States would have substantial effects on the domestic financial markets and the value of the dollar in exchange markets. The nation can ill afford to allow such a result.' 
 
 "That's Ronald Reagan," Boxer emphasized, suggesting that Republicans recall that model. "All they have to do is look at their icon, Ronald Reagan, and understand you don't play with fire when it comes to the full faith and credit of the United States of America." 
 
 She was far from alone. 
 
 Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a letter to all the Republican members of the House to remind them of the Gipper's feelings as expressed in a 1983 letter to then-Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker (R-Tenn.) -- the same letter Boxer quoted. 
 
 "President Reagan was a staunch conservative whose views sharply differ from Progressives’ in nearly every respect," wrote the CPC members to Republicans. "Yet, Reagan understood that the American people have invested their trust in our ability to be wise stewards." 
 
 "We hope you will take President Reagan’s message to heart and put what’s best for America’s economy ahead of gaining a short-term political advantage," they added. "Let’s not hold the jobs and economic security of the American people hostage to an agenda that will only cause long-term harm to our great nation." 
 
 Baker himself has come out in favor of lifting the nation's spending cap before it is reached on Aug. 2. 
 
 The Senate Democratic message shop took a sneakier approach, blasting out an e-mail headlined with a paraphrase of the famous Reaganism. "There they go again," it said. "GOP Lawmakers ignoring Reagan, still downplay consequences of a default." 
 
 House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said the debt ceiling must be raised, but he has also stuck to the postion of his caucus that it cannot be raised with out major cuts. His spokesmen did not immediately respond to a request for comment. ||||| After he switched to the Republican Party in 1962, Ronald Reagan famously quipped: “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me.” 
 
 Now, the Republican Party is doing the same thing to him — and Democrats are happy to take Reagan back. 
 
 At Tuesday morning’s meeting of the House Democrats, caucus chairman John Larson rallied his colleagues for the day’s debt-limit debate by playing an audio recording of the 40th president. 
 
 “Congress consistently brings the government to the edge of default before facing its responsibility,” Reagan says in the clip. “This brinkmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits. Interest rates would skyrocket, instability would occur in financial markets, and the federal deficit would soar. The United States has a special responsibility to itself and the world to meet its obligations.” 
 
 “Kind of sums things up,” Larson said, playing the same clip again at a news conference. 
 
 Nobody knows what Reagan, who died in 2004, would make of the current fight over the debt limit. But 100 years after Reagan’s birth, it’s clear that the Tea Party Republicans have little regard for the policies of the president they claim to venerate. 
 
 Tea Party Republicans call a vote to raise the debt ceiling a threat to their very existence; Reagan presided over 18 increases in the debt ceiling during his presidency. 
 
 Tea Party Republicans say they would sooner default on the national debt than raise taxes; Reagan agreed to raise taxes 11 times. 
 
 Tea Party Republicans, in “cut, cap and balance” legislation on the House floor Tuesday, voted to cut government spending permanently to 18 percent of gross domestic product; under Reagan, spending was as high as 23.5 percent and never below 21.3 percent of GDP. 
 
 That same legislation would take federal spending down to a level last seen in 1966, before Medicare was fully up and running; Reagan in 1988 signed a major expansion of Medicare. 
 
 Under the Tea Party Republicans’ spending cap, Reagan’s military buildup, often credited with winning the Cold War, would have been impossible. 
 
 No wonder Democrats on Tuesday were claiming the Republican icon as one of their own. After the caucus meeting with the Reagan clip, Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) began the day’s debate by reading from a 1983 Reagan letter to Congress warning that “the full consequences of a default — or even the serious prospect of default — by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate.” 
 
 “In the year of his 100th birthday, the Great Communicator might be amazed at how far his own image has shifted from the original,” Quigley charged. “He’d see his most dedicated followers using his name as justification for saying no to honoring our debts. He’d see his legacy used to play chicken with the world’s greatest economic engine.” 
 
 Republicans have continued their ritual praise of Reagan during the debt-limit fight. Rep. Trent Franks (Ariz.) claimed that the budget caps would allow America to be “that great city on a hill that Ronald Reagan spoke of.” Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) invoked Reagan’s belief that “the closest thing to eternal life on Earth is a federal government program.”Kevin Brady (Tex.) cited Reagan’s line that “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’ ” Both Steve King (Iowa) and Bobby Schilling (Ill.) informed the body that they had granddaughters named Reagan. 
 
 But while Reagan nostalgia endures, a number of Republicans have begun to admit the obvious: The Gipper would no longer be welcome on the GOP team. Most recently, Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr. (Calif.) called Reagan a “moderate former liberal . . . who would never be elected today in my opinion.” This spring, Mike Huckabee judged that “Ronald Reagan would have a very difficult, if not impossible time being nominated in this atmosphere,” pointing out that Reagan “raises taxes as governor, he made deals with Democrats, he compromised on things in order to move the ball down the field.” 
 
 During the debt-limit debate, a procession of Democrats — Vermont’s Peter Welch, Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen, New York’s Paul Tonko, Texas’s Sheila Jackson Lee and Gene Green — claimed Reagan’s support for their position. Reagan is “revered by many Democrats,” said Welch, who praised Reagan for fighting “the absurd notion that America had an option when it came to paying our bills.” 
 
 Half a century after he left the party, the Gipper is winning one for the Democrats. 
 
 danamilbank@washpost.com ||||| Red-faced and embattled, House Speaker John Boehner grabbed a podium Friday night to deny President Obama's accusation that Republicans once again walked away from a "grand bargain" that would have slashed spending and even cut entitlements to get a debt-ceiling deal, in exchange for a much more limited package of "revenue" increases. Boehner looked silly. The president exuded righteous anger; Boehner exuded cliches and moral confusion. 
 
 I have no idea how close Obama and Boehner really got to a deal. Personally, I am hoping a "grand bargain" is impossible; it's terrible for Americans who are struggling in this economy, and it's terrible for Democrats politically. For months now, despite the angst of high-profile progressive pundits and activists about President Obama's many compromises with Republicans over the last two years, his staunch defenders have been able to point to steady, solid support from his liberal base. But that support, while still high, is looking less solid: A CNN poll released Friday found that Obama's approval rating has dropped as the stalemate over the debt ceiling continues – and that much of the drop is attributable to a decline in support among liberals. News that Boehner once again backed out of compromise talks could help the president by taking a base-demoralizing, entitlement-cutting "grand bargain" off the table, but no one knows how this drama will end. 
 
 In a comparable CNN poll two months ago, 82 percent of liberals said they approved of Obama's performance as president; only 16 percent disapproved. In the CNN poll released today, 71 percent of liberals approved and 27 percent disapproved. The percent of voters who said they disapproved because Obama's policies aren't liberal enough doubled, to 13 percent. Obama's approval-rating among voters who aren't white also declined, from 75 to 63 percent, and the percent of non-whites who disapproved because the president's policies are insufficiently liberal is 17 percent, compared to 11 percent for whites. 
 
 None of those numbers spell disaster for the president. His May approval ratings were a bit higher than normal; these numbers, though, are significantly lower. They may be a one-month dip as a result of the depressing debt-ceiling stalemate, in which Democrats feel they have to compromise with Tea Party economic terrorism or else see the economy return to recession, or worse. But the dip isn't good: Obama will need the avid support of his most loyal backers if he's going to be re-elected despite the worst unemployment since the early 1980s. Unfortunately, all of the compromises being considered to resolve the default crisis are likely to make unemployment worse, not better. 
 
 And while Obama supporters insist the president would never cut Social Security or Medicare, that he's merely been exploring every possible route to a deal with the GOP (some even suggest he's faking them out), they ought to remember they're dealing with a completely unprincipled enemy. The great Digby noticed that right-wingers are already raising money attacking Obama for breaking his promise not to cut Social Security. Check out the conscience-free Erick Erickson's scurrilous fundraising appeal for the crackpot site Human Events, which is trying to start a Web-based campaign to reach younger voters with the "truth" about Obama: 
 
 Dear RedState Supporter, It's the devastating truth that young voters will believe whatever Barack Obama tells them. First he says he'll never consider cutting Social Security. Now he says he WILL consider cutting Social Security. And the young will go along with it. Just because he says it's right. "Don't worry, Dad, President Obama says you'll hardly notice the cuts." If I were counting on Social Security today, I'd be dead scared. 
 
 Don't people remember that the same folks who are trying to dismantle Medicare won the 2010 election thanks to their lies about Obama wanting to dismantle Medicare? 
 
 As I try not to hyperventilate over every leak and partial report about what the debt-ceiling "compromise" will look like, I find myself thinking more about Obama's references to Abraham Lincoln in that discussion with college students the White House released this week. The president's Lincoln remarks touched off a fascinating debate; you can see some of it in the letters about my first post here. Right now I'm less interested in what Obama's comments told us about his frustration with progressive critics than in what they told us about his views of his own straits: Does he feel like he's governing a nation that's on the verge of a civil war? 
 
 I'm not suggesting that Obama (or I) sees an impending future in which Americans take up arms against Americans. But I do think he rightly perceives himself as trying to steer the country through a period of profound polarization in which our institutions aren't working very well, to put it mildly. And it may feel something like civil war if you're the president. He was elected with more votes (63 million) than any president in history, and with a higher percentage of support (53 percent) than any first-time president since Lyndon Johnson (who doesn't count, since he finished John F. Kennedy's first term). But he's been blocked at every turn by an intransigent minority acting like the election was a virtual tie and Democrats were pretenders to power, instead of the party that controlled the White House, Senate and House of Representatives. 
 
 So if you're Obama looking to Lincoln as the man who tried to steer the United States through its worst domestic political crisis, and keep that crisis from destroying the country, what do you see? First, you see plenty of compromise. It's astonishing to look at all the things Lincoln tried, all of what he said in public and in private, in order to preserve the union and avoid war. Over the years Lincoln backed various schemes for gradual, compensated emancipation, in which slave states might free enslaved African Americans only gradually, and the federal government would compensate slaveowners. Even after his election, Lincoln expressed support for the Corwin amendment, which would have expressly prevented the federal government from outlawing slavery in states where it existed. Some try to depict that as Lincoln's hidden hypocrisy on the issue of slavery, but in fact, while Lincoln opposed slavery, he believed the Constitution already prevented the federal government from abolishing it in slave states – so if the Corwin amendment would reassure those states they didn't have to secede to protect slavery, Lincoln "had no objection to its being made express and irrevocable," he said in his first inaugural address. He also had no objection to voluntary colonization schemes, if efforts to send freed slaves to African or Caribbean countries might win some whites over to the anti-slavery side. He even set aside federal funds for a couple of such schemes. 
 
 None of Lincoln's attempts at compromise worked, however, and in the end he had to fight the Civil War. It was the course of the war itself that made Lincoln a staunch foe of slavery's existence, not merely its expansion. The war showed him the absolute intransigence of slaveholders, as well as the wisdom and the courage of African Americans who supported his war, despite his compromises on slavery, and who gave their lives fighting in it. The war taught Lincoln, albeit belatedly, that African Americans deserved not merely freedom from bondage but the rights of citizenship. 
 
 What does all this tell us about Obama and the current political impasse? If we didn't know it already, it shows that the president has a lot of patience, and a lot of faith in the value of compromise. I don't know whether he's just posturing when he says he's willing to talk about entitlement cuts. He might genuinely believe those programs need to be cut. Or maybe he believes Social Security and Medicare must be "strengthened," and if he trades some (slight) cuts that he truly believes won't hurt (many) people (very) much, he can do better things that will help more people with the political and fiscal capital he gains in a "Grand Bargain." At this point, though, that is faith-based politics at best. There is absolutely no evidence that anything of the kind will work. The only thing he hasn't done so far is act like a staunch Democrat, and take cuts to key Democratic programs off the table. That might not work either, but we don't know, because it hasn't been tried. 
 
 The president sincerely believes that the intense polarization of American politics isn't merely a symptom of our problems but a problem in itself – and thus compromise is not just a means to an end but an end in itself, to try to create a safe harbor for people to reach some new common ground. I actually have some sympathy with that point of view. But having now watched two smart Democratic presidents devote themselves to compromise with Republicans, only to be savaged with increasing intensity, I've lost faith that compromise itself holds some healing magic. Maybe it just emboldens bullies. 
 
 All of that said, I don't agree with Sen. Bernie Sanders that Obama's compromising with the GOP means he should face a primary challenge. I've said it over and over: The left invests way too much energy and drama in presidential politics. If you want a better Democratic president, elect better Democrats to Congress and state legislatures. A primary next year would be an exercise in self-destruction. But I can say that without wanting to destroy Sanders. I hope Obama's staunchest supporters can do the same. 
 
 (This piece was updated after Obama and Boehner's statements Friday evening.)
– The Democrats, the party that Ronald Reagan ditched in 1962, says that even the Gipper would be on their side in today's debt ceiling debate. Dems are telling Republicans they should follow Reagan's lead in fiscal responsibility, circulating a 1987 radio address in which Reagan slammed brinksmanship and stressed that the US had a "special responsibility to itself and the world to meet its obligations," the Huffington Post reports. Reagan—who presided over 11 tax hikes and 18 increases in the debt ceiling—probably wouldn't be welcome in today's GOP, writes Dana Milbank at the Washington Post. While most Republicans continue praising Reagan, he notes that a few have admitted that he wouldn't be able to win the nomination in the current atmosphere. Steve Kornacki at Salon, however, believes that the Democrats are overplaying the Reagan card. If the Gipper were around today, he'd be siding with House Republicans and "finding some way to rationalize away his past statements," he writes.