After President Barack Obama waxed and waned about the so-called “Buffett Rule,” named for investor Warren Buffett, which would force the super rich to “pay their fair share,” Republicans came out against it with guns blazing.

“Class warfare will simply divide this country more,” Rep. Paul Ryan said. “It will attack job creators, divide people and it doesn’t grow the economy.”

Pure partisanship, Democrats cried. And now they’ve found their smoking gun.

A video has been making the rounds on liberal blogs in which President Ronald Reagan, the conservative Republican standard bearer, calls for an end to tax loopholes for the rich so they can pay their “fair share.”

“We’re going to close the unproductive loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share,” Reagan said in a 1985 speech. “In theory, some of those loopholes were understandable, but in practice they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying ten percent of his salary, and that’s crazy.”

Even former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has gotten in on the fun, exhorting others to “listen to Ronald Reagan when he talked about how unfair it was for a bus driver to be paying at the same rate as a millionaire … He speaks beautifully to the unfairness of that scenario.”

This, Democrats say, proves that today’s Republicans are extreme. Could Ronald Reagan even be elected by today’s Republican Party?

Since 1988, Republicans have nominated only politicians much less conservative than Reagan. Reagan would have no problem getting elected by today’s Republican Party.

The more interesting question is this: Have Republicans grown more extreme and moved more to the right in recent years?

That is certainly what conservative activists, like members of the Tea Party, have hoped for. They feel that the Republican Party, from the late ‘90s through the Bush era, lost its way. It abdicated its role as the fiscally responsible party, running up huge deficits. Instead of making government smaller, it enlarged it, creating new bureaucracies like the Department of Homeland Security and adding to Medicare.

In response to this, conservatives acted, the evidence of which lies in the 2010 midterm election results.

To an extent, then, liberals are right that conservatives have moved more to the right since the Bush era. However, when compared to the titans of the modern American conservative movement, today’s versions seem quite tame.

Barry Goldwater in 1964 famously said, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And … moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

In 1983, Ronald Reagan said, “You may remember that when abortion on demand began, many, and, indeed, I’m sure many of you, warned that the practice would lead to a decline in respect for human life, that the philosophical premises used to justify abortion on demand would ultimately be used to justify other attacks on the sacredness of human life ”” infanticide or mercy killing.”

William F. Buckley took aim at the conventional wisdom of the day when he wrote, “Middle-of-the-Road, qua Middle of the Road, is politically, intellectually and morally repugnant.”

All three of these figures were hated by liberals of their day. Today, all three are venerated, and seen as “respectable” conservatives, in opposition to today’s disrespected variety.

Conservatism hasn’t moved more to the right; if anything, “the middle” has moved more to the left. “Class warfare” rhetoric aside, the GOP’s problem isn’t extremism to the right ”” it is a lack fealty to the philosophy it professes to espouse.