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It’s the night of Mitt, with the obligatory Ronald Reagan hagiography, and it’s now an open secret that the mystery wingnut speaker will be iconic lone vigilante Clint Eastwood. Oops, spoiler alert.

Here’s the schedule as Romney’s Power Hour draws nigh.

7:00 p.m.

• Convention convenes
• Call to order
• Introduction of Colors US Central Command Joint Forces Color Guard Team
• Pledge of Allegiance by Dylan Nonaka
• National Anthem sung by SEVEN
• Invocation by Ken and Priscilla Hutchins
• Remarks by U.S. Rep. Connie Mack (FL)
• Reagan Legacy Video
• Remarks by Newt and Callista Gingrich
• Remarks by Craig Romney

8:00 p.m.

• Remarks by Governor former Jeb Bush (FL)
• Remarks by Bob White, chairman of Romney for President campaign
• Remarks by Grant Bennett
• Remarks by Tom Stemberg

9:00 p.m.

• Remarks by former Massachusetts Lt. Governor Kerry Healey
• Remarks by Jane Edmonds, former Massachusetts Secretary of Workforce
• Remarks by Olympians Michael Eruzione, Derek Parra and Kim Rhode

10:00 p.m.

• Remarks by U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (FL)
• Remarks by presidential nominee Mitt Romney
• Benediction by Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan
• Speaker Boehner declares convention adjourned

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, scion of the Bush dynasty, says there would be no place for the hallowed Ronald Reagan — or his father — in today’s far right Tea Party GOP.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush said today that both Ronald Reagan and his father George H. W. Bush would have had a difficult time getting nominated by today’s ultra-conservative Republican Party.

“Ronald Reagan would have, based on his record of finding accommodation, finding some degree of common ground, as would my dad — they would have a hard time if you define the Republican party — and I don’t — as having an orthodoxy that doesn’t allow for disagreement, doesn’t allow for finding some common ground,” Bush said, adding that he views the hyper-partisan moment as “temporary.”

“Back to my dad’s time and Ronald Reagan’s time – they got a lot of stuff done with a lot of bipartisan suport,” he said. Reagan “would be criticized for doing the things that he did.” …

Bush called the present partisan climate “disturbing.”

But after this on-point criticism of the obstructionist loons who’ve taken over the Republican Party, Jeb decided he had to throw a bone to them and blame the whole thing on guess who.

And Bush also blamed President Obama for much of the conflict.

“His first year could have been a year of enormous accomplishment had he focused on things where there was more common ground,” he said, arguing that Obama had made a “purely political calculation” to run a sharply partisan administration.

Right. Why do those nasty liberals keep forcing Republicans to behave badly?

In the Republican debates, Newt Gingrich is always the first to invoke the hallowed name of Ronald Reagan, taking credit for helping Reagan implement the foreign policy initiatives that led to the fall of the Soviet Union.

Flashback to 1986, as Newt gives a floor speech blasting Ronald Reagan for the “failure” of his foreign policy initiatives, and praising Democratic President Harry Truman for accomplishing much more in the same time period.

(h/t: Andrew Kaczynski.)

I can’t figure out whether Rick Santorum is being really smart or really, really stupid here, but The Daily Caller’s Jamie Weinstein is absolutely horrified: Santorum commits Republican sacrilege: Attacks Ronald Reagan.

BRENTWOOD, N.H. — Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum committed one of the gravest sins in Republican politics on Wednesday evening by knocking the revered former President Ronald Reagan at a packed town hall meeting.

While addressing America’s entitlement crisis at his first New Hampshire event since his stunning near-victory in the Iowa caucuses on Tuesday, Santorum said Reagan contributed to the entitlement crisis by pushing Social Security’s sustainability issues down the road instead of dealing with them head-on in the 1983 bipartisan deal to fix Social Security.

“If Rick Santorum gets elected and we do what I said that we need to do, which is to deal with the entitlement programs now, not 10 to 20 years from now,” Santorum said.

“You’ll know — unlike Ronald Reagan who maybe was a better politician than me — you’ll know that it was Rick Santorum that worked together and got the American public to gather together to fix this problem. Why? Because it is our problem.”

“…They passed a bill that didn’t take affect for 20 years so nobody blames them. It was brilliant. They increased the Social Security age by two years back in 1983 and it didn’t start phasing in, it doesn’t fully phase in for almost 40 years. And so Ronald Reagan did that. Most people have no idea — no one associates Ronald Reagan with raising the retirement age. Why? Because all of the people it affected were nowhere near retirement and they didn’t know about it.”

To another questioner, he continued his critique of Reagan for the Social Security deal.

“You know, I love Ronald Reagan, but if I would point to one thing during his administration that he did a serious wrong, it was this bill — it was this Social Security fix,” Santorum said.

“He bought the idea of increasing taxes now — that’s always what the left wants to do — increase taxes now, reduce benefits later. And that’s exactly what the bill did.”

C-SPAN has Sarah Failin’s speech to the Iowa Republicans Ronald Reagan Dinner: C-SPAN Live Stream.

The Atlantic has an exclusive report on some very cool recently unearthed footage from a TV episode featuring Ronald Reagan and James Dean acting together, unseen since 1954: Ronald Reagan and James Dean: Rare Video From 1954.

In the clip, Dean is a hopped up (and really dumb) teenage delinquent who breaks into the home of a doctor (Reagan) and forces him to treat an injured friend. The scene in which Reagan operates on the friend’s bullet wound is a classic, as Dean cranks up some wild jazz on the radio and starts jiving around like a crazed, armed beatnik.

Brightcove Video

(Hat tip: Atlantic deputy editor John Gould.)

During Vice President Biden’s visit, Israel’s right wing Interior Minister suddenly issued a statement that the Ministry had approved a plan for new settlement building in East Jerusalem. This led to a minor diplomatic crisis, with Hillary Clinton saying that she considered it a direct insult. Which it obviously was — but it was also clearly intended to embarrass Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu politically.

Netanyahu’s office has now apologized for the incident:

Vice President Joe Biden left Israel with an apology from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the diplomatic uproar that overshadowed his visit and further encumbered a U.S. peace initiative.

Near the beginning of his visit on Tuesday, Israel’s Interior Ministry publicized its approval of a plan to build 1,600 homes in east Jerusalem—territory claimed by Palestinians.

A statement from the prime minister’s office Thursday expressed “regret over the unfortunate timing” and declared that ground wouldn’t be broken on the project for several years. It also pledged to ensure similar “incidents” wouldn’t recur.

Meanwhile, here’s one of three hate mails I received this morning about the story, from people who seem incredibly eager for me to abandon my support for Israel (which isn’t going to happen):

Moment of truth, bitch. Now we’ll see just how far left you have sunk. Israel makes unilateral concessions, the Palestinians respond by murdering Jews, and your hero Obama identifies Israel as being the impediment to peace. Live down to expectations, just ignore it, and focus on the diabolical Creationists. So, were you always a fraud, or has there been some severe head trauma that corrupted you?

Unfortunately for this admirer (and his raging case of Obama Derangement Syndrome), there’s absolutely nothing unusual about Hillary Clinton’s condemnation of new Israeli settlements. It’s been the position of the US government that Israel should stop building new settlements since Ronald Reagan was president, and George W. Bush was no different from Barack Obama on this issue, either.

On the anniversary of the collapse of the East German police state, Commentary has a great piece by Peter Wehner on the meaning of The Fall of One Wall.

It turns out that in the contest between freedom and totalitarianism, freedom does pretty well.

Following up on Glenn Beck’s latest attempt to warn the country, or to put it another way, Glenn Beck’s latest bugeyed freakout, here’s a little reminder that this diabolical commie plot to encourage volunteerism didn’t start with Barack Obama.

Oh no, my friends! For the origin of this truly monstrous scheme we must plumb the depths of America’s sekrit history!

Ronald Reagan: Announcement of the Creation of the President’s Volunteer Action Awards Program.