Ron Reagan: Sarah Palin is 'a soap opera'a

Sarah Palin may think she’s the political heir to Ronald Reagan, but one of his actual heirs says she’s got it all wrong.

Ahead of weekend celebrations marking the late president’s 100th birthday, his youngest son, Ron Reagan, is speaking out against the former Alaska governor and onetime vice presidential candidate, who is keynoting a Young America’s Foundation gala, honoring the president Friday“Sarah Palin is a soap opera, basically,” Reagan told The Associated Press. “She’s doing mostly what she does to make money and keep her name in the news.”

The left-leaning younger Reagan who has been a recent media fixture as he promotes his book, “My Father at 100,” said he doesn’t see similarities between his father and Palin, and doesn’t take her seriously. “She is not a serious candidate for president and never has been,” he said.

Reagan made similar comments in 2008, soon after Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) chose her as his running mate. “Sarah Palin has nothing in common with my father, a two-term governor of the largest state in the union, a man who had been in public life for decades, someone who had written, thought and spoke for decades about foreign-policy issues, domestic policy issues, and on and on and on,” he said in September of that year.

Last week, Palin wrote in USA Today that Reagan was “America’s lifeguard.” He “lifted our country up at a time when we were in the depths of economic, cultural and spiritual malaise,” she said. “[W]ith his optimism and common sense, President Reagan held up a mirror to the American soul to remind us of our exceptionalism.