Everyone should read the Wall Street Journal columnist, and former George W. Bush speechwriter, William McGurn’s recent piece called “Time for Zombie Reaganomics.” 

Mr. McGurn calls it ‘Zombie Reganism’ because people think the Gipper’s free-market pro-capitalist low-tax deregulation policies are hopelessly out of sync with modern thinking.  

Of course, people who make that case are mostly part of the new socialism practiced by today’s Democratic party.  

It wasn’t always so for the Democrats. John F. Kennedy slashed tax rates — I wrote a book on the subject — and Ronald Reagan always promoted the JFK tax cuts when he himself slashed tax cuts in the 80’s bringing the top income tax rate down to 28 percent from 70 percent.  

The economy boomed in the 1980s. Between 1982 and 1988 the GDP growth rate was 5.4 percent at an annual rate.  It also boomed in the 1960s — growing at an annual rate of 5.8 percent between 1962 and 1968 — and it’s no coincidence that tax cuts were central to the rising tide of prosperity in both eras.   

Mr. McGurn finds a great quote from Reagan, which I will repeat “Why is it inflationary if you keep more of your earnings and spend them the way you want to, but it isn’t inflationary if [the president] takes them and spends them the way he wants to?” 

Of course I’m proud to be an alumnus of the Reagan Administration when I was a young man. And of course I have stayed with Reagan’s free-market supply side principles all these years since.  

Yet proudly, the most important thing I learned from the Gipper is his remarkable sense of optimism. He explained to people why the hapless Jimmy Carter had to be defeated, and Reagan fought the liberal press establishment in a tooth and nail battle for years.  

At the end of the day, people stayed with him. He won two landslides in 1980 and 1984. And he launched a boom that really lasted through the early 2000s.  

It really wasn’t until the financial meltdown of 2008, 2009 that the Reagan boom actually ended.  Pretty remarkable stuff, don’t you think? 

Mr. McGurn is exactly right that candidates for President today, and I’m thinking specifically of those debating at the Reagan library tomorrow night, should follow Reagan’s most successful political textbook.  

Free market capitalism, not big government socialism, is the path to prosperity. Supply side policies of low tax rates, deregulation, limited government, reciprocal free trade, and a sound reliable dollar are the key factors that could be put in place by a republican in order to begin the next long-term economic boom with about 5 percent economic growth. Think of it.  

GOP candidates at the debate should not only echo Reagan’s policies, but his confidence, his humility, his ability to connect with ordinary working folks and his confidence and optimism regarding the future of America.  

Reagan always said he wasn’t really a great communicator; it was the ideas he was communicating. Let’s hear it from these GOP candidates so they will be able to persuade America of their virtue and the virtue of their ideas on the economy. Nice and simple.  

From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business Network.