the popular movement at the time was thatcherism's randianism and neo-liberalism, so reagan would go out there and say things that were very thatcherian and very randian, but he was just a front for a group of old-timey republicans that were broadly still operating under the same basic keynesian assumptions, and when they went back to washington to work on policy, the differences between carter and reagan turned out to be minimal - unless you were the black welfare queen that reagan built his racist, populist mandate on wiping out.

and, that's really all it was - racism under the guise of populism, something that biden himself parroted rather widely in the following years.

if anybody started letting that go, it was greenspan, not reagan.

and, it didn't really flip over until clinton.