Why Do Budget Hawks Keep Invoking Reagan?

[...] View full post on The Washington Independent [...]

Because conservatism is a fantasy land not unlike the Heavy Metal spoof in South Park. They think they are mighty warriors battling evil foes for the best bewbies in the land; but they are really deluded hicks high on cat pee wrestling limply in a sandbox. Alice in Wonderland crossed with civil war reenactors.
It's the same deal with the Amity Shlaes “New Deal prolonged the Depression” story that claims it was WWII that ended the Depression while pretending that the government takeover of the entire economy in an unprecedented totalizing of the nation was somehow less offensive than the minor stimulus efforts of the New Deal. How many ration coupons for gas with Obama's picture on it have you gotten? Did you get your butter rations or did you get the margarine with the blob of orange coloring in the middle of a block of Crisco? Yet the right thinks that was okay. Same deal during WWI with the USRA taking over and revitalizing the private railroads.

From Joan Didion's Political Fictions:

This president who was not a marionette would be shown making decisions, and not only that: the decisions he was shown making (or more often in this instance, where rhetoric was soon understood to be interchangeable with action, the speeches he was shown making) would have demonstrable, preferably Manichean, results.
[...]
This faith in the laser-like efficacy of Reagan's rhetoric seems undiminished by the fact that it remains largely a priori. “Going after a major policy change, crafting a practical policy initiative, and sticking with it is an accomplishment,” Martin Anderson, who was Reagan's chief domestic policy adviser in the early administration, tells us in Recollections of Reagan. Yet the accomplishment he cites is the 1983 SDI, or “Star Wars,” speech. “Another very important event in 1983 took place two weeks after the SDI speech,” he adds, and, again, it develops that he is talking about not an actual “event” but another speech, in this instance the popular “Evil Empire.”

The myth is simply too important to be endangered by facts…

So true. Every president says whatever will be popular among the necessary voting blocs at the moment, and then do whatever is expedient later. Neither Reagan nor Obama are exceptions.

There is no immediate upside for any politician to actually cut spending. It's up to the electorate to demand it.

No matter who invokes whom, the American federal government is on a version of the same unsustainable spending sickness that Greece is suffering. The federal debt is approaching 100% of GDP. The dollar will likely be the currency that the Europeans with grasp for as they circle the rim. Will it have any strength at all by then?

[...] Why Do Budget Hawks Keep Invoking Reagan? « The Washington Independent [...]

[...] Why Do Budget Hawks Keep Invoking Reagan? « The Washington Independent [...]

[...] Why Do Budget Hawks Keep Invoking Reagan? « The Washington Independent [...]

[...] W&#1211&#1091 D&#959 Budget Hawks Keep Invoking Reagan? « T&#1211&#1077 Washington Independent [...]

[...] Why Do Budget Hawks Keep Invoking Reagan? « The Washington Independent [...]

[...] Why Do Budget Hawks Keep Invoking Reagan? « The Washington Independent [...]

[...] Why Do Budget Hawks Keep Invoking Reagan? « The Washington Independent [...]

["Why he remains a conservative icon, despite that track record, is a mystery."]

It's only a mystery if we naively assume that Brady's arguments (and the Reupblicans' generally) are being made in good faith: that his primary concern has to do with debt and deficit, and dispassionate economic analysis generally — and NOT about antagonistic party politics.

But where, oh where, is some good evidence that that assumption is warranted? (Evidence that it's not — at least wrt Rebublicans generally — is so abundant that to participate in our political culture is to swim in a sea of it.)

[...] Why Do Budget Hawks Keep Invoking Reagan? « The Washington Independent [...]

[...] Why Do Budget Hawks Keep Invoking Reagan? « The Washington Independent [...]

[...] Why Do Budget Hawks Keep Invoking Reagan? « The Washington Independent [...]

[...] Why Do Budget Hawks Keep Invoking Reagan? « The Washington Independent [...]

[...] Why Do Budget Hawks Keep Invoking Reagan? « The Washington Independent [...]

[...] Why Do Budget Hawks Keep Invoking Reagan? « The Washington Independent [...]

[...] Why Do Budget Hawks Keep Invoking Reagan? « The Washington Independent [...]

Wasn't there a campaign a few years ago by conservatives to recast the Reagan era? Thom Hartmann talks and writes about this:

“Nearly that much has been spent funding the revisionist history of Reagan’s record. Organizations like Grover Norquist’s “Ronald Reagan Legacy Project” are already organizing to mythologize the G.W. Bush record.

Reagan gave us the “October Surprise”, “Iran/Contra”, CIA involvement in the drug cartels, deregulation, privatization, lower taxes on the corporate elite, and in effect declared war on the middle class. If you don’t know what I’m talking about; google it! His administration saw more federal indictments than any administration in the history of our country. He gave us our first 15.5 billion dollar deficit. He gave us “Reaganomics” or a trickle down economy often referred to as “Voodoo Economics”. He gave Clinton’s White House the stimulus for lifting the “Glass Stiegel Act” leading directly to the “home loan travesty”. He set a precedent for using 160 billion taxpayer dollars to bail out financial institutions in the Savings and Loan” debacles of 1985, arguably setting the stage for Bush’s TARP policies that surrendered “main street” to “wall street”. “
http://www.thomhartmann.com/users/legends3/blog…

[...] Why Do Budget Hawks Keep Invoking Reagan? « The Washington Independent [...]

[...] Why Do Budget Hawks Keep Invoking Reagan? « The Washington Independent [...]

[...] Why Do Budget Hawks Keep Invoking Reagan? « The Washington Independent [...]

[...] Why Do Budget Hawks Keep Invoking Reagan? « The Washington Independent [...]

But where, oh where, is some good evidence that that assumption is warranted? (Evidence that it's not — at least wrt Rebublicans generally — is so abundant that to participate in our political culture is to swim in a sea of it.)