Reagan Revolution Failure

washingtonpost.com — As we mark the centennial of Ronald Reagan's birth, one of our major political parties has become imbued with the Gipper's political philosophy and governing style. I mean the Democrats, of course. The Republican Party tries to claim the Reagan mantle but has moved so far to the right that it now inhabits its own parallel universe. On the planet that today's GOP leaders call home, Reagan would qualify as one of those big-government, tax-and-spend liberals who are trying so hard to destroy the American way of life. Some Republicans, I suppose, might be so enraptured by the Reagan legend that they are unaware of his actual record. I hate to break it to Sarah Palin, but Reagan raised taxes. Often. Sometimes by a lot.

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guardian.co.uk — At the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth, his most important legacy has gone largely overlooked. Reagan helped to put a caricature of politics at the center of the national debate and it remains there to this day. In Reagan's caricature, the central divide between progressives and conservatives is that progressives trust the government to make key decisions on production and distribution, while conservatives trust the market. In reality, the right uses government all the time to advance its interest by setting rules that redistribute income upward. As long as progressives ignore the rules that are designed to redistribute income upward, they will be left fighting over crumbs. There is no way that government interventions will reverse a rigged market. For some reason, most of the people in the national political debate who consider themselves progressive do not seem to understand this fact.

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consortiumnews.com — The political crisis sweeping the Middle East is another part of Ronald Reagan’s dark legacy that is shattering into chaos even as the United States prepares to lavishly celebrate his 100th birthday.

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dailykos.com — That many people still buy into Reagan's ideas on economics is understandable, because the press then and now fails to point out the most important fact about Reagan’s contentions. They made it up. The Cadillac driving welfare queen, the ever-enriching Laffer Curve, the insistence that regulation was what troubled our markets and banks – they are phantasms. Deliberate mendacity, with no sounder theoretical basis than "that's what I want you to believe." The Great Snake Oil Salesman foisted on America a set of remedies that had all the scientific basis of the four humors and even less curative power than a good old fashioned bleeding. But now we take these things for granted, we start from the basis that aid to women and children needs to be reduced, that decreasing taxes stimulates the economy, and that deregulation is the cure, not the problem. We deliver the nation one round of poison after another, and feign shock when it fails to work.

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motherjones.com — Moments before the new Republican House was to be sworn in, —a reporter approached Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), the head of the House Republican Policy Committee and the chamber's fifth-ranking GOPer with a question: How could he reconcile the GOP's pledge to tame the deficit with its decision to dodge budget calculations about the costs of tax cuts and repealing health care reform? Without missing a beat, Price replied, "It doesn't cost the government money to decrease taxes. When you decrease taxes, as President Kennedy proved, as Reagan proved, you increase revenue to the federal government." David Stockman, Reagan's first budget director in the 1980s and the godfather of the Gipper's supply-side tax cuts, was watching the proceedings from his home in Colorado and shaking his head. Republicans like Price were, in Stockman's view, misreading history—even perverting the Reagan message. As he saw it, they were guiding the nation toward financial ruin by pushing for tax cuts without having the guts to seriously slash spending—and dishonestly justifying their "flimflam" by citing his work.

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truth-out.org — The 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth is coming up in February, and before the inevitable gushing over what a wonderful leader he was begins, let me get in a few words about what sort of a leader he really was. Ronald Reagan was, above all, one of the most viciously anti-labor presidents in American history, one of the worst enemies the country's working people ever faced.

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