Republican Revisionism: WIth Help from The Left
Going thru emails I’d missed while traveling last week, I came across this story on MotherJones.com. Friday’s story from David Corn made me realize something I am getting sick to death of hearing: How the current GOP is ruining the message (read: more Centrist) of Ronald Reagan and his era of conservatives. Here’s what Corn wrote:
Moments before the new Republican House was to be sworn in, Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), the head of the House Republican Policy Committee and the chamber’s fifth-ranking GOPer, was standing in the ornate Speaker’s Lobby of the Capitol, near a roaring fire. In the celebratory hustle and bustle—new members rushing to pick up lapel pins and license plates, their kids noisily exploring the building—a reporter approached Price 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.
This piece was written just before Ronald Reagan’s centennial birthday. And just like when he died a few years back, people are mighty forgetful of all the horrible shit he did. Like, cutting taxes and cutting spending is an ethical argument when we consider the things in the federal budget that they cut, or considered cutting? Hell what about what they spent the money on-the arms race? Iran-Contra shenanigans? Furthermore, why is any so-called progressive interested in “correcting the record” of the 1980′s era GOP? It really speaks to the bad investment in some fake olden days of honorable politics, or “gentlemanly” disagreements. Clearly our politics have gotten more rancorous and disagreeable-dare I say violent. But if you were dying of AIDS in 1983, or a school child relying on school lunches (who may have lost your veggies for a daily dose of ketchup), the politics, no matter how outwardly pleasant, were just as horrifying.
Queers for Economic Justice wrote a great article when Reagan died exposing the real legacy of the old fucker. I suggest David Corn read it.
