Ever wonder when the GOP figured out they could lie right into Americans faces and get away with it?

http://thereaganyears.tripod.com/economicpolicy.htm

Lessons in Reaganomics

"Reagan, who more than any president in history railed against government benefits and spending, set the standard for all members of his administration. In addition to his presidential pension of $99,500 a year for life and his annual pension as a former governor of California of $30,800...he received Secret Service protection from forty full-time agents and other security at a cost to the government estimated at $10 million annually, more than double that of other living presidents. A suite of offices atop a new thirty-four-story office building twenty minutes from his home, commanding a view that extended from the Pacific Ocean to the towers of downtown Los Angeles, cost the government $173,000 a year to lease."
--Haynes Johnson, Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years

"At his seventh press conference, President Reagan...responds to a question about the 17% black unemployment rate by pointing out that 'in this time of great unemployment,' Sunday's paper had '24 full pages of...employers looking for employees,' though most of the jobs available--computer operator, for example, or cellular immunologist--require special training, for which his administration has cut funds by over 30%."
--Paul Slansky, The Clothes have no Emperor

"The epitaph of the Reagan presidency will be: 'When Ronald Reagan became President, the United States was the largest creditor nation. When he left the presidency, we were the world's largest debtor nation.'"
--Lester Thurow, MIT professor of economics

"Reagan's theory was really 'trickle down' economics borrowed from the Republican 1920s (Harding-Coolidge-Hoover) and renamed 'supply side.' Cut tax rates for the wealthy; everyone else will benefit. As Reagan's budget director David Stockman confided to me at the time, the supply-side rhetoric 'was always a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate.' Many middle-class and poor citizens figured it out, even if reporters did not."
--William Greider, magazine article, "The Gipper's Economy"

Two years into Reagan's presidency, the United States experienced its worst recession since the Great Depression, with unemployment peaking at 10.8 percent. Rather than take responsibility, Reagan attempted to blame the 1982 recession on his predecessor, Jimmy Carter. (for details click here)