Midnight in the Garden of Reaganomics

[Bennet Kelley]

Midnight in the Garden of Reaganomics

by Bennet Kelley

As the likelihood of an Obama and Democratic landslide moves from possibility to inevitability and as more and more Republicans jump on the Obama bandwagon, wailing Republicans are sounding off as if this were a sign of Armageddon. One Forbes columnist even questioned whether an Obama victory would result in the end of capitalism itself - as if the Republicans have been great stewards of the economy or Democrats have never held power before.

Coupled with comments by Governor Palin, Representative Bachmann and others dividing the country into "real Americans" (i.e., Republicans) and "American haters" (i.e., Democrats), this fear-mongering may only further prove how out of touch the Republican Party has become with mainstream Americans (or even history itself) as the electorate is becoming increasingly aware of how disastrous Republican policies have been over the past three decades.

Since 1980, the Republicans had one response to every problem -- tax cuts; as John McCain demonstrated when he called for a cut in capital gains taxes in response to the stock market crash (in which very few investors actually had gains). Voters went along with this "borrow from Peter to pay Paul" economics thinking they were (or soon would be) Paul, but now most of them realize that they were Peter all along.

Republicans transferred trillions of dollars to the wealthiest Americans, creating the greatest income disparity since the Depression and increasing the national debt by $8.2 trillion (or nearly $75,000 per household). For nearly thirty years, Republicans have chosen to invest in the rich, but not in America and we are witnessing a "quiet collapse in prosperity" as a result. For example, the current United States' rankings on life expectancy, water quality and infant mortality are 24th, 39th and 41st respectively falling behind countries such as Bosnia, Cuba, Panama, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

We have lived off the sacrifices of others and let our roads, bridges, water systems and other infrastructure decline to second world levels such that it would cost $1.6 trillion to merely get our current infrastructure to a functional level. But as former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker stressed last week, we need to begin "the physical rebuilding of our nation now."

We also have failed to invest in the infrastructure needed for our future economic growth. Our broadband penetration rank has fallen from 4th to 15th in five years (the reality is much worse since the U.S. measure relies on a methodology that overstates broadband penetration). Future economic growth also will require alternative energy sources, but Republicans have cut funding for alternative energy programs by two-thirds.

Today we have the highest level of income inequality, poverty and deaths due to lack of access to health care and the lowest level of social mobility among leading developed nations; but the Republicans' answer is to give tax cuts to the richest few Americans. We are spending $720 million each day in Iraq; but the Republicans want to stay indefinitely and cut taxes.

Our economy is in peril, but Republicans merely parrot the same lines they have since 1980. Amazingly, as Rome burns, these Deacons of Disaster and Division have the audacity to claim that only they are suited to run this country even when their policies would only feed the flames. The more Republicans claim that the sky will fall when Obama takes office in January, the more they demonstrate how tone deaf they have become.

Despite their sense of entitlement to power, in this country the power comes from the people. It comes from middle class Americans who have been ignored for years (and who pay the price for Republican's sabotaging a potential deal on the Clinton health plan after Bill Kristol warned it would give Democrats an electoral advantage). It comes from aging baby boomers who see a looming crisis with the Medicare and Social Security trust funds that the Republicans refuse to address. It comes from the many young voters whose future has been mortgaged by the Republican's reckless economic policy.

On Election Day, while Republicans desperately cling to their dogma of the past, a tidal wave of voters from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire and all the way to the curvaceous slopes of California will embrace the future. As midnight falls on the "Reagan Revolution," Republicans will discover that what they saw as signs that the sky would fall was simply the dawn of a new horizon.

[Demeter]

1. And No Child Left Behind Must Be Trashed IMMEDIATELY!

Children are our most important infrastructure. NCLB is killing their minds by starvation. The Fundies having been trying to institutionalize indoctrination and anti-intellectualism for decades. All of that must go Soonest.

[UnrepentantUnitarian]

2. If they were so seriously concerned about the future of this country...

then why did they go and leave those "flaming piles of dog poo"--called the McCain campaign, and the Bush Administration--on the nation's doorsteps? (Thanks for that line, Mr. Colbert.)

[zeemike]

3. Welcome to DU Bennett. K&R

That was a great take on Reaganomics...and so true.

[JustJon]

4. "Mainstream" doesn't mean what it used to, I guess.

I notice more and more talk of Republicans seeming out of touch with the mainstream. But it's easy to understand, considering McCain/Palin's campaign actually started using language that mocked the word "mainstream" during their anti-media rants.

And I don't mean in that old Karl Rove sense, where the candidates would say all the right things on stage while some thugs would do the dirty work for them behind the scenes. No, they've actually had their candidates up there reading prepared, vetted remarks that repeatedly use the word "mainstream" as a pejorative. (God bless their incompetent speechwriters, whoever they are.)

Note to political types: No matter how right you think you are, when you find yourself crafting speeches that cast a word like "mainstream" in the role of insult terminology, you've wandered into some dangerous terrain.

I'd say it's a case of the Republicans getting lazy.

After years of pretending the right was actually the center (and everybody leaning slightly left was therefore way out on the fringes of civilization, somehow), they kind of hitched their wagons to the argument that they were the true mainstream. That they were defenders of mainstream.

But with McCain and Palin spending so much time explicitly mocking the mainstream media, I'd bet money that if you poured over transcripts of their campaign remarks, you'd find they've used "mainstream" as a pejorative term more often than they've used it the way they used to.

Just lazy and undisciplined. Rather than doing the painstaking work it takes to frame every argument as if they are the ones in the mainstream, they got lazy and decided to come out and mock the mainstream (and just wait for the middle to come to them, I guess, instead of trying to appear as if they already were the middle).

Boy, if you told me 4 or 8 years ago that the 2008 Republican presidential campaign would intentionally mock the term "mainstream" and would go through numerous debates without once referring to "the middle class"... I'd have laughed in your face. But here were are.

[Speciesamused]

5. This is the END...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbI5K0AzNHI

[StClone]

6. Sundry of Anchors and the next Wave

Paul Krugman has explained the failings of Reaganomics. Greenspan himself said he was wrong for endorsing the unregulated market system. So when major Republicans and Conservatives are bailing and denouncing the past policies of Reagan's privatization and defunding mindset, when will the Limbaugh's of the World get it? And when they do what will be their next gimmick to be foisted on the public? What scheme to steal our assets, control minds and bodies?