History Has Shown Us What Happens With Republicans In Charge – and it’s not good
November 3, 2014

 
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Probably THE reason I’ve been writing this blog every week for the last ten years is because of the importance of elections. As the subtitle says, “Recording History for those Who Seek to Rewrite it”. Of course, you wouldn’t need to be reminded of something if you had no power to change it. Not only is it about the elections, but also to remind voters of what happens when they vote while uninformed/misinformed. (Side-Note to anyone that thinks elections don’t matter: Ask the people spending BILLIONS trying to suppress your vote why do they bother if elections don’t matter?) Republicans are notorious for their hypocrisy when their politicians do the very things they claim to oppose (eg: GWB decrying “nation building” during the 2000 RNC Convention, to name but one) to a wholesale rewrite of the Reagan Legacy to turn the former union-leader that raised taxes 12 times, decried Assault Weapons, never attended church and granted amnesty to 10 million undocumented immigrants into “Jesus Meets John Wayne”. I’ve written multiple times of how the founder of “The Party of Lincoln” couldn’t get elected Dog Catcher by today’s GOP. And those are the Republicans we liked. But the past three-decades has produced what has to be the most noxious, partisan, short-sighted Republican Party I’ve ever seen. Republicans have left a long (slimy) trail of hypocrisy and economic disaster in their wake, yet somehow they keep managing to get elected by people with incredibly short memories and no foresight. I’ve likened it to psychotics that believe they “don’t need their meds” WHILE ON their meds (ie: Voting Republican after Democrats clean up their mess), discontinuing them only for disaster to ensue. So let’s take a little stroll down Memory Lane for a look back at the GOP Highlight Reel.

Reagan

During his 1980 Presidential campaign, Reagan criticized the Carter Administration for allowing the National Debt to grow to to a “staggering” $800-Billion dollars. Just days after entering office, in an address to Congress in February of 1981, Reagan’s speech-writers came up with the infamous “stack of dollar bills” analogy to give people a sense of just how much money “one Trillion dollars” really is. The Reagan prescription called for a massive tax-cut intended to (quote) “starve The Beast” [ie: government] in a misguided belief that less money coming in would force Congress to cut spending and reduce the Deficit. Sounds reasonable enough. But what the Reagan Administration didn’t count on was there there isn’t that much “fat” in the Federal Budget. And spending wasn’t exactly curbed when the staunch 1950’s anti-Communist decided that the way to defeat “The Red Menace” was to spend them into oblivion via a costly arms race. Before Reagan was governor of California, the former actor was the Head of “The Screen Actors Guild”… a union to protect the rights of people in the film industry… and volunteered to be an FBI informant in McCarthy’s anti-Communist witch-hunt that led to him testifying against “the Hollywood Ten”… a blacklist that ruined the careers of a number of prominent writers, actors and directors.

What the Reagan Administration did not count on was that sucking that much money out of the economy meant fewer paychecks. Less than two years later, Reagan’s Corporate tax cuts led to 10.8% unemployment, the highest since The Great Depression and a level not seen since. To get the unemployment rate back down, the Reagan Administration went on a hiring binge, greatly expanding the size of the Federal Government… which cost money, further exploding the Debt.

By the time Reagan ran for reelection in 1984… less than four years after lambasting the Carter Administration for allowing the National Debt to grow to $800-Billion dollars… “Reaganomics” had nearly doubled 204 years worth of accumulated Debt to $1.5-Trillion dollars. Because the government was borrowing so heavily to finance the Federal Government, people enjoyed all the benefits of low taxes AND a fully-funded Federal Government without realizing just how much they were putting on the National Credit Card. By the time Reagan left office, the National Debt had more than TRIPLED to $2.7-Trillion dollars. 12-years later, soon after taking office, Dick Cheney declared that “Reagan proved that Deficits don’t matter”. Then the Bush Administration proceeded to turn Clinton’s Surplus into a $1.4-Trillion dollar a year Deficit… which didn’t seem to bother Republicans all that much until Barack Obama inherited it. Then suddenly, The Debt (but not The Deficit which is shrinking) became an apocalypse waiting to happen. But I digress.

If the hypocrisy of Deficit Spending under Reagan weren’t enough, how about being “the most corrupt Administration in history”… a title that took some doing barely a decade after the Nixon Administration. Reagan’s presidency ended with ONE-HUNDRED AND THIRTY-EIGHT public officials being indicted or going to Federal prison, the most in American history thanks to things like the “Iran/Contra” scandal (selling arms to Iran to finance the Nicaraguan Contras). And I well remember when… after Congress rejected Reagan’s request to provide rebel Contra forces with money to buy guns, as “Commander-in-Chief”, “St. Ronnie” simply circumvented Congress (sound familiar?) by ordering the U.S. military to storm the beaches of Nicaragua loaded down with as much weaponry as they could carry, dump it all there on the beach, and walk away. The Contras got their guns and Congress was forced to spend the money anyway to rearm our military.

Bush-I

Despite the exploding Debt and record corruption, the country still elected Reagan’s Vice President, George HW Bush, to continue the Reagan presidency. Unfortunately for Republicans, Poppy Bush… who ran against Reagan in 1980 criticizing his economic policies as “Voodoo economics” (the belief that you can increase Federal Revenue by slashing taxes on the rich) was a bit more responsible when it came to Federal spending (not by much mind you, but enough.) Poppy Bush, after assuring cynical Republicans that he wouldn’t raise taxes with his infamous “Read. My. Lips.” pledge, was forced to do so when he saw what Reagan’s tax cuts were doing to the Deficit. So he agreed to a small tax increase in exchange for concessions on drastic spending cuts… inflicting the worst of both worlds on the economy, which thew itself headlong into a Recession.

Bill Clinton’s 1992 Campaign Theme was “It’s the economy, stupid”, ridiculing Poppy Bush for refusing to even mention the subject on the campaign trail. So upset were most Americans with the Bush-I economy, many (myself included) turned to Third-Party candidate Ross Perot. To this day, I wonder what disasters might have befallen the country if Perot had actually won the election… a man that it turned out had no interest in “negotiating” with Congress or anyone else, believing there was a “mandate” for what he believed was right for the country and would ignore anyone that told him otherwise (that’s not a guess. That’s what we learned after one of his campaign managers, Ed Rollins, revealed when he resigned in protest.) I view my support for Perot as a learning lesson for why it is so important to be an informed voter today.

The 1994 Gingrich Revolution

In 1994, following two years of vicious partisan attacks and recriminations by Republicans against a president they viewed as “illegitimate” (thanks to Perot’s third-party candidacy that allowed Clinton to win with less than 50% of the vote), House Minority Leader Newt Gingrich orchestrated the GOP takeover of Congress during the 1994 mid-terms resulting in six straight years of pointless costly investigations in a failed attempt to derail the Clinton presidency. When their partisan witch-hunt failed to deny Clinton reelection in 1996, the GOP controlled Congress turned its attention toward “impeachment” to ensure Clinton didn’t finish out his second term. But there was no “there” there. “White Water”… a failed land deal, never produced evidence of criminal wrong-doing. Clinton’s reported philandering was an embarrassment, but not criminal. For some inexplicable reason, President Clinton allowed the GOP to subpoena him and force him to testify under oath that he wasn’t cheating on his wife… again, scummy but not a crime. Under oath, Clinton denied the truthful accusation, which in itself was (arguably) criminal, thus handing the GOP on a silver platter the justification to impeach him.

Two of Clinton’s key critics, Rep. Newt Gingrich and Sen. Henry Hyde were both currently having extramarital affairs WHILE they were denouncing President Clinton for his, a fact that did not to come out until years later. The sum culmination of six-years of investigations of everything from “The White House Christmas Card List” to “Socks The Cat’s Fan Club”: $70 Million dollars, no conviction, and Clinton leaving office with a (legitimate) popularity that rivals that of St. Ronnie (illegitimate, based on the most whitewashed record imaginable).

Bush-II

During the 2000 presidential race, George W Bush… whose only claims to fame prior to being elected governor of Texas were being a chronically failed businessman, son of a former president, and managing a baseball team that traded away Sammy Sosa… crisscrossed the nation talking down the record-breaking Clinton economy, claiming that “If only a Republican president had been in charge with the Republican Congress for the last six years… just imagine how much better things might have been.” People bought it and (arguably) elected a Republican president to preside over THE SAME Republican Congress Clinton had. The result was a disaster. Economic gains reversed almost immediately and the Stock Market plunged nearly one thousand points from Bush’s first day in office (10,587 on 1/19/2001 to 9,605 on September 10, 2001… so no blaming 9/11). The incoming Bush Administration was too busy plotting the invasion of Iraq to listen to CIA warnings of an impending attack on the US mainland by alQaeda, resulting in the arguably avoidable disaster of 9/11. A wave of post-9/11 patriotic fervor swept the GOP back in power in 2002 and Bush (narrowly) back in office in 2004 despite the disastrous decision to invade Iraq on grounds that people were quickly beginning to realize were totally bogus… with the Bush Administration actually campaigning on “You don’t change horses in mid-stream”… a “stream” that ironically only existed because they blew up the dam.

The Stock Market continued to plunge and unemployment continued to climb as rising oil/gas prices (thanks to the invasion of Iraq) made everything more expensive, ushering in the first or TWO Bush Recessions. The Bush Administration’s solution was to cut interest rates to the bone and encourage people to invest in real-estate. Millions of people were talked into taking out “Adjustable Rate Mortgages” to purchase well beyond their means, but as the economy continued to decline, those ARM rates started to go up & up. As more money shifted from buying goods to paying high interest rates on their mortgages and $3/gal gasoline, the economy started to implode as people began losing their jobs and defaulting on their mortgages, resulting in the collapse of the Banking industry and the biggest economic bailout in history… ON TOP OF the ongoing costs of two wars… one of which we never should have been in and neither with a plan to get out. President Bush would be only the second president in history to leave office with the DOW lower the day he left than the day he took office (the first was Herbert Hoover.)

The GOP under Obama

This is the Sh!t storm President Obama inherited. Yet today, less than six years later, the economy is recovering DESPITE unprecedented Republican obstruction. The DOW has nearly TRIPLED where it was following the collapse of the Bush economy (from 6,547 in March of 2009 to 17,390 last Friday), unemployment has fallen to just 5.9% (below where it was when Obama took office) and GDP grew at 3.5%, the strongest rate in 10 years.

o Republicans said Raising taxes on the rich would crash the economy. President Obama raised taxes on the Rich. The economy is strong and getting stronger by the day. The Deficit is shrinking as a result and has NOT ONCE been larger than the Deficit left to him by President Bush.

o Republicans said ObamaCare would push up unemployment as companies laid off employees rather than insure them. Instead, unemployment is at it’s lowest level in over six years… helping prove the point that tax breaks for the rich don’t create jobs, consumer demand does. So employers are hiring, not firing, despite “ObamaCare”.

o Sarah Palin’s “Death Panels”? They never materialized. In fact, people who were denied coverage by insurance companies’ OWN “death panels” before ObamaCare are now covered. The GOP has vowed to repeal that coverage if they regain power.

o They told us “the only way to get gas prices down is to approve the (disastrous) Keystone XL pipeline”. Gas is below $3/gallon and falling thanks in part to increased competition among OPEC nations, not the construction of any pipeline.

o Obama is mishandling Ebola? ONE death by a man that was turned away from a hospital in a RED state. ZERO cases of Ebola spreading within the general public. By all accounts, handling of the Ebola outbreak has been WILDLY successful.

o Mishandling ISIS? First, let’s not forget there wouldn’t even BE an ISIS if it weren’t for the invasion of Iraq ala the GOP.

o Border crisis? As I pointed out last week, the GOP is actually running ads suggesting ISIS is entering into the U.S. across the Mexican border, while others openly wonder if those poor Central American children entering the country may be carrying the African disease of Ebola. Neither of which are true.

The Republican Party, unable to run on their own record or on Obama’s economic record, are instead doing what they always do: make baseless hypocritical claims of criminal wrongdoing (“Fast & Furious” and “IRS-gate” brought to you by the backers of Iran/Contra and Iraq/WMDs), hypocritical claims of incompetency (cries of “Benghazi!” from the people that brought you “9/11”), and threats of impeachment for circumventing GOP obstruction (the same Party that praises St. Ronnie despite circumventing Congress to arm the Contras.)

They can’t win on their record, so they’ve enacted Draconian “Voter ID” laws across the country, suppressing literally millions of traditionally Democratic low-income voters in the name of “voter fraud”… an activity so rare that more people are convicted of “migratory bird violations” each year than have been convicted of voter fraud in the past decade… not only incredibly rare but hardly enough to swing an election. Don’t think for a moment that they don’t know what they’re doing. If the voters were truly on their side, they’d be doing everything to encourage the vote, not suppress it. And, a question I’ve been asking all year: I’m still waiting for someone to explain what cutting Early Voting hours/days has to do with fighting “voter fraud”?

Ebola, ISIS and trumped up claims of wrongdoing. Fear & Smear. That’s all they have to offer this election season. “Be afraid! Be very afraid! Oh, and vote Republican!” The GOP thinks you should ignore the economic growth and their unprecedented obstruction, and put them back in charge. The amazing thing is that it seems to be working. Those who do not learn from history…
 

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November 3, 2014 · Admin Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: Economy, Election, myth busting, rewriting history, Right-Wing Hypocrisy, Taxes, voting

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