The Real Reagan Record

Peo­ple are some­how still inclined to per­form unspeak­able acts on Reagan’s ghost.  Newt Gin­grich and Craig Shirley some­how snuck a Reagan-​​worship piece that into today’s Politico, but their eco­nomic asser­tions are frankly wrong. Let’s have a go:

Rea­gan rejected the argu­ments of both sides, push­ing tax cuts for indi­vid­u­als, reduc­ing fed­eral spend­ing and begin­ning an unprece­dented quarter-​​century of eco­nomic growth while cre­at­ing mil­lions of jobs.

Now, for the truth:

There was a mas­sive increase in Cold War related defense spend­ing that caused large bud­get deficits, the U.S. trade deficit expan­sion, and con­tributed to the Sav­ings and Loan cri­sis, In order to cover new fed­eral bud­get deficits, the United States bor­rowed heav­ily both domes­ti­cally and abroad, rais­ing the national debt from $700 bil­lion to $3 tril­lion, and the United States moved from being the world’s largest inter­na­tional cred­i­tor to the world’s largest debtor nation.

FUN TIMES WE HAD UNDER REAGAN, HUH??? But to add insult to injury:

Repub­li­cans still fall for the same gam­bit, still try­ing to kick the foot­ball held by the lib­eral Lucy.

This is quite pos­si­bly the biggest BS line in the whole piece if we ignore the fac­tual errors. Let’s pull some polit­i­cal car­toon­ing from for­ever ago:

Good grief indeed.

5 February 2010 – 6:11 am | By Benjamin Daniels | Posted in Conservative Coalition, Economics, Media | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (177)