The Old Fallback
May 21st, 2009
Jonathan Chait of the New Republic:
Quite possibly, four years from now we could still be mired in a worldwide depression and Obama could be facing dismal — who knows, even Bush-like — popularity ratings. The world is unpredictable. But isn’t there a pretty decent chance that the economy will have recovered, and Obama’s policies will look fairly wise in retrospect? Do Republicans want to make any political plans for this contingency?
Sure they have a contingency plan: lie. That’s how they claimed Clinton was not responsible for the booming economy he oversaw. If the economy gets better, claim it was because of actions taken by Republicans in the Bush years which came to fruition later, because of economic conditions completely divorced from Obama, and because of pressures Republicans exerted to shape policies during the Obama administration. Meanwhile, they will blame Obama for every piece of negative news during that time (there is always something bad happening), and will claim he’s the most liberal and worst president ever.
Is Chait new here or something?
Yesterday I saw the piece where Jesse Ventura was interviewed by hannity. Ventura handed him his *ss on a plate.
But at the end, hannity said “I’m a Reagan conservative, Reagan ‘ended the cold war’ and presided over the largest economic expansion in peace time in history’.
To Reagan’s credit, he had some decent policies – he implemented protectionist industrial policy to revive the steel (fairly sophisticated one at that) and the auto industry – so he didn’t let American industry desolve – AND in the end, HE RAISED TAXES.
But Reagan also created massive debts and attacked unions and began the era of concentrating wealth at the expense of the middle class which has created the crater we are in and likely will not get out of in my life time.
Meanwhile Clinton brought about the greatest peacetime expansion in American history. The economy grew 50% on his watch. Nothing, nobody even comes close to having a record like that. And he turned Reagan and Bush Sr’s deficits into surpluses.
I know why I don’t watch Fox news. Those guys spit off lies like machine guns. The people, like my parents, that watch that stuff 24 hours a day are totally saturated with falsehoods designed to strip the nation of its wealth.
I would say that lying is their fluency. Telling the truth is something they can’t do.
Although they have their limits. Ventura asked hannity if the nation was better off before Bush jr. or after Bush. At first hannity took a pass, but then, Ventura asked again, and by then hannity had wrapped his mind around the enormity of the lies he was going to have to sputter and said it was better after Bush. Closing with “he kept us safe.”
– He kept us safe? except on 9/11, except for sending 3,000 more people to their deaths in Iraq. Except for allowing Bin Laden to thrive.