I wonder how many members of the GOP still talk about the good old days when Ronnie was in office:
"In 1981, shortly after taking office, Reagan lamented “runaway deficits” that were then approaching $80 billion, or about 2.5 percent of gross domestic product. Within only two years, however, his policies had succeeded in enlarging the deficit to more than $200 billion, or 6 percent of GDP.
“It was an experiment,” said Alan Auerbach, a professor of economics at UC Berkeley. “No one before Reagan had ever run such huge deficits during peacetime. He showed that you could smile and tell everyone not to worry and, politically, no one will call you to account.”
Of course GH that had to raise taxes to recover from Ronnie’s days and he subsequently lost to Clinton because of that.
…subsequently lost to Clinton because of that.
I got the impression he really did not want the job. About a year before, he had approval ratings of about 92% and still lost.
I’ve kind of figured that if we really had a liberal media that all the headlines would be
“Republicans Vote Unanimously Against Largest Tax Cut in U.S. History”
Since the logic is that if you vote against tax cuts then you are voting for tax increases, future campaigns will be filled with such-and-such Republican voted for the largest tax hike in history.
I got the impression he really did not want the job. About a year before, he had approval ratings of about 92% and still lost.
I think he was just a bad campaigner. I didn’t get the impression that he didn’t want the job, but rather, he thought it was in the bag. Why wouldn’t he think that? His rating were through the roof and they had just come off of 3 consecutive landslide elections.
Bush I was a much better President than he was a campaigner. Perot didn’t help things at all for him.
Having said that, I voted for him twice…oops, no I didn’t. I voted for him the second time but was plseantly suprised by Clinton at the end of his first term. Didn’t like the beginning of it though.
Reagan spent $200 Billion and got something for it. The end of the Cold War. This allowed a reduction of military spending in the 90’s and thus the single year of balanced budget.
The “Stimulus” package is really just a $800 Billion social engineering policy. We’ll get a few bridges & highways, but in the end we get a larger government that needs more money to sustain it.