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The Spectacle Blog
As we approach the 40th president’s 100th birthday, there are many reasons Americans — and conservatives in particular — have fond memories of Ronald Reagan. Here’s one: the great shrinking Republican budget cuts. We were promised $100 billion. Ah, but now a lot of the year has passed, so let’s knock it down to $74 billion. Ah, but we don’t have to count just authorized spending, so we can pare it back further to a little over $30 billion. And these are some of the more serious voices in the GOP.
Now, controlling federal spending wasn’t Reagan’s strong suit either. His substantial cuts in non-defense discretionary spending — which would have been even larger were it not for the congressional Democrats — proved short-lived, because few programs were abolished and they later grew like weeds. More importantly, these cuts were outstripped by galloping entitlements programs and a (necessary) defense build-up.
But Reagan left office with the two crises that brought him to power — stagflation and the Cold War — definitively solved. By the mid-1990s, these once all-consuming problems were barely even thought about. Inflation subsided, growth returned, the largest peacetime expansion up until that point commenced, the number of tax rates fell from 14 to two, the top tax rate declined from 70 percent to 28 percent, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Since then, the U.S. economy has grown about 90 percent of the time and communism has been confined to such creaky museum-states as Cuba and North Korea.
No modern conservative politician before or after can boast of a comparable record. When it comes to meeting today’s challenges applying conservative principles, the early signs from our current Republican leaders are not terribly encouraging. That’s why we miss Reagan. And even though the conservative movement’s Reagan nostalgia can be kitschy at times, the tributes are richly deserved. Though successful conservative governance would be the best Reagan tribute of all.
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More Blog Posts by W. James Antle, III
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/02/04/why-conservatives-miss-reagan
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Too Many Tims| 2.4.11 @ 2:55PM
Thank God we no longer live under the shadow of destruction that was the Soviet Union. And thank you Ronald Reagan for having the guts to take them on-and win.
JP| 2.4.11 @ 3:44PM
The Gipper was the GOP's One Trick Poney. Those that came before and after Reagan were niether conservative nor libertarian. Reagan was a brief coda sandwiched between Progressive Repuplicans, political misfits, and shysters.
If one questions my harsh assesment of the GOP, look at the current crop of Republican presidential wannabes: Pawlenty, Gingrich, Mitt, the Huckster, and Palin. Depressing is a word that comes to mind.
And no, I'm not one of those backward looking people - the only thing I detest more than the 1980s was the 1970s. What I look for isn't a smiling, backslapping, brylcream spinmeister who talks "family values" and tax cuts while he meets for weekend trysts with his mistress and K-Street lobbyists. Lord knows our political landscape is filled with them.
I'm actually waiting for a politician who would hate the job, and must be pushed into it. Someone with the political guile of Reagan, but the temperment of Silent Cal, and the historical consciousness of Winston Churchill. I would be refreshing if he was in his 70s; his children were not misfits; and who had a wife who refused to even step foot in the Beltway.
Oldefarte| 2.4.11 @ 8:07PM
No Republican president has focused substantially on government spending reductions. Reagan's fiscal agenda was based upon tax cuts, and he increased spending [mostly for the military]. While Republicans have traditionally be devoted towards same, Democrats have [in their typical stealth fashion] back doored in increase spending for their preferred welfare agenda items. The government's budget can only be lowered/reduced if both taxes and spending are cut, and will increase if either is increased and not the other. Presnetly, it is essential that spending be substantially lowered over time. Democrats cannot be allowed to back door in social services/welfare programs [and instead same must be eliminated or reduced]. These programs are simply all welfare, and do not solve their recipients' economic problems. Instead if they become permanent [which all do], they result in their recipients' laziness, lethargy, ignorance,etc. The pride of working for one's living must be restored to our society if it is to survive and prosper. If the government's budget is decreased, same will produce the economic result of increasing employment and growing the economy. the less government, the more the private business economic sector will expand!!!!!
axbucxdu| 2.4.11 @ 8:55PM
Ole Ronnie only succeeded in getting the bilge pumps working again. Unfortunately, since Lincoln too many compartments have flooded. This bucket's goin down. I'll have that sherry now...
yisong| 11.5.11 @ 3:21AM
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