Go check it out and show it to anyone who claims that "it was all Clinton and/or Obama's" fault.
The thing that infuriates me to no end is that Democrats themselves bought into the demonization of my beloved Jimmy Carter. Even many Democrats voted for Ronald Reagan, believing the bullshit about Carter.
Every since then, the Democrats/liberals have done a piss poor job defending themselves and fighting back against right wing lies. The wingnuts could never win on the issues. Two things they do well: destroy the economy and start wars. And yet, since they cannot run on their own policy records, they tend to reintroduce the "culture wars". The branded themselves as the party of family values and people just buy into that, hook, line and sinker.
If Dems/liberals ever expect to change the parameters of the narrative, they need to start fighting back and FIGHTING HARD!!!!!
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http://www.newsweek.com/id/237737 Some facts from the article on the last 5 Republican presidents, all of which would fail the "conservative purity test" today...
Nixon:
Nixon repeatedly set wage and price controls, prompting economic adviser Herbert Stein to later declare that his boss had imposed "more new regulation ... on the economy" than "any other administration." The top tax rate went up during Nixon's first three years in office. He even increased spending on federal employees. Worst of all, Nixon was the guy who detached the dollar from the gold standard—a move that would've done little to endear him to the gold bugs who now dominate the Glenn Beck wing of the GOP.
Reagan:
During the Reagan years, federal employment grew by more than 60,000 (in contrast, government payrolls shrunk by 373,000 during Bill Clinton's presidency). The gap between the amount of money the federal government took in and the amount it spent nearly tripled. The national debt soared from $700 billion to $3 trillion, and the U.S. transformed from the world's largest international creditor to its largest debtor. After 1981, Reagan raised taxes nearly every year: 1982, 1983, 1984, and 1986. The 1983 payroll tax hike even helped fund Medicare and Social Security—or, in terms today's Tea Partiers might recognize, "government-run health care" and "socialism."
George H. W. Bush:
..he'd once called Reagan's supply-side proposals "voodoo economics"—Bush agreed in 1990 to break a campaign promise ("Read my lips: no new taxes") and accept some tax increases to accompany his preferred spending cuts. The plan would've slashed the deficit by $500 billion over the next five years, but the GOP wasn't in a cooperative mood, and it was defeated in Congress. Nonetheless, Bush's final budget increased the marginal tax rate, phased out exemptions for high-income taxpayers, and kept the capital-gains tax in place—moves that angered conservatives then and would still anger them today. What's more, Bush also wound up bailing out the savings-and-loan industry with $126 billion in taxpayer money, which directly contradicts the " oppose bills like Obama's stimulus" section of the RNC's purity test. Strike one, strike two.
George W. Bush:
During his first term, Bush Jr. was widely seen as the most conservative president in U.S. history. After all, his tax cuts were even larger than Reagan's. The problem, of course, was that his government and his deficits were larger as well. During his eight years in office, Bush transformed surpluses equal to 2.5 percent of GDP into deficits equal to 3 percent of GDP—a $4 trillion hit on the country's balance sheet. All told, by the end of Bush's term, the national debt stood at $11.3 trillion—more than double what it was when he took office. It's tough to see how a party that now professes to support "smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits" could possibly back him if he were running for office today.
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