A Seance for Ronnie

Every Republican utters the name of Ronald Reagan as if he is going to return on a white horse and rescue them once again. Everything good was epitomized by Reagan. He was for smaller government. He thought government was the problem - not the solution. He was for cutting taxes on businesses and corporations because they created the jobs. He thought more revenues would come into the Treasury by the huge amount of growth created by the tax cuts.

The Republican Party of today is still mired in that false philosophy. They sit around the table with their eyes closed, holding hands, and waiting for Ronnie to appear to give them guidance. They conveniently forget that Reagan raised taxes, once his deficits hit $200 billion dollars and he saw that it was not working. He even raised taxes on unemployment checks. Most of the increases in revenue during his tenure was not from the taxcuts, but rather from the increase in payroll taxes, under the guise of "saving" the Social Security system. Unfortunately, the Republicans of today still operate under these illusions. They are frozen in time and are incapable of change.

They harken back to the days of Reagan as if it was a golden age of sorts. No doubt, the wealthy did very well. But it was not easy for average working folks. For the first time in their lives, they feared that they would never get another job if they lost the one they had. They labored in fear and sacrificed a lot. In 1983, the unemployed were about to surpass the number of unemployed during the Great Depression. In a PR move, Reagan incorporated the military into the employment numbers to cover up the real numbers.

Ronnie was a puppet for the military industrial complex and Big Business. He was a friendly chap with a welcoming smile. His acting skills were put to good use. After Watergate, the Republicans were looking for a hero, a savior, to show them the way to the promised land. Then Ronnie came along with his big smile and his conservative spiel and they fell in love. Now they are looking for the next Reagan.

If you look back on the rushpublicans over the past century, how many real heros did they have? Hoover? Harding? Nixon? Goldwater? You can't count Eisenhower cause he was a "recruit"...not a "true believer". Raygun is all they have. He's their FDR, JFK and Truman...all in one. Or at least that's their perception. He somehow rescued not just the GOOP but the whole world and the myths continue to flow...especially as we get further and further in time from the reality.

It was in that "Golden Age" that a generation that had been brought up believing that each generation could do better than the previous one hit a wall. Union busting and cut backs on aid to education created a generation that took less and less while sacrificing more and more. One income families rapidly vanished during the decade...two incomes became mandatory in the face of rising prices, including interest rates that hovered around 10% or more.

It's interesting that those who are the biggest believers of this myth are in their late 30's and early 40's...the "Joe The Plumbers"...who were kids during that age and ate up the PR with little direct connection to the real world. They were able to remain in that cocoon...and now when faced with all the failures of Raygun and boooosh, they deny and revise even more history.

Reagan's idea of making the economy better was to reduce the number of people it was better for. The middle class did just well enough to look the other way as the top earners made a killing. For the poor in the 80's, myself included, the 80's were a nightmare. It really was morning in America, because all I had to eat for a while was grits.