Lucille
01-29-2009, 03:02 PM
The Party Of Goldwater? (http://www.newsweek.com/id/182137)
We can only Hope™!
Anyways, dig the revisionist history:
This is part of what is becoming a familiar political cycle. After the disastrous presidency of Herbert Hoover and the advent of the Great Depression, conservatives fell into a 50-year funk. Even their presidents didn't do right by them: Eisenhower was never considered a true believer, and Nixon drove way off the reservation by declaring himself a Keynesian. Robert Taft and a handful of others kept the flame alive, handing the minority torch off to Goldwater in the 1960s. That was how long it took for the New Deal era to play itself out—which ultimately it did. The Democrats' long dominance bred too much statist thinking, just as Hoover's Republicans had gone too far in favor of a laissez-faire approach to markets. An oversimplistic faith in Keynesianism contributed to decades of government gigantism and Democratic misrule (or as it was known back then, "stagflation"). That in turn led to the counterrevolution that ultimately brought Ronald Reagan to power in 1980, declaring "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Now two decades of runaway Reaganism—an excess of free-market zeal—have prompted the biggest government intervention since the New Deal. Cue the Keynesians again, and a Democratic resurgence. Responding to this ideological stimuli, the Republicans seem to be rooting around in their closets for their Barry pins.
We can only Hope™!
Anyways, dig the revisionist history:
This is part of what is becoming a familiar political cycle. After the disastrous presidency of Herbert Hoover and the advent of the Great Depression, conservatives fell into a 50-year funk. Even their presidents didn't do right by them: Eisenhower was never considered a true believer, and Nixon drove way off the reservation by declaring himself a Keynesian. Robert Taft and a handful of others kept the flame alive, handing the minority torch off to Goldwater in the 1960s. That was how long it took for the New Deal era to play itself out—which ultimately it did. The Democrats' long dominance bred too much statist thinking, just as Hoover's Republicans had gone too far in favor of a laissez-faire approach to markets. An oversimplistic faith in Keynesianism contributed to decades of government gigantism and Democratic misrule (or as it was known back then, "stagflation"). That in turn led to the counterrevolution that ultimately brought Ronald Reagan to power in 1980, declaring "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Now two decades of runaway Reaganism—an excess of free-market zeal—have prompted the biggest government intervention since the New Deal. Cue the Keynesians again, and a Democratic resurgence. Responding to this ideological stimuli, the Republicans seem to be rooting around in their closets for their Barry pins.