Bogarting Reagan: Dems Try to Use Right Icon for Fairness, Extremism Gospels
In his early Hollywood years, through dozens of films and his tenure as Screen Actors Guild president, Ronald Reagan was a Democrat.
After a political conversion that began with his relationship with Nancy Davis and the General Electric Theater, and culminated in his heroic conservative movement status as the 40th president of the United States, the Democratic Party wants him back.
At least through the November presidential election.
The White House has been deploying Reagan’s name in earnest as it tries to make a case for tax fairness and the Buffett Rule, and as President Obama and Co. attempt to prove on the campaign trail that the Republican Party is now further to the right than its modern-day idol.
Obama has long made a practice of name-dropping Republican presidents Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Dwight Eisenhower has even made it into the game as an excuse for “investment spending” because he built the interstate highway system.
“I’m a Democrat,” Obama said in his January State of the Union address. “But I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.”
What was Honest Abe serving as a plug for? “That’s why my education reform offers more competition, and more control for schools and states,” Obama continued. “That’s why we’re getting rid of regulations that don’t work. That’s why our health care law relies on a reformed private market, not a government program.”
Two weeks ago, on a campaign stop in Vermont, Obama said that Lincoln “couldn’t win the nomination for the Republican primary right now,” and lauded Roosevelt for wanting a progressive income tax.
Reagan, however, is a relatively recent entry into the repertoire of Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.
Obama brought him up multiple times in his April 3 speech at an Associated Press luncheon, trying to make his party extremism argument.
“Ronald Reagan, who, as I recall, is not accused of being a tax-and-spend socialist, understood repeatedly that when the deficit started to get out of control, that for him to make a deal he would have to propose both spending cuts and tax increases,” Obama said. “Did it multiple times. He could not get through a Republican primary today.”
But then, as it would be a painful stretch to insinuate that Lincoln supported the Buffett Rule, the White House deployed two 1985 Reagan speeches (here and here) as proof that he ascribed to their brand of tax fairness.
Obama even said this week that he’d change the Buffett Rule to the “Reagan Rule” if it helped get GOP support for passage when it comes to the Senate floor Monday.
The president said Wednesday that his Oval Office predecessor supported the same notion that wealthy executives shouldn’t pay more in taxes than their secretaries. “That wild-eyed socialist, tax-hiking, class warrior was Ronald Reagan,” Obama said. “He thought that in America the wealthiest should pay their fair share and he said so.”
“No country has ever long survived a tax burden that reached one third of its citizens’ earnings,” Reagan also once said in a speech. “Indeed, the first signs of disintegration begin when the total tax burden hits 25 percent.”
If Reagan were alive today, he’d be crying if he saw the tax burden most Americans have to suffer under. I’m sick and tired of people only focusing on the Federal Tax rates. None of these pundits ever seem to mention that there is a heafty state tax out there (especially if you live in expensive states like New York or California), huge city taxes (in places like New York City), and real estate taxes no matter where you live. If you add all these taxes up for even a moderately successful middle class worker, you’re looking at people who have to pay well over 40% in taxes. And we haven’t even talked about sales taxes in certain states, which never go away. So for a lot of Americans, the dream Reagan had of no taxes is sinking like the Titanic and only getting worse as the years go by. And as more and more states go bankrupt (like California and Illinois and New York), their only alternative is to raise taxes even more, especially when it comes to paying all of those massive union benefits they can’t afford.
So what does Obama want to do? Well raise taxes, of course. That’s what liberals do, after all. Time to put an end to this madness in November and vote that bum out of office.
Ask the Canadians. They hardly seem to be on the verge of disintegration. Or DE, NL, UK, SE, CH, DK, FR, etc. Taxes under Reagan were higher than they are today. It is pure wishful thinking to assume that Reagan would be the uber tea partier. There are two sides of the equation: spending and revenues. Failure to address both sides is simply naive.
“Taxes under Reagan were higher than they are today.”
Which taxes? This old fib gets stretched to the bounds everytime. Reagan agreed to the tax increases as wanted by the democrat congress on the grounds that there would be future cuts– about $2 to ever $1 dollar increase in taxes. The democrats never followed through with the agreement– they lied. And 30 years later here you are mumbling one fact shrouded in ignorance. Broaden your scope of understading.
“It is pure wishful thinking to assume that Reagan would be the uber tea partier. There are two sides of the equation: spending and revenues. Failure to address both sides is simply naive.”
It’s wishful thinking believing Reagan would not fully embrace the tea party as their principles are his. Also, the goverment does not generate revenue. You mean tax revenue– funds collected by the state from individuals or entities. The current mess is caused by an imbalance that is self inflicted by Congress. Spending needs to be slashed– demo-rats refuse (even to produce a budget). That is what needs to be addressed, but it never is. I wonder why.
Actually it is most tax categories: the effective Fed tax rate, Individual Income Tax Rate, Social Insurance Tax Rate, Excise Tax Rate. The outlier is Effective Corporate Income Tax Rate which is up slightly (Source: Tax Policy Center). What is interesting however is how much all categories have declined for the top 5% of income earners. They continue to pay a higher percentage of taxes in most categories. The data is pretty interesting to look at.
And we get Paul Ryan’s budget which addresses the spending side of the equation, in particular the social spending side (never defense) and only vaguely refers to “closing loopholes”. You are absolutely correct that the imbalance is self-inflicted, what is open for discussion is the nature of that self-”affliction”.
See, no personal attacks.
Actually, Canada’s federal budget is only 18% of its GDP.
As for the the assorted Eurozone nations listed, did you happen to miss the ongoing eurocrisis?
What total bs. The U.S. had a major time of prosperity during the 50s and 60s when upper tax rates were 90%. The next period of prosperity was during Clinton’s administration when upper tax rates were 35%. The last decade when taxes got cut by Bush and the Repub Congress, our economy suffered especially since we were having to pay for two wars. The economy suffered but the rich got richer while everyone else lost ground. So much for the silly “trickle down” approach promoted by Reagan and his advisors and fed to a gullible American public. Wake up people….!
Joe Biden’s pie-hole belches: “We’re not supposed to have a system with one set of rules for the very wealthy and one set of rules for everybody else.”, which, of course, is exactly what Democrats propose…
The question for me is how this obvious “fairness” meme works as propaganda. I think the emotional wallop comes about through childhood emotions, especially where there are sisters and brothers. I wrote about that here, along with related subjects, such as the grandiosity of POTUS as deity defining the rules we should live by, as opposed to popular sovereignty. See http://clarespark.com/2012/04/12/the-donkey-serenade-and-buffetts-rule/.
Barack Obama was sworn in as President, at which time he:
1)Put his hand on the Bible;
2 Swore to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution;
He now grabs the image of Reagan as is his own….CONGRAGUTLATIONS, Barry…you’ve hit the Hypocrisy Trifecta!
I wish someone would explain “FAIR SHARE” to me. I kind of figured fair share would be everyone paying something and yet 47 or 48% of the people don’t pay any income tax at all. And many of them get “refunds” of more than they put in. I’m not sure how that equates to “everyone paying their fair share” as Obama keeps saying.
I’m thinking that a small tax on everyone that isn’t paying anything now, and eliminating the earned income credit, we’d generate more money than the buffett tax is going to raise.
“WALTC
I wish someone would explain “FAIR SHARE” to me.”
It’s really very simple: “more”.
I can explain Obamas “Fair Share”
Whats yours is mine and whats mine is mine
To paraphrase Harry Truman. In a race where there is a real Republican and one who pretends he is, the people will vote for the real one.
I say pass it and see that it doesn’t do a damn that while these drunken Democrat politicians are still spending.
The rich will just go to deferred investments or offshore accounts.
Bye the way did you see generous Joe Biden paid 1.5% to charity ?
He should be paying his “fair share”
You nailed it. Government spends money on tax increases based on perceived (actually imaginary) receipts to be generated.
I am still looking, and it has been over 30 years, to find a tax hike that did not result in less revenue.
If you know of one, I am all ears.
ronnie baby, really? to be fair the great o-iwon does remind me of a movie star/actor, of sorts. remember pepe la pew? alike in many ways. and a famous line of pepe’s fits mr. barry perfectly.
“you smell vous funny”.
It’s funny. If Obama really wants to follow in Reagan’s tax-code footsteps and get the “rich” to pay their “fair share”, shouldn’t he support Paul Ryan’s plan, which actually closes tax loopholes, like Reagan’s did?
They still hate Reagan despite their desire to co-opt his presidency. And Reagan died waiting for the 3 to 1 spending cuts promised in his deal with a “bipartisan” Congress.
Rachel Maddow just published a whole book, “Drift,” most of which attacks Reagan’s policies. And if you want to see what other lefties think of Reagan, surf over to Paul Krugman’s column and commentary.
See, the Left still hates Reagan’s guts–but they aren’t averse to invoking his name if it can suit their purpose, which is to obfuscate how poorly Obama has performed.
Notice that one thing Obama is NOT comparing himself to is Reagan’s “Morning in America” re-election campaign.
Not all of us liberals hate Reagan. He wasn’t a bad man, just misinformed on many things. And it’s interesting that Reagan would have not an inkling of a chance of getting nominated by Repubs today because the party has gone so far radically right that Reagan and his Repub predecessors would be left far behind. Sad that the good points of conservatism are lost in the partisan vitriol from the right…..
Apparently, they have a contest at the White House to see how big of a lie they can get away with. As to the Buffett Rule, Obama has a win-win situation. He can demagogue it all he wants knowing the negative consequences it would have will never happen because it will never pass Congress.
Obama wants to run AGAINST Congress. He and his supporters keep attacking “the obstructionist Republican Congress”, while totally ignoring the fact that the Senate is controlled by the Democrats. They figure that many voters don’t know that.
Economics 101: There are 2 major points that excluding all other economic forces (regulation, liability, deficit spending, natural cycles, etc) that change market conditions byway of tax code: There is an optimun tax of about 12% that will maximize revenue in a free market. Anything above or below this price point will result in less tax revenue. This is well known and proven.
However the second point of taxation is on a sliding scale that dictates how anything above 12% operates. On the low end, there is evasion. The critical point on the high end is non-participation in the market. This is the adminstrations target number on virtually every front.
Obama and his marxist buddies are promoting policies that promote non-participation. The end-game where it is not that the government receives no revenue, the net effect of the policies is to cost the government money (this is the dependency cycle that transfers power to the government… It is commonly known as losing your freedom).
I think you can see where this is going. This is the slight of hand, call it an invisible hand if you will, that destroys economies.
I hereby would like to set a new benchmark in cyberland to discuss things in a context that is relevant in economic thinking that is rational.
Cost adjust all data into 2008 dollars (what happened in 2008?). Not the nominal devalued numbers thrown around by the administration (devaluation that is a direct result of their policies). Those numbers are useless. Remember, currencies alway lag (probably the biggest lagger of them all) reality on the down swing.
Using this value baseline, it is plainly obvious that the administrations policies are not just bad, they are a threat to the continuation of the USA as we know it….
Which I am beginning to think was the agenda all along.
Thomas Jefferson’s
Warning To America
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”
* Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802) and later published in The Debate Over The Recharter Of The Bank Bill (1809)
Washington76 has a good point: If you were to take a look, you would probably find sufficient quotes from any of the Presidents (except perhaps the notably reticent Coolidge) to support just about any position you care to name. Quote mining like this is basically meaningless once you have a big enough sample.
I don’t think Reagan would back the Tea Party; I remember him, and he was a President for the whole of America, not just the Rich and the Right. I also think he’d've denounced a lot of the current policies of the Obama presidency. In all honesty, he would probably be in the same boat as many of us – the moderate Conservatives who can’t support Obama and have been abandoned by an ever more extreme Republican party.
Just as the Tea Party movement was an anti-tax movement.
the conservative movement of the 1970s was also triggered by the tax revolt in California in 1978.
Double-digit inflation had caused property tax reassessments to soar to astronomical levels. Activists put Proposition 13 on the California ballot, to roll these back. That was the beginning of
Reagan had no problem backing Goldwater, and he would have had no problem backing Romney.
Actually, he probably wouldn’t have a problem with Romney – because Romney isn’t an extremist the way Santorum or many of the other candidates were. But the Tea Party, which I did initially support on it’s economic platforms, has drifted into areas of race, and religion, and social policies I cannot abide, let alone support. And in all honesty, I do not believe Reagan would have either, as although he was a strongly conservative man, he was also a righteously fair one.
This is a connect-the-dots exercise gone awry. But I agree that Reagan would support the Republican over the Democrat/Marxist in 2012. And BTW, the Tea Party is much more than an anti-tax movement.
Ronald Reagan :: Barack Obama
as
Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers :: The Wicked Witch of the West