Before the symbol of the right became guys in red hats warning that immigrants and the deep state were destroying the country, it was guys in tricorne hats warning about the stimulus and Obamacare. And now they are back. jonathanchait writes
never changed at all. What changed were its circumstances. When Republicans last held the presidency, they happily slashed taxes, jacked up spending, and enjoyed the proceeds of a roaring economy. When they lost the presidency, they decided the budget deficit posed an existential threat. They have been toggling between these two extreme positions for four decades now, and many people still haven’t quite picked up on the pattern.
From the end of World War II until the 1980s, the federal government ran smallish deficits. Ronald Reagan changed all that. Reagan cut taxes and increased defense spending, promising the tax cuts would create enough economic growth to erase the lost revenue. When Bill Clinton assumed office, Republicans began treating the deficit as a crisis, even shutting down the government in a bid to compel the Democratic president to adopt the Republican program of social-spending cuts.
When George W. Bush succeeded Clinton, the Republican obsession with deficits disappeared, replaced by a Reaganesque binge of more tax cuts and defense spending, sending the deficit skyrocketing again. Republicans thought it was all fine. Vice-President Dick Cheney famously explained, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” They mattered again, of course, when Barack Obama came into office and Republicans returned to apocalyptic warnings about fiscal insolvency.
If you remind the Republicans, they might half-apologize for their past sins and insist this time they have truly found religion. And their critics, both within the Republican Party and outside it, treat the manic-depressive pattern as if it represented two completely divergent theories of governing.
It is actually the same theory proceeding from a generally unstated premise: Republicans believe it is immoral to
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