How Ronald Reagan Won A 49 State Landslide
On Ronald Reagan’s 99th birthday, lets remember why he was re-elected in a 49 state landslide, winning the most Electoral College votes in American history.
Compare the results of Reagan’s principled, liberty-based policies with the results of the current chaos in Washington
Yet another disappointing employment report was released Friday – 20,000 jobs lost in January. The political-media establishment is in full spin mode, assuring us Congress will deliver us from misery with yet another, politically contrived, “jobs bill.”
These charts compare the two worst recessions since the 1930s, and the results of the two, directly opposite responses from Washington.
President Obama inherited a deep recession. His response has been to:
- Expand the bailout program begun under the Bush administration;
- Enshrine as explicit government policy the theory that some companies are deemed too-big-to-fail and will always be rescued from the consequences of their own failures, especially if their workforce is unionized;
- Enact the stimulus, $787 Billion of extra borrowing and spending, sold with the promise that it would, in Obama’s words “immediately jumpstart job creation;”
- Subsidize blue-sky energy schemes that are too expensive and unreliable to survive in the competitive marketplace;
- Threaten employers with tax increases, hyper-regulation, new health care mandates, and an artificial energy shortage imposed by government.
Like President Obama, President Reagan inherited a deep recession. By some measures it was worse than the current downturn. Reagan’s economic program, based on his commitment to liberty, was to:
- Reduce regulation and government intervention in the economy;
- cut taxes to leave capital in the hands of those who had earned it and were best prepared to invest in job creating enterprises;
- Release the creative and productive energies of The People from the yoke of imperial government.
