Krugman linked to this good post by Mike Konczal which showed how little difference there really is between Romney's policy agenda here in 2012 and McCain's in 2008 and Bush in 2004 and 2000.
"Mike Konczal does what I was planning to do, and compares the (very thin) policy discussion in Mitt Romney’s big speech with previous GOP speeches. As he shows, Romneynomics 2012 is literally identical to McCainomics 2008, Bushnomics 2004, and Bushnomics 2000. Drill, baby, drill; cut taxes on rich people (why didn’t we think of that?); and so on."
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/the-definition-of-insanity/
http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/romney-will-solve-crisis-exact-same-gop-plan-2008-2006-2004
If you read Konczal, it's really always the same agenda.
This is their prescription whether or not it's good times, recovering times, or bad times. So while the Romney plan is supposedly going to give us 12 million jobs he'd be asking for the same thing if it were a flush time or a recovering time or a ho hum time.
This was an interesting point and it got me to looking at some of the earlier Presidential debates. What's interesting is-starting from 1980-that the debates between Democrats and Republicans are actually remarkably fluid.
In 1984 in the Reagan-Mondale debate, Mondale took Reagan to task for his record deficit and Reagan promised that in his second term it would dissipate quickly-time would prove him wrong here.
Why did he believe this? While Bruce Bartlett wrote a recent paper that claimed that the Reagan team never literally believed that tax cuts fully "pay for themselves" but listening to Reagan, clearly the Gipper thought so at the least.
On the other hand, Reagan was correct in arguing that the deficit wasn't going to lead to another big surge in inflation nor would interest rates spike.
Mondale d the idea that the huge deficit would require a tax increase-and he feared that the rise in inflation and interest rates-could lead to another recession.
He was wrong that there would be a recession or inflation rise, but he was right that Reagan would raise taxes.
Yet at the debate Reagan suggested that he could guarantee there wold be no tax increase-so he really gave us the first "no new taxes' pledge-though his VP would be much more explicit in 1988.
Until then Reagan had said that a tax increase could be on the table but only as a last resort.
Mondale's honesty gambit "Both me or the President will need to raise taxes in the next term. The difference is he won't tell you that and I just did" didn't translate and since then there has been a good deal of caginess about talk of tax increases-Obama discusses them and they have become more respectable now-though only on the rich.
In the 70s, politicians competed to see who could talk more about asking Americans to "make sacrifices."
In the 1976 Ford-Carter debate they both talked about it though Carter suggested there might be less in his Administration. Reagan was the first post-Wanniski Republican who figured out a way to win the debate over the deficit. Since then the idea has been that the Democrats should fix the deficits that Republicans give us for their wars and tax cuts for the rich.
When Reagan debated Carter in 1980 though, he shrewdly turned it around on Carter when he said that the American people are willing to make some sacrifices, Reagan came back with "why do they need to make sacrifices? Why don't you allow your government to do with less?"
It was an effective line. Look, I'm no fan of Reagan, but looking back on the debate now, it's not surprising Carter lost. He just didn't perform well and he kind of fell into traps like that one.
In 1984, the subject of tax returns even came up between Reagan and Mondale as Mondale pointed out that VP Bush's recent release of his taxes showed that while he had paid 40% in taxes in 1980 he had only paid 12.5% in his most recent one at the time.
And they get abortion-and Mondale did mention the issue of abortion in the case of rape-Reagan favored only an exception in the life of the mother.
See here for both Reagan-Mondale and Reagan-Carter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGvBFQQPRXs&feature=relmfu
P.S. Again, I'm as far from a Reaganite as you'll get, but his reframing the debate away from sacrifice was inspired. Ideally, we Democrats should not be about sacrifice. Note that the GOP has used it to try to straitjacket Obama during his first term.
It's not just about deficits, it's how they are created. By the kind of deep tax cuts for the rich Romney wants to do and the hawkishness suggested in his Thursday speech the Wanniski Wager is there will be a huge deficit which enables the GOP to tell us gravely that "we can't afford" the things Americans have become used to in terms of government spending.
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