Exposing the Lie of the Reagan Revolution

Joan Walsh of Salon exposes the big lie about Ronald Reagan: He was as mean as the rest of those "revolting" Republicans, he just seemed nicer:

... for all its love of big bold ideas, "The Argument" is premised on a big, bold idea that's simply wrong: that Republicans seized and held power in the Nixon-Reagan-Bush I generation by selling Americans on a positive platform of new programs for national renewal, while Democrats, by contrast, are now winning merely by not losing, bashing Bush for wrecking the country while never explaining to voters what they'd do instead.


Bai's book is flawed by his failure to grapple with the negativity, lo, the hatred behind the Republican revolution of the '70s and '80s, some of which is still politically operative today. Does he really think Reagan rode to power on the Laffer curve, not by bashing Cadillac-driving welfare queens, scruffy war protesters and big bad government? Both Nixon and Reagan (George Bush I was merely Reagan's long tail) were the political beneficiaries of a resentful, sometimes racist reaction to the perceived excesses of the 1960s and '70s, associated with the Democrats, far more than they were the avatars of a wildly popular new way of running the country.