This About Sums It Up

by Lurker Sun Aug 16, 2015 5:53 pm

Sunday quiz. Which Republican said the following?

"We have seen tax-and-tax, spend-and-spend reach a fantastic total. Behind it are the ghosts of Karl Marx and his socialism; and of Lord Keynes, with his perpetual government spending, deficits, and inflation. And we added a new ideology of our own. That is government give-away programs. If you want to see pure socialism mixed with giveaway programs, take a look at socialized medicine."

If you guessed one of the current 17 Republican contenders, you could be forgiven because they're all giving us variations on this. But the correct answer is Herbert Hoover, president of the United States when Wall Street crashed in 1929 and America slid into the Great Depression. Hoover had no idea how to respond and was booted out of office in 1932, when one of four Americans was unemployed.

Republicans haven't had a new idea, or even a new set of talking points, since Hoover. And they're still wrong.

Robert Reich