And yet there is talk of Obama not winning a second term and republicans gaining ground in 2012. Never overestimate the American public!

Bush sucked away a surplus towards obscene tax-cuts for the rich which were then used to fuel the housing bubble and the Wall Street un-regulated greed.

The perpetuwars are also making brazillions of bucks for the Repugncan war-hores.

Great stuff from Benen today. If we could figure out how to get every American to tune in to the Washington Monthly home page every hour on the hour, then we could turn this country around in no time.

1.Things are still pretty sucky for an awful lot of people.

2. A considerable amount of voters get turned on by the frank "you deserve more, others deserve nothing" attitude of the Republican party. This is a nation minus an ever-growing percentage of its common decency.-

Before declaring victory, Steve, you might wait till the unemployment rate drops below 10%.

I realize there are plenty of well-intentioned people who sincerely believe Republicans are credible on economic matters. I just don't know why.

Because lots of people are idiots who put political ideology ahead of their country?

steve benen: The GOP also said Clinton/Gore economic policies would be a disaster.

FLASHBACK:

this is a mental recession...(gramm july-2008)

iraq would pay for the war....(wolfowitz march 2003)

we would be greeted as liberators..(cheney)

saddam had nukes....(cheney)..

obama is a muslim...(rush)..

etc...

etc...

gop predictions: any suckers left?

"America has been through a lot this decade, but the country can take some solace in the fact that when the economy was on the brink of wholesale collapse, Republicans were in the minority."

Amen to that. This site has some excellent info on why Dems are better for the economy than Reps:

eriposte.com

Steve Benen wrote: "I realize there are plenty of well-intentioned people who sincerely believe Republicans are credible on economic matters."

The Republican Party has a solid, proven track record of implementing economic policies that enrich and empower the rich and powerful, that concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a tiny, increasingly hereditary, ultra-rich corporate aristocracy, at the expense of and to the detriment of everyone else. The Republicans have proved themselves again and again to be highly successful at accomplishing that agenda, whenever and wherever they have been in power.

So, for people who desire that economic outcome, the Republicans indeed have a great deal of well-earned credibility.

Whether people who desire that outcome should be regarded as "well-intentioned" is another story.

And of course, since the overwhelming majority of Americans do NOT desire that outcome, the Republicans have no choice but to try to hide their true agenda behind a load of BS (which Steve has concisely summarized) which has no credibility at all, because everybody except the most abjectly stupid, ignorant and gullible Ditto-Heads knows they are flat-out lying.

The only time any Republican has ever been right about anything was when they were very very very far right.

And, of course, the CORPORATE MEDIA, help them hide who they really are because the CORPORATE MEDIA is REPIGLICANS ..........

Secular Animist skrev :

The Republican Party has a solid, proven track record of implementing economic policies that enrich and empower the rich and powerful, that concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a tiny, increasingly hereditary, ultra-rich corporate aristocracy, at the expense of and to the detriment of everyone else.

If this is the rubric, then Dianne Feinstein is and has long been a Republican.

It's not just the Republican Party; there's a wing of the Dems that votes for these same policies.

When has the Right Wing acknowledged FDR's ending the Great Depression?

What has to be added to the points Steve has listed is that following the GOP economic "solution" would have resulted in a depression worse than the Great One.

With the small initial size of the stimulus package, plus all the subsequent compromises, put the final stimulus at about 50% of what it should have been. If official unemployment is now at 10%, the GOP's tax cuts and spending freezes would have at least doubled it to 20+%.

This IS the party of Herbert Hoover. That needs to be repeated constantly.

Secular I knew it was your post a few words in. And you're right. There is and always has been an aristocracy in America, represented at one time or another by different political front groups, in our age the republicans, who feel it is their inherent right to rule.

This from somebody who has a job.

"I realize there are plenty of well-intentioned people who sincerely believe Republicans are credible on economic matters. I just don't know why."

stormskies nails it in one.
As the cyberneticists say, "Garbage in, garbage out." With the mass media being not just figuratively but literally the propaganda arm of the same corporatocracy that owns and operates the Publican party, it's a minor miracle that any Americans at all actually know and understand the reality in which we're operating.
Consider that well over 60% of the public still believes that Saddam Hussein and/or Iraq was behind 9/11; that over 40% believe that reports of AGW are "exaggerated;" and that the percentage of Americans who hold Republicans responsible for the recession dropped from 53 to 38 between May and November.
Policies that really favor the vast majority of Americans without significant wealth are going to be very difficult to attain until and unless, at a minimum, control of mass media is wrested from the ownership class. (And no, the internet is nowhere near where it needs to be to take over the media's news functions.) It will probably also take real campaign finance reform as well.

OT, but I won't rest until I know :)

Joel Hanes, @17:15,
"skrev"? I know what it means ("wrote"; from the same Latin root as the English "scribe") but what language is it in? Danish?

An irony that escapes today's Party of No - putting fiscally sound policies in place and practice, Bill Clinton was the best Republican president of this entire era, dating back to the Great Prevaricator! -Kevo

Benen - the worst of the recession occurred LAST FALL, accelerating after Lehman's collapse in September. As I seem to recall, a Republican was president, and that Republican president made the most consequential decisions as to how to respond to the collapsing economy. Obama has largely continued the same policies Paulson set in place.

What on earth are you talking about?

exlibra @ 7:11

I'm embarassed to admit that I don't know for sure.

I picked that up on Usenet, back in the late stone age of the Net, and have used it for fun ever since.

Let's consult Google ... yes. I see numerous Usenet posts with this usage. Looks like it might be Danish -- here it is used in a Danish site.

As I seem to recall, a Republican was president, and that Republican president made the most consequential decisions as to how to respond to the collapsing economy. Obama has largely continued the same policies Paulson set in place.

The only thing you got right in this paragraph is that a Republican was president. Otherwise, you are wrong on all counts. Nice try at revisionism, though.

I'm looking forward to the ever-so-creative ways in which the GOP will blame and demonize Obama for doing anything that might have helped turn things around. (ie., aaa's comments.) Anything good that happens? GOP did it. Anything bad? Dems fault. Rinse, wash, repeat.

I suppose they might have to fall back on their old stupid culture war crap-- abortion, gays, guns, immigrants, etc.

Benen - the worst of the recession occurred LAST FALL, accelerating after Lehman's collapse in September. As I seem to recall, a Republican was president, and that Republican president made the most consequential decisions as to how to respond to the collapsing economy. Obama has largely continued the same policies Paulson set in place.

Does that mean that you're blaming Bush for the whole thing falling apart in the first place? Because by your own logic you'd have to considering that the GOP was in charge long before and during the collapse.

Oh boy! Ka-ching!! $$$$$$$!!! Don't spend it all in one place!!!!! Because now it's time for the corporate overlords who bought your president to suck it back out of your carotid with payments on hopeless underwater mortgages, monopoly health insurance rents, and consumer-credit predation!!! And they're going to take your future wages home as bonuses right now.

Your stimulus will buy you a whoppin' two quarters of not knowing you're getting fucked. Until you fix what's really wrong, your pecuniary prostate is going to get pummeled into mush. Your stimulus will not get at corruption. You people must have studied econ in Equatorial Guinea or someplace.

Conservatives have been wrong about everything, not just the recent economy. Civil rights, women's suffrage, minimum wage, health care, the depression, terrorism, the environment...

You name it, they don't understand it.

Paul - You are the one engaging in revisionism - nice...love watching projection in action.

If things are so different now, tell me:

How exactly has Obama's/Geithner's/Summers' approach to the financial crisis differed from Bush's/Paulson's? Please enlighten me as to what Obama has done differently. Have the bailouts been structured differently? Has the money been disbursed differently? Has there been more accountability? Have there been no more lavish bonuses bestowed upon executives receiving TARP funds? Please point me to specific differences between Obama's and Bush's approach vis-a-vis TARP.

Oh...yeah....that's right..

Thanks a lot for the very nice post. It is really very nice.I like to know about political issues. I am passionate about this. It is really cool.

Shorter aaa:

If the economy recovers, it's Bush's recovery.
If the economy falters, it's Obama's failure.

Got it.

Uh...we have a bit of a problem here. You say the Bush Administration "Not only was it cutting taxes in the face of a war, which had never
happened before"

JFK cut taxes significantly in 1963, at the same time he had TRIPLED troops in Vietnam the past two years.

And the most ironic part of your argument is that President Obama has instituted the LARGEST TAX CUT in American history, at the same time as escalating the war in Afghanistan.

YOU ARE BUSTED my friend.