Reaganism is Alive and Kicking!
I was fortunate to attend a dinner at the Heritage Foundation last night where former Reagan attorney general Edwin Meese was the guest speaker. During his speech, he challenged liberal Senator Chuck Schumer, who said that Reaganomics "is dead". To counter, Meese cited the Club's recent poll while proclaiming that Reaganism is "alive and kicking".
Stephen O'Connor of Human Events was also at the dinner and retells the story in this article. Excerpt:
Meese said Schumer’s wishful thinking is in direct contradiction to reality as evidenced by the booming economy and the 30-year-low average jobless rates that were the exact predictions of the supply-side theory known as Reaganomics.
[...]“But the midterm results had many moderate Republicans losing and quite a few conservative Democrats winning,” he said, “and recent polls show, a majority of Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, want smaller government, lower taxes and less spending—which was always the platform of the Reagan Revolution.”
Meese’s claims were based on new polling data from the Club for Growth on Democrats, Independents and Republicans from the across the country that show, among other things, a majority of voters (57.3%) want candidates who will cut spending and even more favor making permanent the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, including the elimination of the death tax.
Meese went on to quote the Club for Growth’s analysis: “Despite the clear rejection of the Republican Party on fiscal issues, there remains widespread majority appeal for the principles of lower taxes and smaller government. Even independent swing voters show strong majority support for extending the 2003 income, capital gains, and dividend tax rate cuts, as well as permanently eliminating the death tax. They also show solid majority support for reducing federal spending, even if that means reducing spending in their own districts!”
