Liberal MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow and liberal Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne on Monday delighted in mocking the affinity conservatives have for Ronald Reagan, dismissing his record as “fake.” Promoting Dionne’s new book, Maddow introduced, “Ronald Reagan's real record has been submarined and all of his faults and compromises have been ascribed to other people and not to him.”
The smug Maddow continued, “So, conservatives can have one hero in modern history about whom they don't feel terrible disappointment and betrayal. They basically reinvented Reagan as perfect....They need something to believe in, even if it's fake.”
Dionne snidely made this comparison when discussing Reagan and how conservatives look at him: “In a way, George H.W. Bush died for Ronald Reagan's sins, because when Reagan raised taxes seven or eight times that didn't matter, but when Bush raised taxes, that became a great sin.”
Of course, what Dionne didn’t explain is that, while Reagan did raise taxes, the tax burden went down. Per Politifact:
It’s accurate to say Reagan increased levies during five years of his administration, but there’s a caveat: The overall tax burden on businesses and individuals went down during his presidency.
...
When Reagan took office in 1981, federal taxes were 19.6 percent of GDP, the highest level since World War II. That figure dropped to 17.3 percent during his first term and rose to 18.2 percent at the end of his second term.
Reagan also dropped the top marginal tax rate from 50 percent to 28 percent.
The Rachel Maddow Show
1/18/16RACHEL MADDOW: The great and big-hearted E.J. Dionne at The Washington Post has an excellent book out called Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond. And it is a great book, and the central thesis of the book is, that I’m quoting E.J. here, "The history of contemporary American conservatism is a story of disappointment and betrayal." In the opening chapters of the book are about Ronald Reagan and among other things, this fascinating and weird development in our time in which Ronald Reagan is basically deliberately misremembered on the right, how Ronald Reagan’s real record has been submarined and all of his faults and compromises have been ascribed to other people and not to him.
So, conservatives can have one hero in modern history about whom they don’t feel terrible disappointment and betrayal. They basically reinvented Reagan as perfect. Even on Iran of all things, because they need something to believe in, even if it’s fake. But because he’s E.J. Dionne, he says it much more nicely than that and with way more footnotes. Joining us now is the great and big-hearted "Washington Post" columnist E.J. Dionne. E.J., it’s great to see you. Congratulations on this.
E.J. DIONNE, THE WASHINGTON POST: Thank you so much.
MADDOW: I -- the whole book is not about Reagan, but this element of Reagan being remembered as perfect because modern conservatives need a hero is a very evocative thesis to me.
DIONNE: Well, I think it’s absolutely true. And right at the beginning of the book I quote a conservative, Charles Krauthammer, who says you can choose your Reagan.
MADDOW: Yes.
DIONNE: Because I think one of the ways in which conservatives can hold Ronald Reagan up is — there’s different kinds of conservatives, remember different Reagans. A lot of the Tea Party conservatives remember the movement Reagan. At the beginning, I quote Chris McDaniel, that right-wing candidate down in Mississippi who remembers this really hard-line Reagan. And then I quote Governor Haley Barbour who remembers Ronald Reagan as a very flexible guy. Purity is the enemy of victory says Hailey Barbour. But if you actually go back at that time, there were a lot of conservatives who were very critical of Reagan, among other things for being too dovish. He committed those troops to Lebanon. I was there at the time. It was a terrible mistake. But then he pulled them out. And he —
MADDOW: He said he wouldn’t pull them out and then he pulled them out. Yes.
DIONNE: Which was the right thing to do. Only it was too late. There were conservatives who criticized him for not sending troops down to Central America. But I think one of the things that saved Reagan is the presidency of George H.W. Bush. In a way, George H.W. Bush died for Ronald Reagan’s sins, because when Reagan raised taxes seven or eight times that didn’t matter, but when Bush raised taxes, that became a great sin.
MADDOW: He became sort of a heat shield in that sense? Anything that Reagan had done that conservatives didn’t like, they decided it was a Poppy Bush problem.
DIONNE: Exactly. And I think the border problem is — I appreciate your doing the opening sentence because I think this sense of betrayal on the part of conservatives, even if they hold Reagan off, reflects the fact that ever since Goldwater’s time, and I take it all the way back to Goldwater, conservative politicians have had to make a series of promises to the conservative base that they couldn’t possibly keep. They promised a much smaller government but the country doesn’t really want it. Even Tea Partiers who are on Social Security and Medicare don’t want a smaller government. They promised to roll back cultural change, but guess what? Most of the country actually supports the cultural changes since the 1960s. Most of the country supports equality between men and women. Now, most of the country supports gay marriage.
So, you have all these conservatives out there who feel we elect our guys and then they don’t get done the things that they said they get done, and I think that gives us this campaign, where Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are the two leading candidates of the primaries.MADDOW: And the — I mean, it’s not incidental that Goldwater who sets this tone is the Goldwater who lost and never had to govern by the principles that he was articulating. And the Goldwater who ended up repenting later in life when some of his hardest-line positions is one who would have not been welcome in the party today.
DIONNE: Right. And Ronald Reagan did a lot of things that would not be welcome in the party today.
