"...the conservative revolution that Reagan helped usher in gained traction because...

[IndianaJones]

Reagan's central insight - that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic, with Democratic policymakers more obsessed with slicing the economic pie than with growing the pie - contained a good deal of truth."

Barack Obama

[CoffeeCat]

1. Another quote...

"Abra-ca-pocus! Pocus-ca-dabra!"

--Bugs Bunny

[aquart]

6. Uh huh. Did Obama say it or didn't he?

Can't wait to see the duck and dodge.

[sandnsea]

7. Did Bill & Hil kill "welfare as we know it"

or not? Why yes they did.

And did Obama implement a program to track the affects on welfare reform because he was concerned about the changes that had been made? Why yes he did.

Just because someone identifies problems, it doesn't mean he agrees with the solutions.

"The right has often seized on these failings as proof that the government can't and shouldn't do a thing about poverty - that it is a result of individual moral failings and cultural pathologies and so we should just sit back and let these cities fend for themselves. And so Ronald Reagan launched his assault on welfare queens, and George Bush spent the last six years slashing programs to combat poverty, and job training, and substance abuse, and child abuse.

Well, we know that's not the answer. When you're in these neighborhoods, you can see what a difference it makes to have a government that cares. You can see what a free lunch program does for a hungry child. You can see what a little extra money from an earned income tax credit does for a family that's struggling. You can see what prenatal care does for the health of a mother and a newborn. So don't tell me there's no role for government in lifting up our cities."
http://www.barackobama.com/2007/07/18/remarks_of_senator_barack_obam_19.php

[Naturyl]

8. Yep, they did.

And despite the quote in the OP, I'd sooner trust Obama with welfare than Hillary. The shameful Clinton track record on welfare is already known. Bill threw it under the bus big time, to cheers from Repukes, centrists, and DLCers nationwide. Obama might do the same, but I can't see him doing it as boldly as Bill did.

But there are essentially no pro-welfare candidates other than Kucinich and maybe Edwards (I say "maybe" because it's going to take more than talk to help the poor in this rabidly anti-welfare nation, and it remains to be seen whether Edwards can walk the walk when the going gets tough and 3/4 of the country is bellyaching about "socialism").

[SpiralHawk]

14. "...And I owe all my success to my astrologer." - Ronald Aquarius Reagan (R)

"As is well known, we republicons are into occultism. I used astrology because it works so beautifully. George AWOL Bush, on the other hand, like the other oil-sucking, money-grubbing members of his family, uses the darkside occult cabal of Skull & Boners to do their - um - EVIL THANG."

- Ronald Aquarius Reagan (R),
Just another Republicon Occultist

[rockymountaindem]

2. Weren't you smacked down badly enough in the other thread?

I guess not since you're back for more. Will this also be a post-and-run?

[Naturyl]

3. WTF? I was just starting to warm to Obama...

Well, that's right down the toilet again now, I guess. No Democrat should be repeating this regressive propaganda, EVER. Will the poor always be thrown under the bus for the sake of pandering to the center and the right? Disgraceful.

This is why Kucinich and Edwards have always been light-years ahead of the pack for me.

[BlueIris]

4. 'Kay, I'm pretty sure the neo-con takeover Reagan facilitated caught traction because

the misogynist, bigoted militarists in America felt humiliated on a deep psychological level by the end of the Vietnam war. Reagan helped the cowardly war junkies in the Pentagon and the corporations feel validated in their belief that America is best when it is War-And-Punish, Inc., and that is why they installed him.

[kevinbgoode]

10. My parents voted for Reagan because of the economic woes

at the end of the Carter Administration - and because of the many things which Carter had no control over which occurred during that time. I remember clarely, because I voted for John Anderson that year (he ran as an independent).

By the end of the Reagan Administration, my parents (both of whom had been life-long Republicans) had become Democrats. They watched in dismay as Reagan assaulted the labor unions (my family is decidedly blue-collar) declared ketchup to be a vegetable, ignored AIDS and helped fuel fear as thousands died. They have never voted Republican since then.

[Nailzberg]

5. Wow, you've gone about 125 pages since the last quote.

You're a good reader. Or maybe you're just indexing Reagan and looking for things to take out of context.

In his rhetoric, Reagan tended to exaggerate the degree to which the welfare state had grown over the previous twenty-five years. At its peak, the federal budget as a total share of the US economy remained far below comparable figures in Western Europe, even when you factored the enormous US defense budget. Still, the conservative revolution that Reagan helped usher in gained traction because Reagan's central insight - that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic, with Democratic policymakers more obsessed with slicing the economic pie than with growing the pie - contained a good deal of truth. Just as too many corporate managers, shielded from competition, had stopped delivering value, too many government bureaucracies has stopped asking whether their shareholders (the American taxpayer) and their consumers (the users of government services) were getting their money's worth.
pages 156-157

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

9. Well, since the "era of big government is over" this is no longer relevant. n/t

[Naturyl]

11. There is no such thing as "small government"

Government will always be large and omnipresent - the only choice is whether it will be run by public servants or by corporate business interests.

Libertarianism is fundamentally idiotic because it refuses to realize that people will always be controlled by others in positions of power. If it isn't public servants with at least some interest in the common good, then it will be a social Darwinist corporatocracy. How can anybody fail to realize that the corporate "company town" is oppressive, intrusive government at its biggest? If people think government is too involved in their personal lives now, wait until the new business plutocracy is telling them when they can brush their teeth and charging them for the privilege.

Anarchy and its thinly-veiled stepchild libertarianism do not work. They only cause one form of government to be replaced by a far more ruthless and amoral one - the law of the jungle.

[Hippo_Tron]

12. That's a pretty conventional observation these days

The real question is what do you do about it. Try to restore peoples' confidence in the welfare state as it was? Dismantle it, like the GOP is doing? Middle of the road solution like the DLC proposes?

Personally I really wish Dukakis had been elected. I'd like to see how a technocrat would've dealt with that.

[robcon]

13. Reagan/Obama were right.

They differ on the solutions.