Rebutting Right Wing Zombie Lies
There are numerous pernicious lies in American politics regarding the Republican Party and the conservative movement. Unfortunately, millions of voters and the “liberal” mainstream media have bought into these myths. It is our duty as Democrats to rebut right wing zombie lies and set the record straight. I plan here to go through some of the biggest lies and rebut them.
- The Republican Party is fiscally conservative.
The reality is that every Democratic president since Jimmy Carter has reduced the deficit he inherited from his Republican predecessor and every GOP president has increased the size of the deficit (or blown the surplus) he inherited from his Democratic predecessor. The last Republican president to reduce the deficit and balance the budget was Dwight Eisenhower.
Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt and ran up then record peacetime deficits. (Trump broke Reagan’s dubious record.) Between the two of them, Reagan and Bush 41 quadrupled the national debt.
Bush 43 squandered Bill Clinton’s projected ten year national surplus of $5 trillion and doubled the national debt. In his last year, Clinton racked up a $200 billion surplus and Bush turned that into a then record annual deficit of $1.3 trillion by the time he left office. (Trump broke Bush’s record.)
Trump increased the annual deficit he inherited from President Obama from $585 billion to $3.1 trillion. Trump added $7.8 trillion to the national debt in just four years. Biden has reduced the deficit by $360 billion in 2021 and is on track to reduce it by over $1 trillion this year.
2. Republicans are better for the economy.
This is a common lie that is widely believed by the voters. Polling has indicated for years that the voters believe that Republicans are better for the economy. This represents a major failure of Democratic messaging.
During Bill Clinton’s Presidency, 22 million new jobs were created, unemployment declined from 7% to 4%, median family income rose, and poverty declined to its lowest rate in 20 years. This was the best job creation record since the Franklin Roosevelt Administration.
George W. Bush squandered the inheritance he received from President Clinton. By the time Bush left office, the economy had collapsed and was hemorrhaging 800,000 jobs per month. According to Ron Brownstein: “ While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked.”
Bush was the only two term president in American history to preside over a decline in middle class incomes during his two terms as president. Moreover, Bush had the worst job creation record since Herbert Hoover. Trump subsequently broke Bush’s dubious jobs record.
Barack Obama was the second consecutive Democratic president who had to clean up a Republican mess. Beginning with the end of the Bush recession in 2009, the unemployment rate was reduced from 10% to 4.7%. In 2016 alone, the economy added 2.15 million jobs. Moreover, since the end of the Bush recession, the economy added 15.6 million jobs. That was the best record of job creation since Bill Clinton’s second term.
Forbes recognized this historical pattern of Democratic presidents being better for the economy shortly before Obama left office. According to Forbes on November 7, 2016: “ It is simply a fact that since World War II, Democratic presidents have seen 24.4 million more jobs created on their watch — an average of 78.6% more jobs created per year of Democratic administrations — than have Republican presidents. Ditto real GDP growth, 44% higher under Democratic presidents. On the flip side, unemployment has been 18% higher under GOP presidents.”
After Obama left office, once again, a Republican president squandered all of his predecessor’s progress. Trump’s failure to mitigate the pandemic wrecked the good economy he inherited from President Obama. When Trump was in office, the unemployment rate increased from 4.7% to 6.7%, 12 million Americans lost insurance and 8 million Americans fell into poverty.
In 2020, the U.S. economy lost a net 10 million jobs. Weekly unemployment claims between March 2020 and January 2021 exceeded the worst week of the 2008–09 recession. Trump left office after nearly 50 straight weeks of the worst job losses in American history. Trump was the first president since Hoover to leave office with fewer jobs in the country than when he was inaugurated.
President Biden has already made amazing progress in cleaning up Trump’s mess. Since the Democrats began to run Washington last year, a record 7.9 million jobs have been created. In contrast, in 2020, 9.4 million jobs were lost. Unemployment has dropped from 6.4% to 3.6%. In 2021, the U.S. experienced the strongest GDP growth since 1984.
3. Republicans are competent on national security.
The myth of GOP superiority on national security should’ve died in the sands of Iraq. In the run up to the Iraq War, Bush Administration officials told us we would be greeted as liberators, Iraqi oil would finance that country’s reconstruction and that U.S armed forces would find a vast arsenal of fearsome weapons of mass destruction.
Unfortunately, the Iraq War turned out to be one of the biggest foreign policy blunders in U.S. history. This war ground on for over eight years and according to Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, will eventually cost U.S. taxpayers $3 trillion. Sadly, 4,424 American heroes died in this conflict and approximately 200,000 Iraqi civilians perished. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found.
After the Bush disaster, President Obama withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq and ended the Iranian nuclear weapon threat. Unfortunately, Trump wrecked all of that progress during his failed presidency.
Trump’s decision to repudiate Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran was a disaster. During the Trump Administration, Iran breached the deal’s nuclear safeguards, and Iran increased its stockpile of enriched uranium by eight times! When Trump took office, Iran had 102kg of enriched uranium. That supply was increased to nearly 2.5 tons during the Trump years.
Like Iran, Trump’s policies turned North Korea into a bigger threat in 2020 than when Obama left office. When Trump was president, North Korea developed an ICBM that could potentially reach all of the U.S. Kim Jong Un’s nuclear arsenal most likely expanded by about 15 warheads since his meetings with the former TV reality star. North Korea currently has 20 to 60 nuclear warheads.
The former TV reality star also left behind a house of cards in Afghanistan. Former Trump National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster described Trump’s 2020 Doha agreement in scathing terms: “Our secretary of state (Mike Pompeo) signed a surrender agreement with the Taliban. This collapse goes back to the capitulation agreement of 2020. The Taliban didn’t defeat us. We defeated ourselves.”
Conclusion.
We Democrats need to raise our game on messaging. It is our duty to rebut right wing zombie lies on a regular basis. That’s what I do on my social media accounts. The reality is that Democrats are much better for America than the Republicans.
Franklin Roosevelt said it best: “Once you build a house you always have it. On the other hand, a social or economic gain is a different matter. A social or an economic gain made by one Administration, for instance, may, and often does, evaporate into thin air under the next Administration. “
Let’s get that message out! If we can get that out, we will win in 2022! Now let’s leave it all out on the field!