Very few real conservatives. It's a tough position to maintain when the currency needed for re-election is either pork or paying back big money campaign donors...The R's seem to have taken far less time to be corrupted by big biz. They've done in 10 years what the D's took a generation to accomplish.
I do see plenty of bible thumpers eager to run other people's lives to standards they can't live up to though.
Bush is just a evangelical psuedo Christian. Always pious in public, but ready to "f--k" anybody or anything in his way in private. He's his momma's boy. Sorta a bible school on Sunday, Hooters on Monday kinda guy. Gut feel trumps brains. All black and white world. Cronies and no hopers in charge. I'd take a real conservative in a heartbeat over Bush even if I prefer a liberal viewpoint.
Clinton was far more conservative when it came to money. (and no Ender, Newt didn't cut spending enough to make any real difference except on Military pork which makes him an America hater to boot). Balancing the budget is the first conservative tenet. after that, you can get down to brass tacks about what we should be doing with tax dollars. Massive deficits? Just theft from the next generation.
I think our judiciary is pretty conservative. The "activism" being denounced is usually the tyranny of the majority being struck down. On social issues the R's have no interest in limited government. Our system works fine unless you have a religious agenda to cram down the throats of the rest of us.
Congress always had the Southern Dems adding to the conservative side of the balance. Most of them were more conservative than the R's on social issues. Ditto on support for the military/foreign policy. Only on the populist issues could they be considered spenders though hardly liberal. Now that they've all rebranded, the divide is clearer. Once the last few NorthEastern R's are gone (the sort the Real Republicans hate unless they are Joe Lieberman) we'll look a lot more like the UK. Hopefully we'll find a way to stop the gerrymandering of districts such that some moderates get elected to put a check on the more extreme members.
Katrina--disasters like that cant be handled locally or by state
Enron--corporations did not regulate the likes of Enron
High gas prices--because govt did not have as a policy energy independence
Media --content now controlled by corporations
Many third world countries are run by "conservatives"--and what happens is there is the few elite rich and the majority are poor and living like animals.
I am a pragmatist. I believe in free markets. But I also believe that corporations and wealthy become too powerful and the government is there to balance their power for the average guy. I also believe the interest of corporations and industry and wealth many times would clash with the average Joe.
Sort of a corporation spewing asbestos, toxins, pollutants in the air and the people around them are getting sick and cannot fight the powerful corporation. So the govt steps in and puts on environmental laws.
Or Walmart and large poultry farms pay workers poverty level wages but work them to death without regards to them getting hurt. I believe Govt should be there to impose a minimum living wage and occupational safety standards.
Government is for the people. If you dont belong to the wealthy, or an owner of corporation and support conservatism, you are going against your economic interest.
Government is their for the people. But it should not be intrusive or excessive, fascistic, just pragmatic or practical. Just enough laws to make sure people are not screwed and opportunities are fair for everyone, and that poverty is non existent.
part of the equation. Grover Norquist, the person most identified with the combination of tax cuts and the simultaneous shrinking of government, is also a central player in the K Street Project. (link , link ) I think it is fair to suggest that the should-be leader of fiscal conservatives is more interested in acquiring and maintaining power in DC than in living up to his ideals.
The reason the two are in conflict is that if you are going to allow special interests to benefit from an arrangement with legislators then government almost has to be big. For example, Medicare Part D is a big government program designed to help the pharmaceutical industry. I think that is a big part of the reason why Republicans have not lived up to fiscal conservative ideals.
Then there is the other observation, which is that Bush and the rubber stamp congress realize (because all their pollsters tell them so) that the people want to keep big entitlement programs like medicare and social security. I would even go so far as to say that the feel good vibes from Medicare Part D were planned to be a central pillar of the "compassionate conservative" claims during the 2006 midterms.
but this is just an effort by the conservative movement to distance itself from itself. It's basically posturing, because if movement conservatives can argue that the present Republican Admin and Congress and Court are not conservative, they can continue to argue that conservatism has never been really tried. Therefore, the movement can claim that its policies didn't fail.
The problem with this is is that conservatism's policies did fail. Movement conservatives do not wish to acknowledge that,so they come up with this rationale that conservatism has never really been tried.
Movement conservatism has a number of issues which make it likely to fail. A significant one being it's all or nothing attitude about conservatism and politics. You are either a movement conservative and sign on for all points, or you are not, if you disagree with any one point. That's one of the main reasons conservatism has failed so totally: there is no nuance, no way to reply to situations outside its narrow confines. If you are a movement conservative, you cannot adjust to changing conditions. It does not allow for improvisation. It is too rigidly ideological.
To use lordzorgon's examples: he considers Reagan a true conservative. That's interesting since Reagan signed into law tax cuts, which makes lordzorgon's point, but repealed those tax cuts when he saw what it was doing to the budget deficit and the economy, which refutes lordzorgon's point.
He also faults Bush for not being a conservative, but then how to explain tax cuts for the wealthy? How to explain the push to do away with Social Security? Those are just two.
How about Fiscal conservatives: If by fiscal conservatives, we mean those who would balance the budget and promote greater economic opportunity, would lordzorgon then consider all Democratic Presidents since the Great Depression fiscal conservatives? If you look historically at the record of economic growth and budgetary restraint, you will find that economic growth during Democratic Presidencies has been greater and more sustainable than under Republican ones, even including the Carter Administration. If you look at Budget deficits, again, you will see the same sort of correlation. Democratic Presidents have been better at mitigating budget deficits than Republican ones. Does that make them fiscal conservatives, or just more pragmatic in their approach to these issues?
I could continue, but I'm getting long-winded here. I haven't even discussed the Supreme Court, which would take a diary all its own. One final point: We do have conservatives in charge in Washington, in all bracnhes of Government; but, and it's a big but, elected officials want to get re-elected and they'll do most anything to have that happen. They have constituencies who are not as conservative as they are, and they know it. Most of these conservative congress critters were elected by hiding their true beliefs. Most know they don't stand a chance if the voting public found out just what they believe.
I'm not saying that the public isn't conservative; it is. But it is in no way, shape or form as conservative as movement conservatives. Just look at what people believe about stem cell research and abortion, to name two on the social side. And ask anyone about schools, they'll tell you that public schools are in terrible shape, but ask about their children's public school, and they'll tell you that it's pretty good. And yeah, they don't want the Federal Gov't to waste their money, but they'll complain like crazy about the potholes on their local highway, demanding that they be fixed. Etc, etc.
What it comes down to is that movement conservatism is a dogmatic ideal which is not based in Reality. Remind you of anyone ;-).
a question - are you referring to HankP's front page over at Tacitus?
a quible - It wasn't originally named the Hoover Dam. It was originally named the Boulder Dam. They changed the name to Hoover to honor him.
While I think many congressional republicans are conservatives, I also think they've let the neocons lead them around on a leash because they were so glad to be rid of 8 years of President Clinton. And really, all they cared about was continuing to win elections. It worked, so they stayed tight lipped. Till this election.
My regret was that the Congressional conservatives weren't more forceful in being fiscal conservatives. That's probably the only area I identify myself as conservative in. But, my guess is that after assuming all the power and holding the reigns, they thought feeding their corporate & wealthy benefactors was more important than representing the folks that voted for them. What was it the David Stockman said during Reagans first term? Oh yea, it was "Man, they were really feeding from the trough." Yup, that describes the current crop exactly.
Well, now the chickens have come home to roost. As much as the conservatives would like to and still will try to blame Clinton for all the worlds & the US's troubles, it's the constituents who aren't believing them this time. No, they have to either stand on their merits or fall by their actions. Can't blame Democrats this time.
McCain is pretty solidly conservative, no? And yet he is widely reviled on the right for not being conservative enough.
Social conservatism arose relatively recently, I would say, and is inherently at odds with "small-government" conservatism. It's an uneasy marriage of convenience that has somehow worked so far.
I think your definition of foreign policy conservatism is a good way to make sense of the many contradictions in what Republicans (and Democrats) have believed wrt foreign policy, usually depending who was in power. I think by that definition quite a few prominent Dem presidents qualify, such as FDR, Truman, and JFK.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
I'd rank him as being a foreign policy and fiscal conservative, but not a social or economic conservative. I think the guy is OK, just not the superstar the media likes to paint him as.
Yes, aggressive social conservatism is incompatible with small-government (Goldwater) conservatism. Less hard-core variants of social conservatism (say, "the government should not spend tax dollars on abortions") are not necessarily incompatible.
Support the Club for Growth, not the Republican Party.
if you are going to allow special interests to benefit from an arrangement with legislators then government almost has to be big.
Definitely true. I have a hard time with your comments about Medicare Part D (I don't want the government strongarming pharma companies into lowering prices), but I do think the program was just a horrible idea across the board.
the people want to keep big entitlement programs like medicare and social security.
Probably true, although relying on polls to figure out what the public wants is dangerous because the public "wants", according to polls, a lot of completely contradictory things (more spending? yes! lower taxes? yes! balanced budgets? also yes!). I am definitely in the minority thinking that these programs are outrageous wastes of tax dollars. But that, if anything, supports my point: there is *not* a conservative majority in America, whether inside government or outside it, on economic issues.
government. There definitely is one inside of government. Again, you're so tied to your ideological principles that you don't see that they failed because they could never be.
You should take a look at Paul's post, also on the front page. I think it does a good job of repudiating your premise.
Yes, of course conservatism is an ideology. So is liberalism. I don't see anything wrong with ideology. Better to be an ideologue one way or the other than to lack convictions and drift one way or the other on each individual issue of the day.
For example -- I don't see how there can be any middle ground on abortion. Either a fetus is a person, in which case abortion is murder and should be illegal just like any other murder; or a fetus is not a person, in which case abortion is a medical procedure that should be legal just like any other medical procedure. Any attempt to split the difference between these positions seems completely ridiculous to me.
Yes, it's entirely plausible to me that the average Democrat is currently more of a fiscal conservative than the average Republican. The average Democrat is definitely *not*, however, more of an economic conservative than the average Republican.
Reagan signed into law tax cuts [...] but repealed those tax cuts when he saw what it was doing to the budget deficit and the economy
This seems to me to be an inaccurate summary of what Reagan did on taxes. There were four major tax bills under Reagan: 1981, 1982, 1983, and 1986. The first was an extremely large income tax cut. The second was a much smaller income tax increase, a partial rollback of the first. The third was part of the Greenspan Commission's proposal on how to make Social Security solvent, which was a combination of payroll tax increases and benefit cuts. The last was a roughly revenue-neutral tax reform that nevertheless was a gem from any economic conservative's point of view (rate cuts paired with simplification and elimination of various deductions), since it left us with something very close to a flat tax (only 2 tax brackets, 15% and 28%) and a nice and low top tax rate of 28%. He also fixed inflation bracket creep (though not income bracket creep) in his 1981 tax cut.
Okay, so let's talk about those two tax increases. The 1982 tax cut was a case where Reagan got politically snookered. You can read his speech about it here: http://www.reagan.ut...
Reagan struck a bargain with Congress to reduce the deficit, with 75% from spending cuts and 25% from tax increases. And as he says, "I had to swallow hard to agree to any revenue increase. But there are two sides to a compromise. Those who supported the increased revenues swallowed hard to accept $280 billion in outlay cuts." Even to a hard-core conservative like myself, this sounds perfectly reasonable. Democrats controlled the House, after all, and that would be a rather substantial spending cut. Problem is, the tax increase happened, but the spending cuts mostly vanished into thin air. In the end, it was a political blunder, plain and simple. But it didn't come anywhere near to canceling out the 1981 tax cuts.
The 1983 Social Security tax increase was a bipartisan attempt to make SS sound for the future. Real simple: tax increases and benefit cuts. Reagan's writings make it clear that in the past he had been suspicious of this strategy, and that he thought the system needed wholesale reform. A few quotes on SS from the book "Reagan in His Own Hand", which I strongly recommend to anyone who wants to know more about what Reagan "really" thought about any given issue:
"Increased taxes are no answer -- they only add to inflation & further impoverish our people. It is time to totally reform the system if we are to prevent a total collapse." (Oct. 25, 1979)
"Truth is if we could invest our & our employers share of the Soc. Security tax in savings or insurance we could double the return promised by Soc. Security." (Jan. 9, 1978)
We see here that Reagan supported SS reform exactly along the lines proposed 20 years later by Bush (private accounts). So why didn't he push that sort of plan in 1983? Simple: it wasn't even remotely *close* to politically feasible to talk about that sort of wholesale SS reform at the time. To quote from his speech when he signed the 1983 SS bill: "None of us here today would pretend that this bill is perfect. Each of us had to compromise one way or another." It's hard to believe that he could have gotten a better deal than he actually did. Letting SS go bankrupt certainly wasn't an option, after all.
Overall, Reagan's record on taxes is very good. The tax system he left us with in 1989 was *vastly* superior to the one he inherited in 1981. And according to my statistics, federal taxes peaked at 19.14% of GDP in 1981, but fell to 17% in 1983-84 and stayed in the 17-18% range for some time afterwards. They finally crept back up in the 90s (Clinton and Bush tax hikes plus a whole pile of bracket creep) and peaked at 20.51% of GDP in 2000.
I certainly can't see how you can justify a claim that Reagan backed off on or "repealed" his tax cuts because they were causing economic problems of any sort. As the speech I linked to makes abundantly clear, Reagan clearly did not like the 1982 tax increase and preferred a lot more in spending cuts instead, but he simply could not get Congress to go along with those cuts. (Remember, Reagan, unlike Bush, actually had to deal with Democrats in Congress!)
how to explain tax cuts for the wealthy? How to explain the push to do away with Social Security?
Yes, Bush has done a *few* things that are the actions of an economic conservative. But not very many. The SS reform (and no, he *didn't* try to "do away with SS" -- best case, he proposed that you could optionally invest maybe a third of your current payroll taxes, and maybe some benefit cuts targeted entirely at upper income earners) never panned out. Even if it had, the Medicare drug plan's costs would have blown any long-term savings from SS reform out of the water. The tax cuts don't nearly make up for the Bush Sr. and Clinton tax hikes, nor for the invisible annual tax increase of bracket creep over the last 20 years, and included some very un-conservative cuts also (the 10% tax bracket and the refund checks?).
Comments :
Just Republicans
Very few real conservatives. It's a tough position to maintain when the currency needed for re-election is either pork or paying back big money campaign donors...The R's seem to have taken far less time to be corrupted by big biz. They've done in 10 years what the D's took a generation to accomplish.
I do see plenty of bible thumpers eager to run other people's lives to standards they can't live up to though.
Bush is just a evangelical psuedo Christian. Always pious in public, but ready to "f--k" anybody or anything in his way in private. He's his momma's boy. Sorta a bible school on Sunday, Hooters on Monday kinda guy. Gut feel trumps brains. All black and white world. Cronies and no hopers in charge. I'd take a real conservative in a heartbeat over Bush even if I prefer a liberal viewpoint.
Clinton was far more conservative when it came to money. (and no Ender, Newt didn't cut spending enough to make any real difference except on Military pork which makes him an America hater to boot). Balancing the budget is the first conservative tenet. after that, you can get down to brass tacks about what we should be doing with tax dollars. Massive deficits? Just theft from the next generation.
I think our judiciary is pretty conservative. The "activism" being denounced is usually the tyranny of the majority being struck down. On social issues the R's have no interest in limited government. Our system works fine unless you have a religious agenda to cram down the throats of the rest of us.
Congress always had the Southern Dems adding to the conservative side of the balance. Most of them were more conservative than the R's on social issues. Ditto on support for the military/foreign policy. Only on the populist issues could they be considered spenders though hardly liberal. Now that they've all rebranded, the divide is clearer. Once the last few NorthEastern R's are gone (the sort the Real Republicans hate unless they are Joe Lieberman) we'll look a lot more like the UK. Hopefully we'll find a way to stop the gerrymandering of districts such that some moderates get elected to put a check on the more extreme members.
A tthoughtful post
worth digesting.
It is the economy, stupid.
Economic Conservatism still fails
Blackouts in NY, MO,etc --failure of deregulation
Katrina--disasters like that cant be handled locally or by
state
Enron--corporations did not regulate the likes of Enron
High gas prices--because govt did not have as a policy
energy independence
Media --content now controlled by corporations
Many third world countries are run by "conservatives"--and what happens is there is the few elite rich and the majority are poor and living like animals.
I am a pragmatist. I believe in free markets. But I also believe that corporations and wealthy become too powerful and the government is there to balance their power for the average guy. I also believe the interest of corporations and industry and wealth many times would clash with the average Joe.
Sort of a corporation spewing asbestos, toxins, pollutants in the air and the people around them are getting sick and cannot fight the powerful corporation. So the govt steps in and puts on environmental laws.
Or Walmart and large poultry farms pay workers poverty level wages but work them to death without regards to them getting hurt. I believe Govt should be there to impose a minimum living wage and occupational safety standards.
Government is for the people. If you dont belong to the wealthy, or an owner of corporation and support conservatism, you are going against your economic interest.
Government is their for the people. But it should not be intrusive or excessive, fascistic, just pragmatic or practical. Just enough laws to make sure people are not screwed and opportunities are fair for everyone, and that poverty is non existent.
You're missing an important
part of the equation. Grover Norquist, the person most identified with the combination of tax cuts and the simultaneous shrinking of government, is also a central player in the K Street Project. (link
, link 
) I think it is fair to suggest that the should-be leader of fiscal conservatives is more interested in acquiring and maintaining power in DC than in living up to his ideals.
The reason the two are in conflict is that if you are going to allow special interests to benefit from an arrangement with legislators then government almost has to be big. For example, Medicare Part D is a big government program designed to help the pharmaceutical industry. I think that is a big part of the reason why Republicans have not lived up to fiscal conservative ideals.
Then there is the other observation, which is that Bush and the rubber stamp congress realize (because all their pollsters tell them so) that the people want to keep big entitlement programs like medicare and social security. I would even go so far as to say that the feel good vibes from Medicare Part D were planned to be a central pillar of the "compassionate conservative" claims during the 2006 midterms.
Not to put to fine a point on this...
but this is just an effort by the conservative movement to distance itself from itself. It's basically posturing, because if movement conservatives can argue that the present Republican Admin and Congress and Court are not conservative, they can continue to argue that conservatism has never been really tried. Therefore, the movement can claim that its policies didn't fail.
The problem with this is is that conservatism's policies did fail. Movement conservatives do not wish to acknowledge that,so they come up with this rationale that conservatism has never really been tried.
Movement conservatism has a number of issues which make it likely to fail. A significant one being it's all or nothing attitude about conservatism and politics. You are either a movement conservative and sign on for all points, or you are not, if you disagree with any one point. That's one of the main reasons conservatism has failed so totally: there is no nuance, no way to reply to situations outside its narrow confines. If you are a movement conservative, you cannot adjust to changing conditions. It does not allow for improvisation. It is too rigidly ideological.
To use lordzorgon's examples: he considers Reagan a true conservative. That's interesting since Reagan signed into law tax cuts, which makes lordzorgon's point, but repealed those tax cuts when he saw what it was doing to the budget deficit and the economy, which refutes lordzorgon's point.
He also faults Bush for not being a conservative, but then how to explain tax cuts for the wealthy? How to explain the push to do away with Social Security? Those are just two.
How about Fiscal conservatives: If by fiscal conservatives, we mean those who would balance the budget and promote greater economic opportunity, would lordzorgon then consider all Democratic Presidents since the Great Depression fiscal conservatives? If you look historically at the record of economic growth and budgetary restraint, you will find that economic growth during Democratic Presidencies has been greater and more sustainable than under Republican ones, even including the Carter Administration. If you look at Budget deficits, again, you will see the same sort of correlation. Democratic Presidents have been better at mitigating budget deficits than Republican ones. Does that make them fiscal conservatives, or just more pragmatic in their approach to these issues?
I could continue, but I'm getting long-winded here. I haven't even discussed the Supreme Court, which would take a diary all its own. One final point: We do have conservatives in charge in Washington, in all bracnhes of Government; but, and it's a big but, elected officials want to get re-elected and they'll do most anything to have that happen. They have constituencies who are not as conservative as they are, and they know it. Most of these conservative congress critters were elected by hiding their true beliefs. Most know they don't stand a chance if the voting public found out just what they believe.
I'm not saying that the public isn't conservative; it is. But it is in no way, shape or form as conservative as movement conservatives. Just look at what people believe about stem cell research and abortion, to name two on the social side. And ask anyone about schools, they'll tell you that public schools are in terrible shape, but ask about their children's public school, and they'll tell you that it's pretty good. And yeah, they don't want the Federal Gov't to waste their money, but they'll complain like crazy about the potholes on their local highway, demanding that they be fixed. Etc, etc.
What it comes down to is that movement conservatism is a dogmatic ideal which is not based in Reality. Remind you of anyone ;-).
Very well rounded. I like it.
a question - are you referring to HankP's front page over at Tacitus?
a quible - It wasn't originally named the Hoover Dam. It was originally named the Boulder Dam. They changed the name to Hoover to honor him.
While I think many congressional republicans are conservatives, I also think they've let the neocons lead them around on a leash because they were so glad to be rid of 8 years of President Clinton. And really, all they cared about was continuing to win elections. It worked, so they stayed tight lipped. Till this election.
My regret was that the Congressional conservatives weren't more forceful in being fiscal conservatives. That's probably the only area I identify myself as conservative in. But, my guess is that after assuming all the power and holding the reigns, they thought feeding their corporate & wealthy benefactors was more important than representing the folks that voted for them. What was it the David Stockman said during Reagans first term? Oh yea, it was "Man, they were really feeding from the trough." Yup, that describes the current crop exactly.
Well, now the chickens have come home to roost. As much as the conservatives would like to and still will try to blame Clinton for all the worlds & the US's troubles, it's the constituents who aren't believing them this time. No, they have to either stand on their merits or fall by their actions. Can't blame Democrats this time.
Good post.
By this rubric
McCain is pretty solidly conservative, no? And yet he is widely reviled on the right for not being conservative enough.
Social conservatism arose relatively recently, I would say, and is inherently at odds with "small-government" conservatism. It's an uneasy marriage of convenience that has somehow worked so far.
I think your definition of foreign policy conservatism is a good way to make sense of the many contradictions in what Republicans (and Democrats) have believed wrt foreign policy, usually depending who was in power. I think by that definition quite a few prominent Dem presidents qualify, such as FDR, Truman, and JFK.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Quack
You can be a mallard. You can be a muscovy. You can even be a canvasback. But at your core you're still just a duck.
qui tacet consentire
McCain
I'd rank him as being a foreign policy and fiscal conservative, but not a social or economic conservative. I think the guy is OK, just not the superstar the media likes to paint him as.
Yes, aggressive social conservatism is incompatible with small-government (Goldwater) conservatism. Less hard-core variants of social conservatism (say, "the government should not spend tax dollars on abortions") are not necessarily incompatible.
There are some serious bad apples these days
...but there are also alternatives.
Support the NTU, not Grover Norquist's ATR.
Support the Club for Growth, not the Republican Party.
Definitely true. I have a hard time with your comments about Medicare Part D (I don't want the government strongarming pharma companies into lowering prices), but I do think the program was just a horrible idea across the board.
Probably true, although relying on polls to figure out what the public wants is dangerous because the public "wants", according to polls, a lot of completely contradictory things (more spending? yes! lower taxes? yes! balanced budgets? also yes!). I am definitely in the minority thinking that these programs are outrageous wastes of tax dollars. But that, if anything, supports my point: there is *not* a conservative majority in America, whether inside government or outside it, on economic issues.
There never was a conservative majority in America outside of ..
government. There definitely is one inside of government. Again, you're so tied to your ideological principles that you don't see that they failed because they could never be.
You should take a look at Paul's post, also on the front page. I think it does a good job of repudiating your premise.
A few comments here, before moving to the other post...
Yes, of course conservatism is an ideology. So is liberalism. I don't see anything wrong with ideology. Better to be an ideologue one way or the other than to lack convictions and drift one way or the other on each individual issue of the day.
For example -- I don't see how there can be any middle ground on abortion. Either a fetus is a person, in which case abortion is murder and should be illegal just like any other murder; or a fetus is not a person, in which case abortion is a medical procedure that should be legal just like any other medical procedure. Any attempt to split the difference between these positions seems completely ridiculous to me.
Yes, it's entirely plausible to me that the average Democrat is currently more of a fiscal conservative than the average Republican. The average Democrat is definitely *not*, however, more of an economic conservative than the average Republican.
This seems to me to be an inaccurate summary of what Reagan did on taxes. There were four major tax bills under Reagan: 1981, 1982, 1983, and 1986. The first was an extremely large income tax cut. The second was a much smaller income tax increase, a partial rollback of the first. The third was part of the Greenspan Commission's proposal on how to make Social Security solvent, which was a combination of payroll tax increases and benefit cuts. The last was a roughly revenue-neutral tax reform that nevertheless was a gem from any economic conservative's point of view (rate cuts paired with simplification and elimination of various deductions), since it left us with something very close to a flat tax (only 2 tax brackets, 15% and 28%) and a nice and low top tax rate of 28%. He also fixed inflation bracket creep (though not income bracket creep) in his 1981 tax cut.
Okay, so let's talk about those two tax increases. The 1982 tax cut was a case where Reagan got politically snookered. You can read his speech about it here: http://www.reagan.ut...
Reagan struck a bargain with Congress to reduce the deficit, with 75% from spending cuts and 25% from tax increases. And as he says, "I had to swallow hard to agree to any revenue increase. But there are two sides to a compromise. Those who supported the increased revenues swallowed hard to accept $280 billion in outlay cuts." Even to a hard-core conservative like myself, this sounds perfectly reasonable. Democrats controlled the House, after all, and that would be a rather substantial spending cut. Problem is, the tax increase happened, but the spending cuts mostly vanished into thin air. In the end, it was a political blunder, plain and simple. But it didn't come anywhere near to canceling out the 1981 tax cuts.
The 1983 Social Security tax increase was a bipartisan attempt to make SS sound for the future. Real simple: tax increases and benefit cuts. Reagan's writings make it clear that in the past he had been suspicious of this strategy, and that he thought the system needed wholesale reform. A few quotes on SS from the book "Reagan in His Own Hand", which I strongly recommend to anyone who wants to know more about what Reagan "really" thought about any given issue:
"Increased taxes are no answer -- they only add to inflation & further impoverish our people. It is time to totally reform the system if we are to prevent a total collapse." (Oct. 25, 1979)
"Truth is if we could invest our & our employers share of the Soc. Security tax in savings or insurance we could double the return promised by Soc. Security." (Jan. 9, 1978)
We see here that Reagan supported SS reform exactly along the lines proposed 20 years later by Bush (private accounts). So why didn't he push that sort of plan in 1983? Simple: it wasn't even remotely *close* to politically feasible to talk about that sort of wholesale SS reform at the time. To quote from his speech when he signed the 1983 SS bill: "None of us here today would pretend that this bill is perfect. Each of us had to compromise one way or another." It's hard to believe that he could have gotten a better deal than he actually did. Letting SS go bankrupt certainly wasn't an option, after all.
Overall, Reagan's record on taxes is very good. The tax system he left us with in 1989 was *vastly* superior to the one he inherited in 1981. And according to my statistics, federal taxes peaked at 19.14% of GDP in 1981, but fell to 17% in 1983-84 and stayed in the 17-18% range for some time afterwards. They finally crept back up in the 90s (Clinton and Bush tax hikes plus a whole pile of bracket creep) and peaked at 20.51% of GDP in 2000.
I certainly can't see how you can justify a claim that Reagan backed off on or "repealed" his tax cuts because they were causing economic problems of any sort. As the speech I linked to makes abundantly clear, Reagan clearly did not like the 1982 tax increase and preferred a lot more in spending cuts instead, but he simply could not get Congress to go along with those cuts. (Remember, Reagan, unlike Bush, actually had to deal with Democrats in Congress!)
Yes, Bush has done a *few* things that are the actions of an economic conservative. But not very many. The SS reform (and no, he *didn't* try to "do away with SS" -- best case, he proposed that you could optionally invest maybe a third of your current payroll taxes, and maybe some benefit cuts targeted entirely at upper income earners) never panned out. Even if it had, the Medicare drug plan's costs would have blown any long-term savings from SS reform out of the water. The tax cuts don't nearly make up for the Bush Sr. and Clinton tax hikes, nor for the invisible annual tax increase of bracket creep over the last 20 years, and included some very un-conservative cuts also (the 10% tax bracket and the refund checks?).