Reagan broke with the hardliners in his administration and compromised with the Soviets on arms control. Reagan saved Social Security. He expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit. He responsibly raised taxes three times, despite campaign promises and political pressure. In deed, if not in word, even Reagan recognized that some measures to achieve equity, fairness, and even redistribution not only were necessary, but were the purview of the federal government.
I bought the original, and it still hangs in my office. When Reagan died a year later, the TV and radio waves were filled with conservative pundits, friends of the president, and former White House staffers all expressing paeans to the liberator from liberalism, savior of the free world, and protector of federal frugality.
What made them credible was that there was some truth to all those things. Reagan himself was much more diplomatic in his own autobiography, An American Life. In his diaries, however, he was less than diplomatic. What utter nonsense. Chris Matthews, in his book on the relationship between the two men, prances through Washington falsely claiming they did the Tax Reform legislation together. True, the latter helped impeach the former, but before that hoopla went down, the two did restore the economy, and they did pass major reforms.
The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill. Don't miss a brief. Sign up for our daily email. This occurred because Republican analysts saw that the Democratic New Deal coalition was cracking, the traditionally conservative south and west began to control more seats in the House of Representatives, and Americans were becoming more affluent and, thus, more interested in taxes and inflation. Efforts were made to bring social conservatives, especially pro-lifers, into the Republican party with scare tactics used in the wording of direct mailings.
In the late s, fundamentalist Christians became outraged by Supreme Court decisions banning school prayer and legalizing abortion and by Jimmy Carter's decision to withdraw tax-exempt status from segregated church schools. This group was mobilized by radio and television preachers, especially televangelist Jerry Falwell who also used scare tactics to promote his Moral Majority. The new right also tried to reach the nation's 50 million Roman Catholics through the right-to-life movement.
The Catholic bishops worked closely with the new right at first, but most Catholic lay people did not share their church's opposition to abortion in all cases.
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