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Townhall
An
80’s Remake
by Tim Phillips
Sep 28, 2012
With
millions of Americans out of work,
unemployment is marching ever higher. Gasoline prices soar, painfully
hitting
family budgets with every fill-up. As fall approaches, an incumbent
President
holds a narrow lead, intent on gaining a second term. The key to
victory is a
relatively small group of undecided voters; a conflicted electorate who
respect
the President, but recognize his policies have failed to lift the
economy out of
a recession. Do they give the President a second chance and hope for
the best?
Or take a risk on a pro-business Governor who talks about economic
freedom?
While this scenario sounds familiar, this is not actually describing
the
current situation in 2012, but instead 1980.
That
incumbent president was Jimmy Carter, who
held a low single-digit lead until late in the fall, when the American
people
finally answered a clarion call from a California Governor named Ronald
Reagan,
who said that the solution to our economic crisis would not come from a
bigger,
more expansive government but instead from soaring economic freedom.
At
the rate movie themes and characters are
recycled these days, it’s clear we are living in a remake world. But it
isn’t
just movies anymore; we’re seeing the political plot line of 1980
repeated in
2012. But in politics, while the plot may be the same, the ending is
not yet
written, because the American people have not yet made their decision.
Our
country today is faced with 43 straight
months of unemployment over 8%. That’s more Americans unemployed for
longer
than under the last eleven presidents combined. Gas prices have nearly
doubled
in four years, averaging more than $3.80 a gallon. The abysmal economic
“recovery” is now the self-made crisis of the Obama Administration,
which
continues its empty calls for more jobs, even as more and more
Americans leave
the workforce entirely. We’ve been through nearly four years of failing
policies that make the current “recovery” almost indistinguishable from
the
recent recession.
In
1980, the choice between Jimmy Carter and
Ronald Reagan was similar to what voters are facing today…
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the rest of this article at Townhall
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