Despite the personal attack you cite, here's the problem with what you are trying to claim as Republican achievements:

"The end of stagflation didn't help anyone. The Reagan boom didn't help anyone."

Republican policies had nothing to do with ending stagflation and there was no "Reagan boom" that had anything to do with the Godawful policies of that doddering old fool. Cheap oil fueled the boom of the eighties and 90's more than any oher factor or group of factors. The Reagan deficits which were wasted on tax cuts for the rich and a totally unnecessary military buildup only depressed what would have been an even more robust economy during that period.

"The peaceful conclusion of the Cold War didn't help anyone."

Reagan just happened to be there when the collapse of the USSR occured. It happened because of the 50 years of determination by the United States and every President from Truman to Reagan to contain the Soviets and bring about the very result the delusional Republicans wish to claim solely for Reagan. The Republican fantasy that somehow Reagan was responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union is so absurd it doesn't it rise to the level of myth. It's and out and out lie.

"The plunging crime rate over the last fifteen years didn't help anyone."

The Plunging of the crime rate had fare more to do with demographics and the boom of the 90's than anything any Republican anywhere did. The growing poverty due to the collapse of our economy and continuing deterioration of our public schools thanks to Republican policies is creaing the coming rise in crime. Thanks a whole lot for that!

"Welfare reform didn't help anyone."

Welfare "reform" by any measure has been a mixed success at best and certainly didn't happen because Republicans. The limited success of the Clinton led welfare reform of the 90's has hit the wall and little additional progress is anticipated because the approach is not one that produces positive results.

"Americans are, by every measure, no better off today than they were in in high-tax, high-inflation, high-crime, lower-life-expectancy, balance-of-terror, skyrocketing-welfare-rolls paradise that was 1978."

Americans wages have been stagnant since the era of Republican dominance began in 1980. Benefits also have been disappearing. Pensions are either disappearing, unstable, or unavailable except for the already well-to-do, unemployment is rising, the nation is nearly bankrupt and beholden to Communist China for most of the national debt, our banking and financial system is on the verge of collapse for the first time snce Hoover, college is moving further out of reach for more families than at any time in the last 50 years, millions are expected to lose their homes to foreclosure in the coming year alone, inflation is about to take off like never before as a result of the irresponsible Republican spending spree, the now nearly worthless dolllar, and the skyrocketing price of oil due to Republican destabilization of the middle east, gas is at $4/gallon, more US based companies are being bought and controlled by foreign interests, and every day healthcare is becoming less affordable for all but the wealthy. Wow! We never had it so good! Another 4 years and we'll all be put in indentured servitude to our Chinese masters! Thanks GOP!

"Or if they are better off, the party responsible for running the government during most of that period deserves absolutely none of the credit."

If there is any credit to take for what remains after your party has nearly destroyed our nation then take it, but only if you take responsibility for the criminal irresponsibility, the lawlessness, and the end of prosperity for the common people of this nation. If ya do that, then take credit for whatever you think is left of America.

On top of all the previously mentioned Republican "successes" of the past 30 years we also have our liberties being routinely infringed by a nascent police state ushered in ethusiastically by the now pro-authoritarian Republican Party (except for the goofy Ron Paul, the Constitution is in tatters from Republicans riding roughshod over it every time they occupy the executive branch since they clearly don't know the difference between being an elected President and a divinely appointed monarch when they are in power. Thanks to the Republican leadership of our federal government, the US, once the leading moral voice on the planet, has become reviled throughout the world for adopting the very same tactics of the most hated regimes in history: Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, when dealing with prisoners and it is quite clear that the President and the Vice President are war criminals who should be tried and imprisoned for their crimes since they were personally involved in the ordering and approval of torture and an illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq, a nation that had neither any plan nor the ability to threaten the US in any way.

But of all the crimes and obscenities perpetrated by the criminal gang in charge of the Republican Party, the open defiance of the Geneva Convention may well be the crowning achievement of Republican success in that they stripped naked for the world their real intentions: global empire and world dominance by US corporate interests. Ahhhh, good times, good times eh?

What oleep said.

oleeb addressed the "senile movie star won the cold war" bullshit but I have one thing to add to his response: I thought you conservatives said that communism doesn't work. You've been saying that over and over, and it's one of the few true things you say. (As they say, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.)

So if communism was always destined to collapse under its own weight why do you give the credit for stopping it to your racist senile movie star president? Honestly it seems like you people don't even believe most of your own rhetoric!

You conservatives are like weather forcasters: it doesn't seem to matter how consistently wrong you are, some people still listen to you. What a bunch of losers.

"I don't think Reagan deserves credit for all the prosperity of the past thirty years, but I would concede that the Democratic party learned important things from Reagan. Welfare reform is a decent example."

The problem I have with that logic is, why in God's name are they still *fixated* on it more than 10 years later? It sort of suggests to me that they haven't really caught up with reality, preferring to keep on scapegoating the same dead carcass.

I do think that liberals do this as well--it aggravated the living crap out of me that the Obama crowd was convinced the only possible reason the "white working class" in PA and OH could have for voting for Hillary Clinton was that they were racist white trash. This, even as the dimwitted Austan Goolsbee was busy reassuring the conservative Canadian Prime Minister that Obama was just demagoging the canaille and, of course, he would never revisit NAFTA.

Whatever you think about revisiting NAFTA, we know the number one issue for the "working class" is their job opportunities (and not Douthat's new and improved welfare plan), so there's no way a thinking person can conclude that "race" is the the only factor at play in what the working class thought about Obama, at that particular juncture.

So, I don't know. I don't think either political clique is too interested in trying to look at "reality," preferring to cling to their ancient prejudices.

Douthat slings it, but I can't help but notice where his own bias seems to steadfastly lie. Same old, same old.

Nice hit and run on one of our users here. Ross came here, ignored all reader comments and then, in his last post, lashes out at one of our regulars. Real nice. Ross apparently didn't have the testicular fortitude to actually engage us.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't have Republicans here. But, come on, it's unusual. And the people who are invited here to promote their books should show more courtesy to the people who post here.

Ross Douthat reminds us what a sanctimonious prick he really is. Of course, a terse "hit and run", not "stay and argue" has always been the hallmark of the effete libertarian wing of the Republican Party. As for all those "none of this excuses the failures of the Bush Administration" this is just his bullshit entry ticket into venues like this. The failures of the Bush administration and Saint Reagan before him (which only set the table) are not just failures of acts, they are the epitome of the failures of the essential right-wing-libertarian IDEA. The colossal spectacular failure of the unfettered, unregulated free market...the very raison d'etre for the Republican Party and for Douthat the Douche...puts the real Republican ideologues like Douthat out of business. So instead of the (true) adherrence to the tenets of rightwing Republicanism we get the hustle they are currently peddling. Oh if the Republicans only adopt the concerns of the working class, oh if pigs only could fly.

Bye bye Ross...

But I hope you're not hurt when I say I wish you the worst of luck in your repackaging attempts. All I see is an attempt by the GOP to hold onto the 'white working class' voting demographic that was key to their past electoral successes. They were brought into the fold by playing on fears and hatreds. Once they realized they had been economically 'sold down the river', and the playing of the race card was no longer working, the GOP has to try to figure out a new way to keep them in the fold. A few crumbs are proposed to be thrown their way but the overall song remains the same.

Bon voyage...