“There you go again.”
It’s hard to believe, but more than 40 years of right-wing government basically evolved from one four-word lie in a 1980 presidential debate between President Jimmy Carter and his challenger, Ronald Reagan.
Reagan had been leading through most of the fall, but Carter had been closing the gap and Reagan had one serious weakness heading into the closing days. The right wing of the Republican Party was on record as being opposed to national health care, and Carter pointed out that Reagan had been unalterably opposed to Medicare when Democrats passed it in the 1960s.
Here’s what he said:
“Governor Reagan, as a matter of fact, began his political career campaigning around this nation against Medicare. Now, we have an opportunity to move toward national health insurance, with an emphasis on the prevention of disease, an emphasis on out-patient care, not in-patient care; an emphasis on hospital cost containment to hold down the cost of hospital care for those who are ill, an emphasis on catastrophic health insurance, so that if a family is threatened with being wiped out economically because of a very high medical bill, then the insurance would help pay for it. These are the kinds of elements of a national health insurance, important to the American people. Governor Reagan, again, typically is against such a proposal.”
A crucial moment, and Reagan answered with the four-word lie.
“There you go again.”
“When I opposed Medicare, there was another piece of legislation meeting the same problem before the Congress. I happened to favor the other piece of legislation and thought that it would be better for the senior citizens and provide better care than the one that was finally passed. I was not opposing the principle of providing care for them. I was opposing one piece of legislation versus another.”
That probably won him the election right there, but the fact was that Reagan toured the country for years opposing what he called “socialized medicine” and saying it was a big step toward dictatorship.
Don’t believe me?
Check this out.
Reagan never liked government benefits for ordinary people. It was during his second term that the most destructive act of the last 90 years happened to change America for the worst. Under the guise of tax reform, Reagan cut the top tax rate the megarich paid from 7o percent to 28.
It has crept back up then, but never to much more than half what it was.
Reagan lied, America died?
Pretty damn close.