Reply #11: I was struck by his billing and cooing over Reagan & the "failure" of liberalism [View All]

'That Reagan's message found such a receptive audience spoke not only to his skills as a communicator; it also spoke to the failure of liberal government, during a period of economic stagnation, to give middle-class voters any sense that it was fighting for them. For the fact was that government at every level had become too cavalier about spending taxpayer money. Too often, bureaucracies were oblivious to the cost of their mandates. A lot of liberal rhetoric did seem to value rights and entitlements over duties and responsibilities. Reagan may have exaggerated the sins of the welfare state, and certainly liberals were right to complain that his domestic policies titled heavily toward economic elites, with corporate raiders making tidy profits throughout the eighties while unions were busted and income for the average working stiff flatlined.

Nevertheless, by promising to side with those who worked hard, obeyed the law, cared for their families, and loved their country, Reagan offered Americans a sense of a common purpose that liberals seemed no longer able to muster. And the more the critics carped, the more those critics played into the role he'd written for them - a band of out-of-touch, tax-and-spend, blame-America-first, politically correct elites.'