PROGRESSIVES ONCE AGAIN NEEDED TO RESCUE THE COUNTRY FROM THE GOP

When will Americans start remembering what happens every time the Republicans are given control of the government?

... Just one of the many massive crowds to greet Obama during the campaign

I have found it interesting that when looking back in history, the Democratic Party has historically been brought back into power in order to take the country out of a Republican sponsored economic recession or depression.

Now the nay-sayers will say that situations such as the past Great Depression were economic anomalies and that any other past recessions were mostly minor and just the normal, up and down fluctuations of the market.

However, if you will look closely, you will see that all of the spending and job creation that is usually sponsored by the progressives, historically it is needed in order to pull the country out of recessions that were initially and mainly generated by the GOP leadership.

In addition, one can see, and history has shown, that when the conservatives are in power, they tend to remove the necessary regulations that previously had allowed for a stable and consistent economy. Eventually the greedy, such as de-regulated bankers and those on Wall Street will take advantage of the situation and as expected, down we go again.

This is not just my idea of what has occurred in the past. Since economic records have been kept, it´s fairly easy to see that what I am saying is actually true.

Now, we all know what has happened to America´s economy since the Great Depression of the 1930´s. But, to prove my point, just look at the country´s economic situation prior to 1900:

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, they have published the following: "The United States was in official, country wide recessions from 1873 to 1879, from 1882 to 1885 and off and on from 1893 to 1898."

Republicans were in successive control of the White House, and most of both houses of Congress, during these periods of national recessions prior to 1900.

In fact, the only real respite from the recessions of the 1890´s was from March 1894 to mid 1896, which was during the then, lone Democratic presidency of Grover Cleveland.

The GOP took over the White House again in 1897, and the country then proceeded to go back into a mild recession.

And when the Republican´s look back at their beloved and very successful president, Teddy Roosevelt (1901-1909), based on the areas that he supported when he was president, today he would be considered as a moderate progressive.

As with the Democrats, TR supported old age pensions, universal health care and government sponsored health insurance. He established the "Pure Food and Drug Act" which spawned the regulatory commission currently known as the FDA. He supported organized unions and he went after corporate monopolies.

TR set aside 190 million acres of national parks and forests, as well as coal and water reserves. He developed the Department of Commerce and he signed the Meat Inspection Act.

He also passed the Hepburn Act which enhanced the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission. TR´s "Roosevelt Corollary" also gave even stronger support to the Monroe Doctrine for protecting Latin America from European intervention. And TR supported and approved millions of US dollars for building and completing the Panama Canal.

Actually, I personally feel that in his time, TR was even more liberal than some of today´s liberal Democrats. (In fact, FDR´s "New Deal" was in many ways an expanded Democratic version of TR´s "Square Deal".)

The point here is that many of the areas that made the United States so successful in the 20th century, and the past envy of the world, was not due to Republican Party leadership, (TR excluded).

America has excelled due to the past support for the middle class, by providing low-cost education for all, equal opportunities for all, reasonable government regulations for keeping corporations honest, help for the poor and disadvantaged, a well maintained American infrastructure and a strong national defense. And most of these areas have never been very high in the GOP´s platform statements.

With the recent election of Barack Obama, It is appearing that once again the progressive Democrats are being asked to pull the country´s rear-end out of the Republican sponsored fire in their recent failed attempt (we hope) for ruining the country. But did the previous Reagan and two Bush eras of government mismanagement take America to "the point of no return"? I guess we´ll soon find out.

We all are aware that both political parties have reeked their own kind of havoc on the country from time to time. But the Republican´s philosophy of massive de-regulation and their "everyone is on their own" attitude, has shown that when they do go down, the damage is usually heavier and deeper than that caused by the progressives.

As we continue to hear more and more about the miss-use of power by the Bush / Cheney administration and their past Republican Congress, I have serious concerns that things may already be "too far gone".

In any case, it´s going to be a long, hard ride going forward, one way or the other.

Copyright G.Ater 2009

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