The GOP's Forgotten History

Written by David Frum on Wednesday March 24, 2010

While Democrats damn the GOP as the "party of No" and the tea party tries to reinvent the GOP as the "party of Ayn Rand", Republicans should not forget their party's legacy of pushing for important social legislation.

David Leonhardt in the New York Times today quotes Larry Summers:

Before he became Mr. Obama’s top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers told me a story about helping his daughter study for her Advanced Placement exam in American history. While doing so, Mr. Summers realized that the federal government had not passed major social legislation in decades. There was the frenzy of the New Deal, followed by the G.I. Bill, the Interstate Highway System, civil rights and Medicare — and then nothing worth its own section in the history books.

Summers is a brilliant economist, but if quoted accurately, a poor historian. No major social legislation since Medicare?

What about the Section 8 housing program, created in 1974 as part of the Nixon administration's attempt to voucherize social services?

What about the Earned Income Tax Credit, enacted in 1975, signed into law by (Republican) President Ford and expanded by (Republican) President Ronald Reagan?

Or Supplemental Security Income, signed into law by (Republican) President Nixon to aid the disabled?

Or the Americans with Disabilities Act, signed into law by (Republican) President George HW Bush - not an income transfer program, but one that has transformed job opportunities for the disabled?

Or welfare reform, which brought work to the former underclass, initiated by Republican local leaders like Wisconsin's Gov. Tommy Thompson and New York's Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and pressed nationally by the Republican Congress elected in 1994?

The charter school movement, supported primarily by Republican governors and local officeholders?

Medicare Part D is not a brilliantly well-designed program, but it is indisputably big and has made a difference to many seniors.

These are legacies of Republican political history - and they should not be overlooked as Democrats damn the GOP as the "party of No" and the tea party tries to reinvent the GOP as the "party of Ayn Rand."

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