April 16, 2012--Democrat Commies

While snowbirding in Florida our winter congressman is Allen West.

He's a rising star in the Republican party. For example, just last week Fox-TV personality Sarah Palin suggested he would make an excellent vice presidential candidate. Among other things that qualify him to people such as Palin is his personal story--he served 20 years in the U.S. military, including several tours of duty in Iraq and left the army as a lieutenant colonel. And, oh, he is the only African-American Republican congressman.

One thing Palin and other supporters fail to mention is that while on one tour West participated in the violent interrogation of a suspect who had allegedly threatened to attack his men. To get him to talk, West fired a pistol close to the suspect's head. No useful information was obtained and West was fined $5,000 for his participation. He paid it and shortly thereafter left the army.

West began to come to wider public attention back in January when at a Florida GOP dinner he had some choice words for Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress:

“Take your message of equality of achievement. . . . You can take it to Europe, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America." He called out Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi by name at the dinner, vowing to stop Obama from “destroy[ing]” the country.

But just this past week he really stepped in it. Outdoing even red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy, West claimed that there are "about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party that are members of the Communist Party."

This got me to thinking about how for decades the McCarthys and Wests of the Republican Party have been casual about smearing Democrats by labeling them socialists and communists.

I did a little research to compare how Republican and Democrat presidents while in office handled the America economy. If Democrats are really more socialist or communistic than Republicans one would expect to see Democrats' assault on capitalism causing declines in our economy--higher unemployment would soar since the "job creatures" would be so highly taxed that they would not be motivated to build businesses and hire people and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) would increase more when free-economy-minded Republican were in the White House.

Let's then look at the facts from Republican Herbert Hoover's and Democrat Franklin Roosevelt's day to the present. Let's see if Allen West and his ilk may actually have it right.

"Communist" Truman left 2.5 percent unemployment to Eisenhower.

"Patriot" Eisenhower left recession and 6.5 percent unemployment to Kennedy.

"Communists" Kennedy/Johnson left 3.5 percent unemployment to Nixon/Ford.

Republican "Patriot" Ford left a recession and 7.5 unemployment to Jimmy Carter.

During his four years, "communist" Carter wasn't able to end the recession he inherited and neither were Republican "Patriots" Reagan and Bush who followed him and left recession and 7.2 unemployment to Bill Clinton.

"Communist" Bill Clinton left 4.2 percent unemployment to George W. Bush and hundreds of billions in budget surpluses.

"Patriot" George W. Bush left recession and 7.6 percent unemployment to "Communist" Barack Obama.

No Republican ever left office with unemployment under 5 %, including Ronald Reagan.

No New Deal Democrat ever left office with higher unemployment than he inherited, including Jimmy Carter who left the same unemployment rate he inherited from Ford.

Three out of four New Deal "Communists" left office with unemployment well under five percent.

In regard to GDP growth, here are the figures, listed from best to worst:

Kennedy/Johnson: 4.8 % average annual GDP Growth.

Truman: 3.8%

Clinton: 3.7%

Reagan: 3.4%

Carter: 3.3%

Eisenhower: 2.9%

Nixon/Ford: 2.8%

G.W. Bush: 2.2%

G.H.W. Bush: 2.1%

How did America do economically before and after the "Reagan Revolution"? For example, how many quarters of economic boom did we have--quarters where annnualized GDP growth exceeded 6%?

"Boom" Quarters in the 28 years before Reagan's inauguration: 34

"Boom" Quarters in the 28 years since Reagan's inauguration: 14

In addition, the national debt tripled during Reagan's eight years and tripled again during George W. Bush's eight years.

Then, how have capitalists on Wall Street fare under Democrat "communist" presidents? What did the Dow Jones Industrial Average do over the course of Republcan and Democratic administrations?

Republican Herbert Hoover: -90% (That's minus 90%.)

FDR/Truman: +525% (From 41 to 290)

Eisenhower, who refused to lower income taxes: +120% From 290 to 630.

Kennedy/Johnson: +51% (From 630 to 950)

Nixon/Ford: +2% (From 950 to 970)

Carter: +3% From (970 to 1000)

Reagan/Bush: +244% (From 1000 to 2440)

Clinton: +264% (From 2440 to 9880)

G.W. Bush: -25% (From 9880 to 7600)

Comrade Obama: +68% (From 7600 to 12800 last week)

From the actual evidence--not the rhetoric, spin, and outright lies--it looks as if my winter congressman Allen West and his Republican colleagues have things backwards:

With the exception of Eisenhower (who many thought was a Democrat and he almost declared himself one) and the Dow during the Reagan years, the so-called free market capitalist Republicans did worse by our economy that the socialist/communist Democrats.