Mitt’s no Ronald

Mitt Romney seems happy to associate himself in every speech with former President Ronald Reagan.

Having taught United States history for 42 years, it seems to me Reagan talked a conservative game but was very moderate in his policies and was happy to cooperate with Democrats. He inherited severe inflation, which he left to the Federal Reserve to solve, which it did with a recession.

Reagan worked hard to get Congress to both cut taxes and rapidly increase federal spending in the form of increased military spending. Cutting taxes while increasing federal spending is a classic Keynesian or liberal method of creating jobs, which is exactly what happened.

Then, Reagan cooperated with Democrats to get a major revision of the tax code.

One wonders if Reagan was a conservative at all in the current sense of the word.

— Dean Shoemaker, Kent