A trip down memory lane Quite lengthy for Youtube But bare with me
Reagan (R) - 8yrs in office. 26 criminal indictments. 16 convictions. 8 prison sentences.
Bush, George W. (R) - 8yrs in office. 16 criminal indictments. 16 convictions. 9 prison sentences.
Obama (D) - 8 yrs in office. zero criminal indictments, zero convictions and zero prison sentences. so the next time somebody describes the Obama administration as "scandal free" they aren't speaking wishfully, they're simply telling the truth.
Of course, you couldn't just come right out and say, "Vote for me and I'll give your money to people so rich they can't even imagine what they'll do with it (but they still demand to have it anyhow)", so slightly more subtle tactics had to be employed. But Reagan was right when, at a presidential fundraiser in San Francisco he told the wine and cheese set that the right uses guns, god and gays to scare people out of their money. I'll believe that Republicans are serious about protecting heterosexual marriage on the day that you can't find half of them prowling the gay bars of DC every night (and you don't even want to know what the other half are into). This bait-and-switch tactic worked perfectly well whenever it was applied. It didn't hurt that the regressive Billy-Bobs who vote for these folks are as dumb as a tree. But stupid is really only the facilitating quality, and often one that is neither present nor required. What really drives this stuff is fear. If you can turn that into a loathing of fur'ners, fags, bitches, blackies and brownies, you got their vote.
Then you can do what you really set out to accomplish in the first place. George W. Bush's 2004 campaign was the paradigmatic example. All year he talked about jamming through a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Big priority. Urgent national issue. The religitarded across America just about peed themselves, they were so excited. Then he gets elected and is brazen enough to announce that there'll be no such effort, after all, and that his signature legislative initiative will be an attempt to hand over the fat Social Security pot of money to Goldman Sachs. The redneck dolts with their Bush/Cheney '04 bumper-stickers didn't know what to think. So, of course, they just didn't.
Meanwhile, to say that this kleptocratic revolution worked really well is only untrue by means of the verb tense employed. It is still working really well. And the final leg of Reagan's March to the Sea is now upon us. Chunks of middle class body parts have been hacked off, bit by bit, over the decades, 'til there's little remaining anymore. Remember how they told us that 'free trade' wouldn't decimate our jobs, our unions and our bargaining power? Remember how they said that massive tax cuts for the wealthy would be 'revenue neutral' and would jump-start the economy? Which is confusing since the national debt doubled under George W. Bush, and then he proceeded to hand us the worst economy since the Great Depression. Remember how they told us that we needed to slash wasteful government spending on benefits, entitlements?
Next, inevitably, will come entitlements. Indeed, most of the states in the union are already heading that way, cutting pensions for employees. Not to mention certain low priority areas like education, which is getting slashed from California to New York. How long can it be before Medicare and Social Security are put on the chopping block? And why? Because we have our priorities good and straight, pal: a morbidly bloated military and pathetically low tax rates for the wealthiest among us comes first. Then, if we could somehow do it for free I suppose we could allow decent education, or healthcare, or retirement with dignity for our elders. But, of course, since that can't be done without cost, those things must go.
And thus the Reagan Occupation inches closer yet to a full-blown "mission accomplished". The middle class is on its knees and shrinking fast. Unions have been broken into irrelevance. Government, supposedly an agent of the public interest, has become a complete tool of those it is meant to monitor. Both political parties are fully owned by the oligarchy. The public has been brainwashed into seeing its allies as enemies and its enemies as allies. We have been drained of hope that any actor on the horizon can come to our rescue. And up steps Donald J.Trump for the challenge "Sorry Barack Obama for the mess I left you with". George W Bush