The Good Ol' Days

David Brooks, making sense for a short period of time:

I was also struck, as in New Hampshire and Iowa, by the mood of this year’s rallies. Republican audiences this year want a restoration. America once had strong values, they believe, but we have gone astray. We’ve got to go back and rediscover what we had. Heads nod enthusiastically every time a candidate touches this theme.
I agree with the sentiment, but it makes for an incredibly backward-looking campaign. I sometimes wonder if the Republican Party has become the receding roar of white America as it pines for a way of life that will never return.

Not only are Republicans white folks pining for a way of life that will never return, they are pining for a time when minorities were in a worse situation than they are in today.  It was remarkable to me that a recent survey showed that blacks and Hispanics were much more optimistic about the future than whites.  Considering how many of the minorities have things a lot worse than folks in the Tea Party, that surprised me.  But, they have often seen more opportunities over the recent past, while the privilege of whiteness has been lost to economic struggles between high earners and the middle class. 

Anyway, it is clear to me that Republicans want to return to a day that didn't really exist, a time of postwar expansion with less regulation and lower taxes.  Taxes were higher back in "the good ol' days," and many industries, like airlines, phone companies, banks and trucking companies were highly regulated.  Republicans want to get back to the" good ol' days" of the '80s, when Ronald Reagan never raised taxes, even though those days didn't exist.  What they want is a fantasy.