Black Magic

Christine O’Donnell, the surprise Tea Party candidate for the Senate seat in Delaware, once “dabbled in witchcraft,” as she put it, including attendance at witchcraft events. Actually, so has the Republican party.

“Voodoo economics” is the term George Bush (the elder), one of the last of the moderate Republicans, gave to the theory that income tax cuts will magically stimulate an increase in tax revenues to compensate, and that the benefits for the wealthy would “trickle down” to the rest of us. Formally known as “supply-side economics,” the idea was actually tested by the Reagan administration during the early 1980s and was thoroughly discredited. President Reagan was forced to reverse course and raise taxes when the Federal deficit ballooned. Yet the idea lives on in Republican rhetoric as if tax cuts for the rich today, to the tune of an estimated $700 billion over the next decade, will not worsen our current deficit. It’s voodoo economics all over again.