Atrios at Eschaton: On Rhetoric

LG&M writes:

I think this is something that progressives need to pay more attention to. Mark Smith, a UW political scientist, has spent a lot of time looking at back copies of the National Review to study conservative rhetoric on tax policy. In the wake of Goldwater, conservative arguments in favor of tax cuts tended to be libertarian ones, linking tax cuts with increased freedom. Particularly starting with Reagan, the libertarian arguments became much less prevalent, and were largely replaced by arguments linking tax cuts to economic growth. The latter strategy had significantly more public appeal. It's important, therefore, for progressives not to concede the premise that tax cuts produce economic growth; the evidence for this is, to put it mildly, weak.