“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”
~The late Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931 - 2005
I don’t know if you have fond feelings left for GWB but I believe he made expectations from the government worse. Right now as our we are being sold to the Chinese as slaves (national and public debt, buying all our businesses) the public has been trained to think, “debt and deficits don’t matter”, that they can have everything. Sure, the public expected handouts in 2000, but it is worse now because they figure no one has to pay for it, certainly not them.
GWB also naturally gets the blame for the economy, like it or not. So that just adds to the fire of socialism. His economic vision was short sighted, he thought he had a real economic boom (Hannity still says so.) But no one cares about it now. They think republicans=depression and greed and stupidity. bad PR.