Free Republic

WASHINGTON – In sheer size, the economic measures announced by President Barack Obama to address "a crisis unlike we've ever known" are remarkable, rivaling and in many cases dwarfing the New Deal programs that Franklin D. Roosevelt famously created to battle the Great Depression. Winning approval was a political tour-de-force for the new administration. Yet gloom and uncertainty persist about the plan's ability to deliver a cure for the economy's severe ailments. Stocks plunged to six-year lows after the burst of bill signings, bailout announcements and presidential pledges.

Those who have watched cable news lately have undoubtedly noticed conservative media figures attempting to rewrite history by denigrating the successes of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies. This amounts to an orchestrated effort to derail the economic recovery plans of President Barack Obama. Fox News' Brit Hume recently claimed that "everybody agrees, I think, on both sides of the spectrum now, that the New Deal failed." He's correct, if by "both sides of the spectrum" Hume is referring to the right and far-right over at Fox News. He then called Roosevelt's policies "a jihad against private enterprise." Hume's own jihad...