The Forgotten Man and the New Old New Deal

Jonathan Chait wrote an excellent critique for TNR of Amity Schael's The Forgotten Man.

In the past few weeks that Obama has come out with sweeping plans for governement stimulus, conservatives are calling Obama's plans a second New Deal and are making the fairly new assertion that the first New Deal was in fact a failure. Chait points out that until very recently, most neoconservatives felt that it wasn't until the 1960's that liberalism really went haywire, but now the GOP seems to have changed their story.

These new claims about the New Deal are being backed up by The Forgotten Man, which a number of republican politicians have been seen carrying around Washington.

Chait easily refutes the major claims made in Schael's book, which makes me wonder whether the GOP will succeed via evoking the New Deal to rail against Obama's plans.