When did the Republicans become the party of free trade?
When was the first time that Republicans preached "fiscal responsibility"?
By and large, these changes came with Warren Harding in the 1920s after the crisis of World War I. The “Depression of 1920” cited by the radical right as proof that smaller government will cure depressions, was the most decisive event.
Jesus Christ, you would think that the corporate billionaire donors funding the Mises Institute would be able to come up with better propaganda...
These people actually believe that the Great Depression would have ended 7 years earlier without the New Deal...yes, an economy that was bleeding jobs in 1933 would have magically repaired itself instantly!
Yes, with better government action the Great Depression would have ended far earlier. Most economists agree that the impact of the New Deal was mildly positive, but not in curing the Depression. As a means for greater equality and social welfare, it was good, but it failed to do anything significant about the Depression. The aim was in redistribution, not necessarily in expansion. Also, remember the fact that Roosevelt balanced the ing budget halfway in to the Depression. FDR made the massive mistake of not borrowing for the programme, as he (or at least the policy writers) thought that debt financed spending was worse than the depression it was going to solve. The New Deal was nowhere near enough (or really even aiming) to lead a fiscal-stimulus recovery, so the policies were far too small to lead economic recovery in any way. A lot of the other actions even harmed recovery (see encouraging anti-competitive ess by linking collusive practices to higher wage payments (ending these anti-competitive policies massively contributed to strong recovery in the 40s
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/421169?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents), and arbitrary agricultural price fixing). There is an argument in the fact that stimulus from reducing the size of the Government could have been better than the clusterf**k of inaction and bad actions that we actually got.
Its impact was completely negligible compared to the massive positives of FDR taking the U.S. off the Gold Standard (to stop the deflationary spiral), and WW2 (a massive expansionary factor; 100% economic growth two years in a row). The Great Recession could have easily turned into another Great Depression, but a major deciding factor in was the action of the Bush/Obama administrations (and of course Lord Ben Bernanke actually having the courage to act compared to the sh**tty 1930s Fed).
