Anti-New Deal Book Is GOP's New Bible

For the Republican Party, looking for any kind of traction for its opposition to President Obama’s stimulus spending, anti-New Deal book The Forgotten Man is a godsend, Politico reports. Author Amity Shlaes suggests, in what some call revisionist history, that FDR’s plan, pushed by government bureaucrats on a tottering economy, worsened the Great Depression. “Republicans are gobbling it up,” says an aide to Rep. Eric Cantor.

Rep. Steve King, who calls the book “definitive,” says, “Today we have a president who believes that the New Deal was a good deal, and would have been a far better deal if FDR would have spent a lot more money.” Adds Shlaes, a columnist for Bloomberg, “That’s why it’s called The Forgotten Man, not The Misspent Money— it’s about the people. The book is specifically about policy agony—when you do policy and you know that the policy that you’re doing is not optimal.” (More President Obama stories.)