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Rachel Maddow completely dismantled the Republican claims that President Obama has grown the size of government since taking office.

Here is the video from MSNBC:

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Maddow said,

It’s a default Republican talking point to accuse all Democrats of wanting to grow government and to say that instead government should be shrunk. Despite that Republican talking point, government did grow more than at any time since World War II under their Republican president, under George W. Bush and a Republican congress, and this Democratic president is proposing shrinking government, but that will not interrupt the talking point, which alleges exactly the opposite of what’s really happening. It’s the same thing on taxes on regulations. It is a default Republican epithet that Democrats want to increase taxes and they want to increase regulations…So they say not only does President Obama want to increase taxes and regulations, he already has. And while that talking point is a tried and true talking point, it’s an applause line, right? What the Obama administration has actually done bears no resemblance to the talking point, and is therefore a bit of a flabbergast for Republicans on this. In January of last year, it has gone down the memory hole for Republicans, but President Obama issued an executive order and wrote an op-ed in the rabidly right wing Wall Street Journal editorial page calling for a government wide pruning of unnecessary or overly burdensome regulations. In February of 2009, President Obama implementing either the largest or one of the largest middle class tax cuts in American history. That was part of the stimulus actually, but you’d never know it from the way that the Republicans talk about it. The administration also brags on having passed 17 tax cuts specifically for small business. So naturally, keep denouncing him as raising taxes, piling on the regulations, and raising taxes.”

Maddow explained that the Republican talking points always stay the same against Democrats, even when they don’t make sense. The MSNBC host also pointed out that the Republican invectives have become disconnected from what is actually happening in governing.

Not only has Obama shrunk the size the government, but he has reduced it more than Republican hero Ronald Reagan ever did. In 2011, President Obama became the biggest tax cutter in American history. Obama has cut more taxes than any other president in American history. Obama’s move to reorganize and cut government overlap represents who this president really is, and how he governs.

President Obama isn’t a tax raising, government growing, socialist. Obama is a centrist Democrat who has more politically in common with Bill Clinton and JFK than he does FDR and LBJ. The right wing portrayal of Obama is so out of touch with reality that only Republicans buy it. The far left is angry with Obama because they thought they were getting FDR, or at least what they thought FDR was, and instead have gotten a moderate Democrat.

Obama has done more to cut government than any Republican president in the modern era, but this hasn’t stopped the GOP from playing to their base with outrageous claims that have no basis in fact. In recent months Obama has flummoxed the Republican Party, and with each voyage into their alternate Obama universe, Republicans take another step away from winning the White House in 2012.

Image: Rachel Maddow Show