In case you missed it, here's President Obama speech from yesterday at the University of Vermont.
The entire speech is good, and it serves as a preview of where the president intends to hit the Republicans during the general election, but I want to highlight a specific part beginning at the 11:50 mark
Over the past 2 years, businesses have added nearly 4 million jobs. Our manufacturers are creating jobs for the first time since the 1990s. Our economy is getting stronger, the economy is accelerating, all of which means the last thing we can afford to do is to go back to the same policies that got us into the mess in the first place.
That's what the other side wants to do. They make no secret about it. They want to go back to the days where Wall Street played by its own rules. They want to go back to the days when insurance companies could do whatever they wanted to. They want to continue to spend trillions of dollars on tax breaks for the wealthiest individuals in America even if it means adding to the deficit, or gutting education, or gutting investments in clean energy, or hurting Medicare.
Their philosophy is simple. You are on your own.
You're on your own. If you're out or work. Can't find a job. Tough luck. You're on your own.
You don't have healthcare. That's your problem. You're on your own.
If you're born into poverty, lift yourself up with your own boot straps, even if you don't have boots. You're on your own.
They believe that's how America has advanced. That's the cramp narrow conception they have of liberty, and they are wrong. They are wrong.
[...]
We have always understood that we wouldn’t win the race for new jobs and businesses and middle class security if we were just applying some ‘you’re on your own economics.' It's been tried in our history and it hasn't worked.
It didn't work when we tried it in the decade before the great depression. It didn't work when we tried it in the last decade. We just tried this. What they're peddling has been tried. It did not work.
This repudiation of Reaganomics, or as the president is calling it 'you're on your own economics,' is clearly going to be a defining element of the 2012 campaign. And it should be. Because the president is right. This has all been done before, and it has never worked. It's time to put the nail in the coffin.
If you have the time, I recommend watching the entire speech. There's a few very amusing digs at Congress and Republican "values" in there.