Inflation has been an important political issue since the Revolutionary War, but the GOP's inflation playbook dates to 1952, when Dwight Eisenhower ran a series of ads about the topic during his presidential bid. “I paid $24 for these groceries—look, for this little,” a middle-aged woman moped in one television commercial. “A few years ago, those same groceries cost you $10,” Eisenhower told viewers. “Now 24, next year 30—that’s what will happen unless we have a change.”
Even though the inflation rate was relatively low in the early 1950s, it remained a potent weapon because of lingering anxiety about prices from the early post-war years. President Harry Truman’s unwillingness to embrace price controls led to a sky-high 14.4% inflation rate in 1947.
The Federal Reserve tightened credit markets, and inflation dropped to 7.7% in 1948 then to -1% in 1949, but it subsequently climbed back up, creating a sense of instability and stoking fears that it could jump again.
In this context of economic uncertainty, Eisenhower and his Republican allies created an image of inflation as one of the greatest threats to the nation — one caused only by the opposition. “The wanton extravagance of the inflationary policies of the Administration in power,” Republicans asserted in their 1952 party platform, “have cut the value of the dollar in half and imposed the most confiscatory taxes in our history.”
Prices fluctuated during Eisenhower’s term, but even with him at the helm, inflation remained a political weapon. During the 1958 midterm election campaign, Republicans warned of the dire inflationary possibilities of a Democratic Congress. This time, they also blamed labor unions’ demands for higher wages — since unions were Democratic allies — in addition to Democrats’ desire to spend “recklessly.”
The GOP cared little about what actually drove higher prices and ignored other factors that contributed, like supply shortages combined with a growth in consumer demand. Rather than providing a nuanced explanation of the economics of inflation, they created a simplified and easily digestible narrative that aimed to convince working class voters that Democrats would make everything from groceries to gas cost more, while Republicans would keep prices low.
While this message failed to stave off big losses in 1958, the GOP still embraced this tactic once again when prices began crawling back up in the mid-1960s. It was all the fault of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs, they asserted — a narrative that ignored the contribution of factors like an intensifying Cold War arms race with the Soviet Union, and relatively low interest rates.