In the 1984 presidential campaign, Democratic candidate Walter Mondale declared that, if elected, he would raise taxes.

During his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, Mondale said: “By the end of my first term, I will reduce the Reagan budget deficit by two‑thirds. Let’s tell the truth. It must be done, it must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.”

The Minnesota senator was subsequently pummeled in the general election, losing every state but his own and the District of Columbia. Ronald Reagan won re-election in one of the biggest landslides in political history.

Maybe Mondale would have lost to Reagan anyway. But the lesson wasn’t lost on politicians. Voters say they want honesty from their politicians but, in reality, they don’t.

Some politicians are delusional. They are unable to accept the facts for what they are. Reaganomics is a failed policy. Only someone who continues to believe that man roamed the earth with dinosaurs and that climate change is a giant hoax continues to believe otherwise.

Mondale knew what he was talking about. As president, Reagan raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office, including four times in just two years. Former GOP Senator Alan Simpson pointed out that, “Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration – I was there.”

Reagan added $1.86 trillion to the national debt while he was in office – a time when $1 trillion was real money. By the time Reagan left office the debt had nearly doubled from when he was first elected.

Yet that hasn’t stopped every conservative Republican over the past 15 years from declaring themselves a tax-cut disciple of Reagan while ignoring his true record and the economic toll inflicted by Reaganomics at the federal and state levels.

Why the history lesson?

In the three decades since that 1984 presidential election, candidates in both political parties have been careful not to repeat Mondale’s mistake. Tax increases are the third-rail in politics. You can’t talk about them, even as your state or your nation are sinking in red ink.

Just ask Democrat Paul Davis who will likely be challenging Gov. Sam Brownback in the general election.

Davis has been critical of Gov. Brownback’s tax policies because they are not sustainable. Kansas is digging itself into a fiscal hole that is undercutting education, our state’s infrastructure, aid to children in low-income families and assistance to our elderly.

This isn’t some wild-eyed theory. It’s a fact.

While granting tax cuts to our wealthiest citizens and to corporations, the Brownback Administration’s solution to those who have seen cuts in food and child care assistance is simple: “Get a job.” Or if you already have a job, “Get a better job.” Unfortunately, since the Kansas Legislature has been reshaped in the image of Gov. Brownback, thanks to the Tea Party insurgency and considerable financial backing of the Koch brothers, there’s very little room for debate on the state’s fiscal policy.

Bringing reality back into Kansas politics has to begin with the Democratic wing and its gubernatorial candidate.

Davis obviously knows what must be done. In a recent economic message, he said that, if elected, he will stop automatic income tax reductions already passed by the legislature, but not yet in effect. That is only part of the solution. It would only prevent us from sliding deeper into debt.

But unless that plan is accompanied by tax increases, there is no way that the state can begin to restore much needed funding to programs that have suffered under Brownback and the GOP-controlled legislature.

And should Davis dare to mention tax increases – even though it’s the only reasonable solution that can bail us out of this disastrous course – one has to wonder if he would suffer the Mondale blowback?

To some degree it’s inevitable.

There will always be that part of the Republican base – the Tea Party wingnuts – who cheer efforts to shut down the IRS, who are opposed to government spending as long as it doesn’t affect their Social Security or Medicare payments and who don’t see the correlation between tax cuts to our wealthiest individuals while we increase property taxes to offset lost revenue.

Those individuals just don’t get it . . . never will.

There’s no reason we can’t treat the rest of the electorate in Kansas like adults.

It takes money to provide our children the best opportunities to succeed in the classroom, to make sure young children don’t have to go to bed hungry at night, to improve our highways and care for our elderly.

Doing what’s right and what’s best for our citizens comes with a price tag.

Conservative Republicans want you to believe they can keep marking down that cost like we’re in the bargain basement of a department store, but they’re wrong. They’re not just wrong . . . they’re lying to you. Those cuts come with a consequence to Kansas families and to our future.

Paul Davis should tell Kansas voters not what they want to hear, but what they need to hear.

Mondale paid the price for being honest. It’s time that ultraconservatives paid the price for being dishonest.

Rod Haxton is editor/owner of the Scott County Record. [email protected]