Republicans Have Exaggerated About Inflation To Attack Biden. History Suggests That Won’t Change With Harris Atop the Ticket

Republicans spent months pounding President Joe Biden over what they claim is rampant inflation, sensing a real opportunity for victory in November. The only thing likely to change now that Vice President Kamala Harris is the likely Democratic nominee for president is the name in the negative advertisements. The GOP inflation rhetoric dates to the summer of 2022, when the Consumer Price Index reached 9.1% and inflation became the story in the U.S. Instead of acknowledging the impact of global supply chain disruptions that occurred during the pandemic, Republicans simplified the economics of inflation, transforming it into a finger-pointing political language that tapped into the broader economic anxieties Americans were experiencing.

Even though inflation has dropped dramatically — to 3.7% in June 2024, less than the increase in wages — Republicans have continued to create an image of economic catastrophe if Harris wins in November. “Here’s the truth,” said Florida Senator Rick Scott in a recent press release, “the Biden administration’s spending policies has [sic] caused the inflation that we’re seeing and the economic devastation it is producing.” 

One reason this rhetoric and fear mongering won’t change with Harris atop the Democratic ticket is that it’s part of a playbook that the GOP has deployed for over 70 years. Going back to the Eisenhower era, Republicans have simplified the sources of inflation and exaggerated its perceived impacts to create a misleading narrative that Democratic spending policies single-handedly create inflation, while the GOP is the only countermeasure. 

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.”

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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.

The GOP’s inflation narrative faced a crucial test when Republican Richard Nixon took office. Contrary to party promises, however, inflation kept growing thanks to Nixon and his Federal Reserve Chair, Arthur Burns, who prioritized economic growth over bringing prices down. Things got worse in 1973 when the Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an oil embargo in response to the Arab-Israeli War. The global price of oil nearly tripled, sending gas prices skyrocketing and forcing millions of Americans to wait in exhaustingly long lines for gas — what historian Meg Jacobs described as a new and “completely terrifying,” experience.

Even worse, skyrocketing prices didn't mean low unemployment as a then-common economic model had always assumed. The surprising combination of rising unemployment and surging prices produced a new term: “stagflation." Even though this happened on Republicans’ watch, they still saw political opportunity in the brewing economic disaster.

Rather than acknowledging the role played by low interest rates — which Nixon championed —and the oil embargo, he argued that the problem was high government spending and union demands for wage increases. “If they continue pushing prices and wages rapidly forward,” Nixon declared in 1974, sounding like Republicans in 1958, “this will continue the inflationary pressures.” Only by following the quintessential Republican program of slashed spending and stagnant union wages, Nixon told Americans, could they win their “fight against inflation.” 

In the mid-1970s, inflation continued to be “enemy number one” in the words of President Gerald Ford. That made it a top priority for Ford’s successor, Democrat Jimmy Carter. Yet, unlike his Republican predecessors, he acknowledged a wider range of inflationary drivers, including the supply shocks — food supply shortages in addition to the oil embargo — and the expansionary monetary policy that increased capital investment and aggregate demand. Yet, by acknowledging that such a wide range of factors contributed to inflation, Carter was also conceding that his administration had a limited ability to control it.

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While Carter grappled with the complexities of inflation, Republicans, led by Ronald Reagan, saw an opportunity to revive their simpler, more politically potent narrative. During their lone presidential debate, moderator Howard K. Smith asked Carter and Reagan, “Can inflation in fact be controlled?” Following the now familiar Republican script, Reagan explained that, “We don’t have inflation because the people are living too well. We have inflation because the government is living too well.” For Reagan, who dramatized inflation as “violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hitman,” there was only one cause of inflation — government spending.

Because inflation remained relatively low in the following decades, it wasn’t a major political issue. But when prices surged above nine percent in 2022, Republicans pounced at the opportunity. They resurrected the tactic that had worked so well for them between the 1950s and early 1980s, exaggerating the perceived impacts of inflation and insisting that it had only one source — government spending. 

This maneuver not only generated the misleading impression that Democrats created inflation and that a Republican-led government would somehow fix the problem. It also convinced many Americans that there was a much bigger problem than actually existed. Economic growth is up, unemployment is at 4.1%, real wages (adjusted for inflation) have grown by 0.6% in the last year, and the rate of inflation has gone from 9.1% in 2022 to 3.7% in 2024.

But none of that seems to matter to Republican nominee Donald Trump. Embracing the power of simple and dramatic political messaging, Trump declared that inflation is “crushing, just simply crushing our people like never before” and “killing our country.” He even falsely claimed in his acceptance speech for the GOP nomination that “we’ve suffered the worst inflation we’ve ever had.”

And the cause? Democrats wasting “trillions of dollars” on “the Green New Scam.” By simplifying the causes of inflation and dramatizing its perceived impacts, Trump and the Republicans are tapping into a playbook that has served the GOP well politically for over 70 years. And the success of this tactic reveals an enduring challenge: communicating complex economic realities in a political landscape that rewards simple and dramatic messaging.

Johnny Fulfer, a doctoral student in the department of history at Indiana University, recently published “The Goldbugs Go Global: The Philippines, China, and the Foundations of Development.” He is also the editor of The Economic Historian.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.