I don't think the Republican position has been better than the Democrats, but unless there was a lot of context taken out, that quotation is all about spin.

Look at the deficit spike in 2008:

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=1990_2010&view=1&expand=&units=k&fy=fy12&chart=G0-fed&bar=0&stack=1&size=m&title=&state=US&color=c&local=s

I want to see this

"The propensity for politicians to leverage tax dollars into greater and greater levels of debt argues against the wisdom of such proposals, however. In a recent update to ground-breaking research begun in the 1980s, Richard Vedder and Stephen Moore have shown that “over the entire post World War II era through 2009 each dollar of new tax revenue was associated with $1.17 of new spending."