Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,talk.politics.misc,tx.politics
Subject: Re: Why is George Bush such a loser?
From: sichermn@beach.csulb.edu (Jeff Sicherman)
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 10:08:04 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Cal State Long Beach

In article <1992Nov5.160315.5035@awdprime.austin.ibm.com> curt@ekhadafi.austin.ibm.com (Curt Finch 903 2F021 curt@aixwiz.austin.ibm.com 512-838-2806) writes:
>mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:
>>religious right will take over the Republican Party (which will as
>>good as kill it) 
>
>Too late.  They already did.
>
>There are two big reasons Bush lost as I see it.
>
>1.  The Republicans are correctly perceived as interfering in the lives
>    of the American people.  Flag burning and Abortion are examples.
>    Most Americans don't like that.

  Abortion probably, but the whole 'flag' issue is more likely to be laid
at Georges feet given that he ran on it (well, symbolically via the pledge
of allegiance) and then supported the amendment attempt. I'm not sure it's
a general Republican issue or seen as that.

>
>2.  Bush was elected as "Reagan - Part 2" but he was no Ronald Reagan.
>    Under Reagan both taxes and regulation went down.  Way down.
>    The economy boomed.  Presto.  Landslide.
>
>    Under Bush taxes and regulation went up.  Considerably.  The
>    economy died.  Goodbye George.

  ON the other hand, it's also possible to argue that all the problems that
started and festered under Reagan came to negative fruition under George.
Like the Savings & Loan bailouts, like the effects of massive interest
payments on the national debt sapping federal revenue from more productive
use, like the failure to deal with health care costs and insurance reform,
like festering nuclear weapon facilities which got worse - and more
expensive to cleanup - under the neglect and lax enforcement and the
pressure to produce more for the Reagan defense buiildup.

  It's my contention that the single biggest contribution to George Bush's
defeat is Ronald Reagan.

>
>
>Social issues and the economy.
>
>If you look at the number of pages in the Federal Registry, a generally
>accepted seat of the pants measure of federal regulation, it went down
>considerably under Reagan.  Result - economic boom.

   Faulty reasoning. Correlation (especially time) is not cause and effect.
They could be unrelated, weakly related or possibly strongly so but you
haven't presented any evidence of the relation.

>
>If you look at the number of federal regulatory employees, yet another
>generally accepted seat of the pants measure of federal regulation, it
>also went down considerably under Reagan.  Result - economic boom.

   See above. However, there are other factors. Government service have
a perverse tendency to go up during harder economic times due to the
gov't providing safety-net services in greater amounts with concommitant
increased bureaucracy. Also the above mentioned bail-out programs also
increased federal roles and rolls.

>
>Under Reagan these both went down for the first time IN U.S. HISTORY.
>It really was a revolution.

  Possibly, of course some revolutions have distasterous results or
replace things with worse than they displaced.

>
>Bush went back to the same old game, both those measures went back up,
>it tanked the economy, and he lost.  Bush was not a fiscal conservative.
>Reagan was.

  Reagan was a fiscal moron, not a fiscal conservative. I'm not a fiscal
or any other kind of conservative but I respect the intelligence of the
real ones too much to class Reagan's policies on the economy along with
theirs. He just postponed the effects of his borrow and spend approach
to come home to roost on somebody elses watch. You can argue about how
much fault COngress has, but that doesn't absolve Reagan from clearly
unconservative economic policies. 

>
>
>If Clinton reduces overall government spending, (as a percent of GDP,) 
>Reduces the tax burden, (gov. income as a percent of GDP,) 
>Reduces regulation, (with Gore lurking around?) and 
>Doesn't build a protectionist wall (with Gephart around?)
>
>	then he'll get my vote next time.
>
>But that all seems exceedingly unlikely.

  If he's the slick politican people accuse him of being, he'll realize
that's the only way he has of being reelected. I'd say, given the campaign
and the vote, that he's on probation as President, so-to-speak.

>
>I think he'll cave in to the big spending Democratic Congress and
>devastate the economy and lose to Kemp in '96 in a huge landslide,
>if and only if the Republicans jettison assholes like Pat Buchanan
>and the Fanatic Right.

  I think it would be in their own best interests but it's going to
be hard. These people are committed to their program and have come
to control the party apparatus in many states. Remember how long it
took the Democratic party to bring itself back to the middle.

-- 
Jeff Sicherman
up the net without a .sig
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,talk.politics.misc,tx.politics