TODAY’S REPUBLICANS have as much trouble with their identity as Democrats, with the wacky Tea Party wing giving them a semblance of spine. That’s a problem nationally, however, with Jeb Bush laying it out in a Bloomberg news article today. One of his biggest issues with Mitt Romney is on immigration and Hispanics, but it’s the lack of bipartisan compromise that has him opining about Ronald Reagan and his father.
“Ronald Reagan would have, based on his record of finding accommodation, finding some degree of common ground, as would my dad — they would have a hard time if you define the Republican party — and I don’t — as having an orthodoxy that doesn’t allow for disagreement, doesn’t allow for finding some common ground,” Bush said, adding that he views the hyper-partisan moment as “temporary.”
“Back to my dad’s time and Ronald Reagan’s time – they got a lot of stuff done with a lot of bipartisan suport,” he said. Reagan “would be criticized for doing the things that he did.”
Grover Norquist is not amused. From Sahil Kapur:
“There’s a guy who watched his father throw away his presidency on a 2:1 [ratio of spending cuts to tax increases] promise,” Norquist said of Bush. “And he thinks he’s sophisticated by saying that he’d take a 10:1 promise. He doesn’t understand — he’s just agreed to walk down the same alley his dad did with the same gang. And he thinks he’s smart. You walk down that alley, you don’t come out. You certainly don’t come out with 2:1 or 10:1.”
I’m still amazed Republicans continue to ignore Ronald Reagan’s collapse on conservative economics, moving to large tax increases, at the same time Iran-Contra unfolded under his nose. It’s an an impeachable offense if he were a Democrat.
However, what’s astounding is who Jeb Bush blames for the lack of “common ground.” You guessed it, Pres. Obama:
“His first year could have been a year of enormous accomplishment had he focused on things where there was more common ground,” he said, arguing that Obama had made a “purely political calculation” to run a sharply partisan administration.
In Pres. Obama’s first year in office he was blessed with a Democratic Congress. What Obama did was ignore his own base and the polling that the public option was backed by the people, instead choosing deals with private insurance and big Pharma, selling them out. Yes, he chose to get health care passed, but that wasn’t a bad decision, it’s just the outcome was a compromise with himself and Democratic ideals. If the Supreme Court comes down against ACA, what’s passed will certainly serve as prologue.
Any Republican saying Pres. Obama didn’t attempt “common ground” in his first year is playing the press and ignoring the actual behavior of Republicans. Mr. Bush proves that point by lauding Ronald Reagan, who might have done a deal or two with Democrats, but who was an overtly partisan Republican, which showed in his union busting, de-regulating, budget blowing policies that exploded the national debt and got the U.S. into crisis mode economically that inevitably led to William Jefferson Clinton bailing the Republicans out.
It’s a tough job, but Democrats seem to always have to do it.
Pres. Obama was handed a miserable economic reality and the problem with his solution was that it was mostly Republican lite; a little stimulus, instead of what was required, backed up by buying into deficit delirium on the way to giving lip service to austerity. Pres. Obama was more than happy to side with Wall Street, big banks and the moneyed interests, while hedging on housing, which is exactly what Mitt Romney would have done as well.
So, Jeb Bush really has no reason to be so cranky. He’s just pissed that Pres. Obama’s Blue Dog Republicanism is not rightward thinking enough, while Mitt Romney’s idea of immigration reform is just one step away from Patrick J. Buchanan.
As for Grover Norquist, he’s a scourge, someone who would have helped primary Ronald Reagan who raised taxes 11 times during his presidency. Quoting former Reagan economic adviser Bruce Bartlett, this time last year:
[...] Over the next few years, Reagan came under the influence of Rep. Jack Kemp (R-NY), Wall Street Journal editorial writer Jude Wanniski, economist Arthur Laffer and other proponents of “supply-side economics.” While skeptical at first, in 1979 Reagan endorsed the Kemp-Roth tax bill, which would have cut statutory income tax rates by about 30 percent across the board. After winning the White House in 1980, Reagan sent the Kemp-Roth proposal to Congress and it was enacted in August 1981.
Almost immediately upon enactment of the 1981 tax cut, Reagan came under enormous pressure to do something about the federal budget deficit. While his preferred approach was to cut spending as much as necessary, it was not politically possible to… His aides began pressuring him to support a tax increase. Conservative activists were appalled that Reagan would even consider such a thing, but he eventually endorsed the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982. According to a Treasury Department analysis, it raised taxes by close to one percent of GDP, equivalent to $150 billion per year today, and was probably the largest peacetime tax increase in American history.[11]
This was just the first of many tax increases that President Reagan endorsed and signed into law. There were 11 major tax increases during his administration. And this doesn’t count the fact that Reagan intentionally delayed the start of tax indexing, which was part of the 1981 tax bill, until 1985 so as to capture a lot of anticipated bracket-creep for the Treasury. In fact, it was the failure of inflation to come in as fast as White House economists expected that created much of the deficit problem. I estimate that lower than expected inflation and the loss of bracket creep was responsible for about half the budget deficit in 1981 and 1982.[12] It’s also worth noting that the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which was revenue-neutral in the long run, was a fairly substantial revenue-raiser its first year, increasing taxes by $18.6 billion or 0.41 percent of GDP.[13]…
Much as I loathed the liar in chief even he would have trown Grover out of the Oval Office if he tried to get him to sign his stupid pledge….or he would sign it and THEN raise taxes anyway.
I’d say Option B would have been more likely— Reagan was always saying one thing, and then doing something else, and the conservatives would blissfully ignore the constant flip flops because his electoral power was far more important to them than actual principles. The plan all along was to ride Reagan’s popularity through eight years and then deconstruct his presidency and re-invent the past.
Which is why “Pro-Life” and Anti-Tax drips like Sean Hannity can worship at the shrine of Reagan, who didn’t do one thing to ban abortions and who raised taxes more than any President in history up to that time. It’s why deficit hawks adore Reagan, who exploded the deficit. It’s why “No Compromise” foreign policy neocons adore Reagan, who traded arms for hostages and cut and ran from Lebanon. It’s why Constitutionalists love Reagan, who tore the Constitution to shreds with his illegal wars in Central America. They have no interest in the truth, just the legend, which is entirely of their creation.
jjamale stop it….this is twice I have agreed with you and it’s making me feel…..funny.
We’ve really gone down a rabbit hole when Jeb Bush can write something like this after Obama was in Florida, literally embracing him and his public school privatization projects while folks in Wisconsin were freezing at demonstrations in Madison.
It is true that the majority of Americans support a healthcare bill that includes a public option. The House bill did include a public option. The problem was in the Senate where Republicans universally rejected the senate healthcare bill. President Obama did not compromise with Republican Senators, he reached a compromise with senate Democrats in order to defeat a promised filibuster led by all Republicans and at least four Democratic senators who promised to join the Republicans in filbustering any bill to death if the senate bill contained a public option.
The four Democrats who vowed to kill any democratic healthcare bill that included a public option all had close ties through family members with the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
Sen. Lieberman who wife had served on the board of directors of several health insurance companies. Sen Even Bayh whose wife served and still does on the board of directors of the largest private health insurer, Wellpoint. Sen Blanche Lincoln whose family owns a string of drugstores and Sen. Ben Nelson a former Nebraska insurance commissioner with ties to the health insurance industry.
The only way a healthcare bill could have passed was if the House Democrats agreed to the Senate bill as written. They bit their tongues and agreed to accept the Senate bill as is without a public option.
It could be argued that President Obama should have demanded a public option be included in a healthcare bill, but it would have been an excercise in futility with any healthcare reform being declared dead for at least another decade.
A healthcare bill, once passed, can be amended over time to include a public option.
It won’t happen anytime soon but eventually the chances of having a public option is far greater than if no healthcare bill was passed.
I know I’ll be excoriated in this forum for saying it, but the lack of a public option is not the disaster it’s cracked up to be. It would have been better to have it but the lack of it didn’t have to be a deal breaker.
I’ve learned from experts that Medicare for all was actually an easier, more effective way to go.
The point really is to have a wider selection of options, not pre-selected private companies with the deck stacked by the government.
It is a fact, however, which was my point, that public polling was in favor of the public option, as were progressives, so Pres. Obama had a wide group behind him to back him up. That didn’t happen with ACA, which was the dumbest, most counterproductive political move, revealing Barack Obama’s tone deafness when it comes to doing things for people, while choosing the most popular item to counter the critics.
By the way, insurance cos are now including automatically some elements of ACA, like covering kids to 26. Everyone’s preparing for whatever the Supreme Court might decide.
May I ask you to please define what a 26 year old kid is.
I only ask because when I was 26 I was an ault working, living on my own and trying to give back to my parents for paying for my education.
Thanks!
I have always understood that President Reagan was a “Middle of the Road” Republican. In his diary he states quite clearly that he is in favor of the “New Deal” and what has come from it and strongly against the “Great Society” and the mess its policies created.
I’ve learned from experts that the main problems with our system are the skyrocketing cost of care aided by a runaway fee-for-service system and falling quality. I have no problem with Medicare for all but once we finish arguing over what services will be covered in such a system, we will still face the cost problem. Governments and insurance companies both act as blunt instruments to control cost. The only way out of that situation is for the providers to change the way they practice. The ACA has incentives built in to encourage that process; we’ll see if it works. Medicare as it exists now is requiring practices to set up Patient Centered Medical Homes or Accountable Care Organizations. A Medicare for all system would have to do the same.
Sasha, the ACA definition is a dependent or former dependent age 26 or under who has no other group coverage. Some policies already provided this up to a minimum age 19, some all the way to age 29 depending on the state.