Newt Gingrich! for President! 2012 !

[miraja2]

Originally Posted by Riot

Politics. And Hilary's involvement. None of them can stand the other parties success. If Teddy Kennedy hadn't freaked out about it not being aggressive enough, we'd all have had Richard Nixon's mandated health care from our employers years ago. As it is, much of what ended up in the PPACA has plenty of Republican history and previous recommendation. They can't stand that a Dem finally gets credit for passing something (because most of us realize the PPACA isn't any aggressive or major "socalized medicine" overhaul. It's some tweeks to administration by private companies, in an effort to simply better provide consumer protections to people within the current system)

It's strange, what the GOP has turned into, in the past 5-6 years. Very bizzaro.

I think the conservative counterrevolution goes back a bit further, and I think you may be underestimating how ideologically opposed many Republicans in Congress were to health care reform by 1993.
You are surely correct that the Republican "conservatism" of the Nixon/Goldwater/Rockefeller era was a whole lot different than it is today, but I don't think it just suddenly changed in the W era. The Post-Regan Republicans of the 90s were already pretty set in their anti-government (by the standards of the 60s and 70s) ways.

[Danzig]

i don't think it has so much to do with who comes up with the idea-it's how citizens react to ideas, and the pols need for re-election.
look at the defense of marriage act. who signed it? and why? it all comes down to political points. at the time, the majority was against gay marriage. now, that's changed, and so has the govt in response.
the govt. doesn't change the people, it's the opposite.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by miraja2

I think the conservative counterrevolution goes back a bit further, and I think you may be underestimating how ideologically opposed many Republicans in Congress were to health care reform by 1993.
You are surely correct that the Republican "conservatism" of the Nixon/Goldwater/Rockefeller era was a whole lot different than it is today, but I don't think it just suddenly changed in the W era. The Post-Regan Republicans of the 90s were already pretty set in their anti-government (by the standards of the 60s and 70s) ways.

I do think that most of the fight against health care was that Clinton put Hilary - a non-elected official - in charge of it. Even in the Bush HR years, Republicans had a social conciousness, consideration for the old and poor and needy.

I think that's a good point, the negative influence Reagan had on the party. Yeah, he was the turning point, after Nixon ... I think that, after the night of Watergate, the country was so happy to get "such a nice guy", who "tore down that wall", they didn't care - or simply didn't notice - that he brought the financial policy disasters and the evangelicals with him. We all loved the man, nearly no matter what he did.

The financial policies that remain are what continue to astound me, the years of viewing the bad results, yet the blind adherence to completely ineffective "Reaganomics". But, when you are only interested in making good policy for the wealthy, not the entire country, it's a good thing.