AHC: U.S.A.'s Bush, Sr. somehow gets permission from people to break "Read My Lips, No New Taxes"?

Buchanan primaried Bush in '92, and this is a couple of commercials he used.

As part of the AHC, Bush agreed to a tax increase as part of an overall budget deal during the build-up of the Persian Gulf War of Fall '90. And he faced a Democratic Congress. I'm not making this up. These are the real facts.

Is there some creative / straightforward way he could have gone to the people, especially what could have been realistically argued to be a sample and representative group of Republican primary voters, and have been released from his promise?
 
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That's a pretty tall order. Presenting your case to a "sample and representative group" is different from presenting it to the people as a whole.
 

Towelie

Banned
The Norquist position on taxes all being equal was by no means a consensus in the party. Reagan several times in fact used arguments about tax inequality (he cut taxes across the board regardless) during his term in office and the Republican Party did not really dig into an insistence about no tax hikes period until '94.

Bush could have I believe gotten a modest tax increase on the wealthy through and retained the trust and support of the party grassroots.

Buchanan's initial momentum was based off of the fact that Bush neglected taking the primary seriously and that New Hampshire was a state tailored made for Buchanan's anti-tax, protectionist message. But he never even won New Hampshire.
 
It would probably be easier for him never to have made the promise. He could have won without it, considering his sizable margin of victory over Dukakis.

So let's say he never makes the promise. It hurts him but not badly enough to lose or even approach losing. Then he signs the tax increase as he needs to. The Democrats don't have a leg to stand on in '92, since the ad campaign was less about a tax hike and more about breaking his word. Bush makes up enough ground and wins in '92.
 
The Democrats don't have a leg to stand on in '92, since the ad campaign was less about a tax hike and more about breaking his word. Bush makes up enough ground and wins in '92.
Just to be clear, this was former Nixon speechwriter and conservative columnist Pat Buchanan taking on Bush in the Republican primary. I think Pat might be notable in (?) other ways, but he took on a sitting President in that president's own party.

This plays off what one political commentator said recently about the "your own teammate" effect. For example, some kids are playing baseball and there's a big argument about whether someone is safe or out. During the course of the argument, one person let's on that the runner might have been. And as the argument continues, another kid says, "Look, your own teammate is saying . . . "

And this commentator applied this to Nixon vs. McGovern in '72 and I think a couple of other races.
 
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Just to be clear, this was former Nixon speechwriter and conservative columnist Pat Buchanan taking on Bush in the Republican primary. I think Pat might be notable in (?) other ways, but he took on a sitting President in that president's own party.

This plays off what one political commentator said recently about the "your own teammate" effect. For example, some kids are playing baseball and there's a big argument about whether someone is safe or out. During the course of the argument, one person let's on that the runner might have been. And as the argument continues, another kid says, "Look, your own teammate is saying . . . "

And this commentator applied this to Nixon vs. McGovern in '72 and I think a couple of other races.

Buchanan may have started it, but the Democrats weren't above using it in their attacks on Bush. If you avert the promise, you avert anyone - GOP, Dem, Reform, you name it - being able to use it against him. Sure, they can get on him for actually raising taxes, but no one can use his own words against him. I'm not sure if that's enough to win Bush a second term - the economy was in rough shape and Clinton was young and charismatic and kind of a breath of fresh air against the stodgy Bush - but it could only help that such a statement can't be Ed against him.
 
That's a pretty tall order. Presenting your case to a "sample and representative group" is different from presenting it to the people as a whole.
What if Bush had skillfully used delay and uncertainty in his negotiations with Congress?

Say, he goes to a middle America state like Ohio (a good state since it has long track record of going with presidential winner), and he says, I'm going to give a couple of speeches, and then we're going to take a poll of Ohio voters.

I'd still like to see a timeline on the build-up for the Persian Gulf War.
 
Maybe if Saddam Hussein hits some U.S. target harder and he can portray it as "We need to break this promise to raise taxes to fund the war effort" then anyone who attacks it can be accused of wanting to cut funds for the troops.
 
Maybe if Saddam Hussein hits some U.S. target harder and he can portray it as "We need to break this promise to raise taxes to fund the war effort" . . .
Let me tell you, as someone who was 26 during the Fall build-up and in a number of ways this was my political coming of age, this war was pretty damn popular!

Not with with me, however, nor with the 10 to 15% of citizens who thought it was a bad deal, but with the other 85% of our fellow citizens, yes, pretty popular.

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The Big One, what if RR had spoken in favor of a modest tax increase in a time of potential war as clearly the responsible thing to do?
 
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The Democrats don't have a leg to stand on in '92, since the ad campaign was less about a tax hike and more about breaking his word.

They absolutely do have a leg to stand on. Bush's approval ratings were falling like a rock thanks to the bad economy. Really, the "no new taxes" thing is overestimated when it comes to the 1992 election. You don't lose by seven points merely because of one broken promise.
 
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/15/world/meast/gulf-war-fast-facts/

Timeline:

August 2, 1990 - Iraq invades Kuwait. . . .

August 2, 1990 - The United Nations passes a resolution denouncing Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

August 6, 1990 - The United Nations imposes sanctions on Iraq.

August 7, 1990 - U.S. President George H. W. Bush orders the start of Operation Desert Shield.

August 8, 1990 - Iraq formally annexes Kuwait.

August 25, 1990 - The United Nations passes a resolution to allow enforcement of the embargo by military means.

November 29, 1990 - The United Nations authorizes use of force after January 15, 1991.

January 16-17, 1991 - Operation Desert Storm begins.
I think this is a pretty good timeline. But if someone would like to find another and/or bring out other aspects, please jump on in.
 
They absolutely do have a leg to stand on. Bush's approval ratings were falling like a rock thanks to the bad economy. Really, the "no new taxes" thing is overestimated when it comes to the 1992 election. You don't lose by seven points merely because of one broken promise.
This.

The "No New Taxes" bit gets remembered because it plays into a Republican talking point (that you should never raise taxes); the Democratic takeaway from the same election was "it's the economy, stupid." As others have noted, it didn't even allow Buchanan to win the state he targeted with it. It was, at best, a tiny factor in the general. If people like Norquist weren't doing their best to keep it in peoples' minds, it would have been mostly forgotten by now.

More broadly, it's hard to get permission from "the people" to do anything; "the people" aren't one single group. He could have marketed it better, but he'd still be vulnerable among the people who cared about breaking his word. And the economy would still be in trouble, which was what ended up turfing him in the first place.

In reality, unless you have an abysmally poorly run campaign (I think we can all think of an example), most of the race is going to be determined by the fundamentals.
 
Easy... continue the war until Saddam is toppled as in 48 hours of more ground operations and the RG is pocketed and the hundreds of thousands of Shia and Kurds topple the regime.

The stories from the next year are all focused on Iraq and its democratic transition not on the US economy and Saddam butchering the people we told to rise up with the American people starting to question if we really won the war.

Frankly the decision to end the Gulf War a bit early hunts us to this day and did cost Bush 41 reelection.
 
Alternatively, the occupation turns out disastrously, much like OTL's occupation in 2003 on, and the US populace (which hasn't undergone 9/11 in this history, and is thus much less tolerant of casualties in overseas operation (remember Somalia at roughly the same time), and the news focus on Iraq as a disaster plus the OTL economic downturn means no one remembers the tax pledge when they discuss the disastrous Bush presidency (there being no Bush the Lesser as president ITTL).

So either way, the pledge gets forgotten!
 
. . . not on the US economy and Saddam butchering the people we told to rise up . . .
President Bush can win on points but that's not enough. His defenders can say he was recommending to the people of Iraq that they overthrow their dictator, but he wasn't promising to back that up.

Frankly, I think we were hoping for a rightist coup among Saddam's generals. And not for a populist uprising of any sort which may or may not keep the oil flowing through western corporations.

And we had sanctions for the next 12 years, including sanctions which directly or indirectly hit food and medicine. A predictable number of deaths of children over these next twelve years, and really anyone who's more vulnerable including seniors, but not the damn dictator we were clumsily targeting.

Those of us who lean toward the pacifist side and toward the humanitarian side, need to keep in mind that in many ways the 'sanctions' were worse than the war. And we don't need to just choose from a very limited menu, but be quite a bit more creative.

Baseline almost always swamps the dramatic stuff. As an example, even today multinationals market infant formula in slick ways. They imply it's healthier for babies. Not if the family doesn't have dependable access to clean water, and not if the family doesn't have enough money to buy enough of the formula. This one issue is probably more important than all the flashy wars we see. Of course, we have to do both. As human beings, we're always trying to achieve multiple goals. Sometimes we're better at it, and sometimes not.
 
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