DBWI: Ford Defeats Reagan
- Thread starter Israel
- Start date
I once read a T.L. (it never got finished) that Ford won when Reagan chose Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania as his running mate, causing the Mississippi delegation to defect to Ford. Moreover, it ends up that Reagan defects Carter in 1980! How implausible.
But it fell into hiatus with the economy falling into another trough in 1982, with no sign of recovery. That was pretty plausible.
I doubt that Ford would nearly beat Carter thanks to Carter's honesty, of course. I still think Bush would win the Republican nomination and his landslide in 1980, and bring the Republicans back to moderation, and back into electability.
I meant Reagan running again and winning after challenging Ford and losing.
The Republicans would've been electable even if Dole won the nomination over Bush. They won with 300 electoral votes in 2000, with Kay Hutchinson as their candidate!
That's true. But I found the Reagan administration to go pretty plausibly.
Yeah, but that was after the dreadful Metanet (OOC: Internet) crash and the recession that followed killed off President Harkins' chances. And Hutchinson was and still is to an extent pretty inspiring as the first woman president.
Dole wouldn't have seen Helms jump ticket, true, but he also would not have won over the support of Carter-supporting moderates. Bush ran as a rational moderate and attracted the very same moderates Carter was able to attract in 1976.
You underestimate the invisible hand
Indeed. Clark didn't stand a chance in `04!
But Bush did make an appeal to foreign policy hawks
I think Reagan's supply-side economics (as we saw with Rumsfeld [1989-1993] and the Savings and Loans Recession) would have been a total failure. The fact of the matter is, tax cuts don't increase government revenue. It decreases it.
Any Republican would have beaten Wesley "intern the Muslims" Clark in 2004. It's the one time I've ever voted Republican.
Not really. He did stress "foreign policy pragmatism" a lot, after all. Unless you count choosing Rumsfeld as his VP an appeal to hawks.
Ford cut taxes, and the economy got a lot better. Reagan mentioned that, as a matter of fact, in one of his campaign ads that year.
Indeed.
Rumsfeld was a hawk, all right!
And besides, in the second 1980 debate, Bush said "we have the largest army in the world. We have a responsibility to our interests, and in all frankness we shouldn't be afraid to utilize it."
That backfired...
But Ford wasn't a supply-sider. His cuts were a fair bit more shallow than what the supply-siders advocated for.
And the economy didn't really get "a lot better". It improved a bit, for sure, but inflation hadn't really gone down.
Again, Rummy pursued Reagan's economic plan, and it caused the 1990-1994 recession. It's a good think Brown got us out of that. If he hadn't gotten shot in '97, the late 1990s recession would have never happened!
He was able to clean that, of course, with that whole positive ad campaign. And Helms calling Carter a "homosexual" did help Bush get a lot of conservative support.
OOC: Inflation fell 6.58% from 1975 to 1977. In 1978, inflation started up again...
Indeed
Again, doubt it. He did consider running again, but chose against it, and rather supported Dole while successfully running for the Senate that year
Well, I stand corrected. Still, Rumsfeld's whole supply-side experiment showed that tax cuts on the scale that Reagan advocated for would drive the economy back into recession.
Yep. Reagan was 69 in 1980, and he began to suffer the pangs of old health. By 1980, he was just out of power for too long.
Reagan was in an interview in 1991, and was asked about Rumsfeld's tax cuts. Off the record he said, "I think that we do need to cut taxes, but we don't need to be reckless."
He stayed out of the spotlight in the Senate, though won re-election in 1986 and 1992 by wide margins.
Indeed. Rumsfeld's cuts led him to declare, in that interview, "I am no longer a supply-sider".
And Rumsfeld did use the 1976 Republican platform as inspiration for his cuts.
His resignation speech to Senate in which he announced his Alzheimer's on August 18th, 1994 was pretty sad. But then again, he was showing signs of Alzheimer's before 1994. He shouldn't have ran in 1986.
Remember when he voted for higher taxes 3 times?
Jokingly, of course
Yes, as the inspiration. He took Reagan's rather moderate policy, and then put it on steroids.
But he was not diagnosed until 1994. He did not know.
Yes, but that was during the Rumsfeld years.