No Gipper - An Alternate 1980s

Bush was always fairly uncomfortable with the Religious Right. Granted-he said that religious belief was a necessary part of citizenship-but the world of Christian Conservatism wasn't one to which he belonged. The religious right will not have the same seat at the table. I'm not sure how the AIDS crisis unfolds with Bush in Reagan's place given that condition.

Bush wasn't charismatic the way Reagan was and was less prone to seeing rhetoric. The message in 1980 will be, "Carter is particularly awful" rather than broader shift Reagan advocated. Deregulation is still going to happen to some extent but there won't be the same accompanying rhetoric. There also will not be the lopsided 1981 tax cut.

Conceivably, the cultural "Greed is Good" ethos doesn't happen without the 1981 cut and Reagan's rhetoric.
 
Bush was always fairly uncomfortable with the Religious Right. Granted-he said that religious belief was a necessary part of citizenship-but the world of Christian Conservatism wasn't one to which he belonged. The religious right will not have the same seat at the table. I'm not sure how the AIDS crisis unfolds with Bush in Reagan's place given that condition.

Bush wasn't charismatic the way Reagan was and was less prone to seeing rhetoric. The message in 1980 will be, "Carter is particularly awful" rather than broader shift Reagan advocated. Deregulation is still going to happen to some extent but there won't be the same accompanying rhetoric. There also will not be the lopsided 1981 tax cut.

Conceivably, the cultural "Greed is Good" ethos doesn't happen without the 1981 cut and Reagan's rhetoric.

So perhaps things are culturally more similar to the mid-1960s, when the economy was fairly good and the counterculture movement wasn't THAT prominent yet, but not as idyllic as the 1950s?
 
Perhaps. But since the Carter deficit is not what Reagan's would become and because of countervailing pressures I'm not certain Bush would be able to advocate for full austerity measures. There's still a constituency for lowering taxes-particularly among the Reaganite right to which Bush would feel some pressure to appeal. Bush isn't a supply side true believer-which means he will not advocate for a cut as large as Reagan's-but a smaller cut a long the lines of what he advocated in his race against Reagan might well be enacted here. Bush would also be inclined to increase defense spending beyond the Carter level to some extent if not to the point Reagan did. Given those conditions the only path for austerity in 1981 would be in discretionary spending-and even Reagan could not move the Democratic Congress to support drastic cuts that would paper over reduced revenue and increased defense spending.

We're as likely to see some sort of tax increases in the years after 1981 as under Reagan-perhaps more so since Bush will actually care about the increasing deficit. Bush here will not have made a no new taxes pledge so he probably has more political leeway here than he did after 1988.
 
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