Republicans become more moderate and pragmatic after Reagan. POD(s)?

I know Republicans moved toward the outskirts. But give me a POD or two where they move toward the center.

Maybe, for example, the fact that President Reagan signed a tax reduction in '81, and then a tax increase to partially offset in '82. Maybe some Republicans might reason that Reagan erred on the side of economic growth at the expense of deficits, which is not such a bad side to err on. That Reagan himself was a moderate.

But I don't think this particular example is enough. Please give me a little more.
 
Reagan doesn't back Volcker to the hilt in 1981.

Robert Samuelson said:
As the gruesome social costs of Volcker’s policies mounted — the monthly unemployment rate would ultimately rise to a post-World War II high of 10.8 percent — Reagan’s approval ratings plunged. In May 1981, they were at 68 percent; by January 1983, 35 percent.

Still, he supported the Fed. “I have met with Chairman Volcker several times during the past year,” he said in early 1982. “I have confidence in the announced policies of the Federal Reserve.”
[...]
By October 1982, inflation had fallen to 5 percent

Which gives him just enough time for the public to feel the economy bouncing back as the money supply is loosened to win a huge re-election.

So let's say he doesn't back Volcker the first time. Just like Volcker didn't have enough support from Carter (or a proper sense of how hard it was) when he went in 1979-80 before giving in. In that case the economy bounces back as the Fed loosens up, but inflation continues to mount fast, well above the heights of 1980 to 20%+ in late 1982. Reagan admits he made a mistake and goes to bat. This hammers the economy even worse than OTL because inflation is greater, we're talking 12-15% unemployment not 11%. Also this is occurring in 1982-3 with a harsher recession in 1983-5 or so. Much of Reagan's agenda is also derailed over this, obviously.

By the time 1984 rolls around Reagan is toast. Which drastically changes the Democratic race since everyone will want a shot ITTL. Once a Democratic President is elected and the economy recovers the election of a conservative Republican is closely tied to terrible economy, much more than Carter IOTL. That would weaken the fiscal conservative wing, especially since large elements of the Republican base are fine with government spending (or, after this alt much harsher early 1980s, anything if it helps).

That said large parts of the Republican base are still bonkers, but at least in this scenario they're a lot weaker without a successful two-term Reagan to pull them together. Republicans will have to moderate with Reagan's disaster hanging over their head (especially once the Iran deal comes out), although it is any guess how long they bother to do so with people like Gingrich and the rest of the bomb throwers around.
 
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I know Republicans moved toward the outskirts. But give me a POD or two where they move toward the center.

Maybe, for example, the fact that President Reagan signed a tax reduction in '81, and then a tax increase to partially offset in '82. Maybe some Republicans might reason that Reagan erred on the side of economic growth at the expense of deficits, which is not such a bad side to err on. That Reagan himself was a moderate.

But I don't think this particular example is enough. Please give me a little more.

Well, they did to some extent under GHW Bush. He signed a tax increase, approved the Civil Rights Act of 1991 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1991 (admittedly after vetoing a stronger version in 1990), signed the Immigration Act of 1990,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1990 etc. He even got criticized by the NRA for placing a temporary ban on the import of certain semiautomatic rifles.

Of course he did plenty of conservative things too, but compared to the GOP of today he does not seem terribly right-wing (although to some extent that is true of Reagan as well).

Indeed, the subsequent GOP move to the Right was largely a reaction to the Right's dissatisfaction with GHW Bush. Even GW Bush needed to persuade the party in 2000 that he was not like his father, was more like Reagan, etc.
 
Maybe have the GOP realize that Reagan was himself, moderate and pragmatic in many ways?

Abortion for example. You know which Governor legalized abortion in California prior to Roe v. Wade? You guessed it, Reagan. Like with most social issues, Reagan thought they should be left to the states, a much more reasonable stance than the OTL "Pro-life or GTFO" view the GOP has.

He was also antiwar, against many forms of Government overreach, very much in favor of supporting things like NASA or public television, and remarkably forward thinking on LGBT rights for a man born in 1911.

You want the GOP to become more moderate or pragmatic, have them remember Reagan the man, not Reagan the myth.
 
If you're talking about the GOP being more moderate etc. after Reagan, one way could be to have Perot not be mad at GHW Bush and thus allow "41" to be re-elected in 1992.

When Clinton became president, this seemed to set off howling masses of rage-motivated persons who ended up seeming to evolve to what we see today. Maybe I'm over-generalizing.
 
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Of course he did plenty of conservative things too, but compared to the GOP of today he does not seem terribly right-wing (although to some extent that is true of Reagan as well).

Indeed, the subsequent GOP move to the Right was largely a reaction to the Right's dissatisfaction with GHW Bush. Even GW Bush needed to persuade the party in 2000 that he was not like his father, was more like Reagan, etc.


Compared to today, Newt Gingrich in retrospect marched with Clinton to the Mall and ushered in a decade of collaboration for peace and prosperity. At least that's how I feel about Gingrich, and I was alive and aware in 1994, etc. [Edit: Yes, mild exaggeration is taking place.]
 
If McCain had won in 2000, the political analysts would have decided that running to the right and depending on churches turning out people was a fool's errand that was always going to fail.

Another option is for Murdoch to never set up Fox News. That brought talk radio conspiracy paranoia into mainstream conservative politics.
 
Perhaps have Reagan cut his losses in Nicaragua after the Boland Amendment is ratified and make a secret deal with the Sandinistas. This nips Iran-Contra in the bud and allows him more leeway in politics.
 
If Reagan had taken Richard Schweiker as his running mate in 1980 (as he proposed to do in 1976), that may have paved the way for a moderate Reagan successor in the best traditions of the term, given Schweiker's stances while in Congress. A possible side effect would have been at least a delay in a key rust belt state tilting more to the blue side.
 

Deleted member 1487

Have Reagan get crushed in 1984. If he's viewed as a failure and the right wing candidate you'd more likely help the H.W. Bushes going forward.
 
Arguably the Republican Party was a broadly centrist party (by US standards) throughout the Reagan-Bush I years, and most Republicans in the House and Senate were willing to compromise when necessary. For the Republicans to become more centrist and pragmatic than Republicans like George HW Bush or Dole, they might as well join the Democratic Party, which under Clinton was a pragmatic centrist party as well.
 
This is not one of those issues you can force with a single watershed moment like a presidential campaign.

The party's rightward shift is built on an incremental, self-reinforcing rightward shift in state parties that began as far back as the 1940s.

A county party chair quits or retires. Is his replacement more or less conservative? The answer, for over six decades, has trended in the direction of "more."

The county party chair recruits local candidates. They help make up the electorate for the state chair. The state chair recruits statewide candidates and as a whole the state parties color the character of the national party. The party machinery slowly grows more conservative, and the more conservative character promotes more conservative candidates and more conservative donors and more conservative voters.

You don't prove an edifice like that wrong by costing them one race when they're winning hundreds of others constantly and much closer to home. "The New York City liberals might defeat Reagan, but Hickory County knows what a real patriot looks like!" Repeat that phrase ten thousand times in ten thousand counties and you see why Reagan's loss alone can't change the trajectory.
 
And this theory: You've got to deliver the goods on middle-class jobs. If you don't, we've have misplaced anger and scapegoating. Of course, we will.

And then, most people in most situations aren't very good in getting a healthy interplay going between theory and practice. It's kind of an exception when we do.
 
So let's say he doesn't back Volcker the first time. Just like Volcker didn't have enough support from Carter (or a proper sense of how hard it was) when he went in 1979-80 before giving in.
I'm not a big fan of the wage holy war against inflation forget everything else.

I think the most important economic number is quarterly economic growth which is the engine of the whole thing. And that it was the deficit spending of the Reagan administration which pulled us out of recession.

We might have to just agree to disagree. Although I am willing to take a look at some economic statistics. I'd also be interested in what Robert Reich thinks about this.
 
As a young man who lived through the early '80s, let me tell you, they weren't that swell!

I don't want Reagan to crash and burn.

I'd rather go in the opposite direction and have him more successful, a little bit more of an economic populist, much more widely known that way as well as a pragmatist in a number of ways, theory as something which is our servant nit our master, etc.
 
I'm not a big fan of the wage holy war against inflation forget everything else.

I think the most important economic number is quarterly economic growth which is the engine of the whole thing. And that it was the deficit spending of the Reagan administration which pulled us out of recession.

We might have to just agree to disagree. Although I am willing to take a look at some economic statistics. I'd also be interested in what Robert Reich thinks about this.

Neither am I. I think central banks are insanely obsessed with inflation, that the 3% target is garbage, that Print Yen could have saved the Japanese economy in the early 1990s, etc.... But the 1970s were different, which explains why the banks are hyper-careful today even if one disagrees.

Stagflation. If inflation produces economic growth and a drop in unemployment then we be good. If inflation produces nothing but inflation, there are problems: stagflation.

The dove Miller followed your plan, expecting high and growing inflation to produce economic growth and considering 6.7% inflation to be reasonable (which, if it was stable 6-7% instead of rapidly growing, he was close to having a point on), instead growth stalled and inflation increased faster. Stagflation.

Link
Robert Reich said:
A generation ago, they paid too little attention to inflationary forces, so Paul Volcker who was then Fed chairman, had to break the back of inflation and thereby put the economy into a severe recession.

Yes Reagan's Keynesian spending (via the military and tax cuts, basically the worst possible way to do it lol) provided a major boost to the US economy after inflation was brought under control but it was the end of tight Fed money in 1982 that brought about the 1983-4 part of the recovery.

In an ideal world Volcker is Fed chair in 1978 instead of Miller, breaks 9% inflation with 7-8% unemployment for maybe 2/3 as long as 10%+ was IOTL as the Democratic Congress spends tons of money on construction jobs--those were 90% unemployment rate IOTL--such as building trains or what not. The economy would probably have done double what it did OTL in the 1980s, especially if tax cut money was spent on public works.

But we are trying to break conservative Republicans.

Reagan is 100% for two decades and beyond leader of the conservative wing, if you want right-wing Republicans to lose Reagan has to be destroyed. Despite being a New Deal Democrat once upon a time he really isn't going to change his mind post-GE speeches in the 1950s, he simply adapts to what the audience wants. (So, potentially you could have a populist instead of conservative Republican Party and he'd adapt, but that's pretty hard too.)

Reagan was an actor, and not a good one, but bad actor beats good politician. The man had Alzheimer's when he was President and either backed or was so dumb/brilliant to avoid knowing about Iran-Contra and treason. He is not someone whose mind could be altered like you suggest without a POD in the 1950s (wherein we could get Democratic President Reagan :), which is great fun I promise). He ran his speeches on index cards filled with lies, and just shuffled the order for different venues. Honestly the two best things he did were breaking inflation and dealing with the Soviets decently despite his rhetoric. The only way conservative Republicans are weakened once Reagan is President is to make his Presidency horrifically bad. They certainly weren't remotely stopped with Nixon or Ford as President, nor Reagan's defeat to Ford in '76. Nor would Reagan as moderate or whatever do much to slow them. Crazy people just keep going, alas.

Edit: Before Reagan I can think of tons of PODs, once Reagan is in office the options narrow to making Reagan a complete failure, I'm afraid, unless you give him a personality transplant.
 
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There's always been a paranoid, ultra-conservative strain in American politics; the John Birch Society and "Impeach Earl Warren!" were things long before Reagan became a nationally prominent politician.

The South has also long been significantly more conservative than the rest of the country; that was the case even when they were solidly Democratic. The realignment whereby the South goes Republican and the Northeast tends Democratic was already well underway, and is going to happen regardless. That, more than anything, is what drove a lot of polarization; as the parties became more ideologically sorted (and as the American populace also became more ideologically sorted), you quickly reach a point at which the primary election is more dangerous than the general election. That's arguably what's driving the current mess, and it's not something a Reagan POD is going to fix.
 
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