WI: The GOP gained a majority in the House in 1980

Not that different. He managed to pass what he wanted with the help of Blue Dogs (as well as the fact that nothing else had been working).

1982 recession still results in a midterm beatdown and 1986 still sees Rs who rode his coattails lose.
 
Not that different. He managed to pass what he wanted with the help of Blue Dogs (as well as the fact that nothing else had been working).

Nitpick: It was the Boll Weevils (the Conservative Democratic Forum) who helped Reagan get his program through Congress. This was a quite conservative, almost exclusively southern group. (The only northern Boll Weevil was Ronald Mottl of the Cleveland suburbs who was defeated for re-election in the 1982 primary when his old district was combined with another.) The Blue Dogs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Dog_Coalition came later; they were much more middle-of-the-road and much less exclusively southern than the Boll Weevils.

The Boll Weevils indeed can be seen as a transitional group between the old Dixiecrats and the future Blue Dogs. They were young enough to focus on economic issues and not race. Yet some of them were old enough to have voted against civil rights bills in the 1960's...
 
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Potentially less deficit spending at the outset.

Actually, the conservative Democrats were somewhat skeptical of Kemp-Roth (they were more old-fashioned Harry Byrd spending-cutters than supply-siders) and helped get it watered down. (A 23 percent rate cut instead of 30, three years instead of two). So with a GOP majority, you might get full Kemp-Roth and (pace the Laffer curve) a larger deficit.
 
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Actually, the conservative Democrats were somewhat skeptical of Kemp-Roth (they were more old-fashioned Harry Byrd spending-cutters than supply-siders) and helped get it watered down. (A 23 percent rate cut instead of 30, three years instead of two). So with a GOP majority, you might get full Kemp-Roth and (pace the Laffer curve) a larger deficit.
That is certainly a possibility too.
 
Major cutbacks to or even possible eradication of Johnson's Great Society Programs. I would like to think if GOP had the chance to do this, they would take it.
 
BTW, we should not exaggerate how conservative even the Republican-majority Senate was in 1981-2. Among the Republicans I would count as moderates at least twelve senators: Weicker (CT), Percy (IL), Kassebaum (KS), Cohen (ME), Mathias (MD), Durenberger (MN), Hatfield (OR), Packwood (OR), Heinz (PA), Spector (PA), Chafee (RI), Stafford (VT) and Gorton (WA). In short, even the Senate was hardly a right-wing chambre introuvable.
 
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Major cutbacks to or even possible eradication of Johnson's Great Society Programs. I would like to think if GOP had the chance to do this, they would take it.


There were more moderate Republican than you think in 1981-2. I have already listed the senators in another post. In the House I would count at least Pete McCloskey, Lawrence DeNardis, Stewart McKinney, John Porter, Tom Railsback, James A. Leach, Tom Tauke, David Emery, Olympia Snowe, Silvio Conte, Margaret Heckler, Carl Pursell, Millicent Fenwick, Howard Hollenbeck, Matthew J. Rinaldo, Bill Green, Hamilton Fish, Jr., Benjamin Gilman, Lyle Williams, Joseph McDade, Lawrence Coughlin, Marc Lincoln Marks, Claudine Schenider, James Jeffords, and Joel Pritchard. Some of them to be sure owed their reputation for moderation more to cultural than to economic issues, but few would want to see the Great Society scrapped entirely.
 
Nitpick: It was the Boll Weevils (the Conservative Democratic Forum) who helped Reagan get his program through Congress. This was a quite conservative, almost exclusively southern group. (The only northern Boll Weevil was Ronald Mottl of the Cleveland suburbs who was defeated for re-election in the 1982 primary when his old district was combined with another.) The Blue Dogs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Dog_Coalition came later; they were much more middle-of-the-road and much less exclusively southern than the Boll Weevils.

The Boll Weevils indeed can be seen as a transitional group between the old Dixiecrats and the future Blue Dogs. They were young enough to focus on economic issues and not race. Yet some of them were old enough to have voted against civil rights bills in the 1960's...
It seems to me that the Boll Weevils were DINOs, either adopting Reagan’s platform in order to get re-elected or Republicans at heart who ran as Democrats because they started their careers in a time when a Republican couldn’t get elected.
 
Actually, the conservative Democrats were somewhat skeptical of Kemp-Roth (they were more old-fashioned Harry Byrd spending-cutters than supply-siders) and helped get it watered down. (A 23 percent rate cut instead of 30, three years instead of two). So with a GOP majority, you might get full Kemp-Roth and (pace the Laffer curve) a larger deficit.

This could screw the GOP over in the long run though if the Democrats hammer the larger deficit thing and it might actually gimp the economic recovery if the "trifecta" prevented the tax increases from happeneing. So either the GOP lose out a bit worse than OTL in 1984, or it just results in greater economic troubles that has Reagan's time be crushed in the 80s and the Dems swinging up in response.

The GOP's financial failures could also prevent Clinton or others like him from rising since they would need to tackle the deficit and the supply side economics' abysmal failure meant that neoliberal finance may not have a chance to rise
 
It seems to me that the Boll Weevils were DINOs, . . .
I really encourage you to view the whole thing as far more quirky and just plain weird than any kind Republican or Democrat by-name classification.

For example, Sen. Russell Long of Louisiana was a big proponent of ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Plans) and was a big reason a law got passed enacting such in the mid-70s.

He expected it to change the face of American big business (at least according to one of my former college textbooks). Would that it were! :cool:
 
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