WI: Tip O'Neill in U.S. House doesn't punish Phil Gramm early '83, he remains a conservative Democra

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/01/06/us/gramm-quits-house-for-gop-race.html

BRYAN, Tex., Jan. 5 [1983] Two days after his fellow Democrats stripped him of his seat on the House Budget Committee, Representative Phil Gramm of Texas resigned from Congress today and announced that he would run for re-election as a Republican. . .
Let's say the House Speaker Thomas "Tip" O'Neill and the Democratic Leadership anticipate this and don't punish Phil.

Texas remains a competitive two-party state, maybe till the present day. The Democratic Party is a modest but perceptible amoun more conservative.

What other changes do you see which might happen? :)
 
. . . don't think Phil Gramm can personally . . .
It would definitely help. Phil was a pretty popular guy. And if one of two Texas Senate seats is a long-standing conservative Democrat, that will help shift things. Plus, Texas Democrats at least partially avoid the OTL 1984 debacle for state-wide Democrats.
 
What I have in mind is the LBJ approach, which Lyndon put in his own delicate way that he'd rather have the fellow in the tent pissing outward rather than outside the tent pissing in!
 
Let's say the House Speaker Thomas "Tip" O'Neill and the Democratic Leadership anticipate this and don't punish Phil.
Phil Gramm probably just flips later. I mean, he was out of step with the Democrats even back then and even in Texas - he was to the right of George Bush and probably even Bill Clements, let alone Mark White and the Lloyds. Plus which, I get the feeling that he was pretty much just looking for an excuse to do it. Maybe he sticks around until the 1990s, but then I think he'd be in danger of a Republican challenger in his district (like a lot of other conservative Democrats). More likely he just leaves the party a couple months later to run for the Senate. He won the Senate primary and election by large margins, so that probably doesn't change much.

IMO, if the Democrats didn't strip him of the seat on the House Budget Committee, all that happens is that there's one more conservative on that committee for a few months. I don't know if there were any significant bills that passed or failed there by one vote in early 1983, but if there were, that might change.
 
Wasn't Gramm related to repealing Glass-Seagall and triggering the 2008 collapse ?
I think the repeal was pushed by both Democrats and Republicans and signed by President Clinton. And I think it's main selling point was that if England, Germany, etc., are going to have these huge mega-banks, then we're going to have these huge mega-banks, too.

And even if it's a bad idea, it's hard to argue with the sales pitch.
 
Phil Gramm probably just flips later. I mean, he was out of step with the Democrats even back then and even in Texas - he was to the right of George Bush and probably even Bill Clements, let alone Mark White and the Lloyds. Plus which, I get the feeling that he was pretty much just looking for an excuse to do it. . .
But why should the Democrats give him an excuse, in fact, give him this whole great narrative that he's honorably fighting back against the unjust leadership of the U.S. House?

If the Democrats had strove to be a "big tent" party (maybe even using that very language) . . .

In my fondest of hopes, the Democrats take the lead on replacing lost manufacturing jobs and acknowledge that no one thing is going to do this, that it's going to be a variety of medium and small improvements all added together, and that we need both liberal and conservative ideas.

It could have been a substantially different history, especially for the Democratic Party.
 
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