Posted on 11/06/2008 3:27:18 PM PST by Bob Eimiller
Iran contra is a blip in history... He gave H.W. the platform that gave us Clinton, W, OBAMA
The Title line stated BIGGEST mistake... there are always little mistakes.
Bushes spending spree helped spawn the current political climate... His gagged mouth on the fannie Freddie fiasco for the last four years... The Bushes are pathological in the way they finish their pathetic terms.
A Marxist successor because of his inability to comprehend complex political positions... one simple one is the Border policy... Ramos and Campion>?
Is Pres Bush wrong on immigration. Yes.
Is he wrong on Ramos and Campion? Yes.
Are those the only decisions he ever made? No.
Kennedy was known as a squishy; Reagan essentially gave up after Bork and Ginsburg and went with someone he knew he could get through.
Souter, on the other hand, was promised to Bush as a conservative. RINO Sen. Rudman, knowing all the long that Souter was a liberal, gleefully snookered John Sunnunu into thinking he was a conservative.
On the campaign trail, he promised a woman. Possibly he chose the wrong one to replace Potter Stewart.
But you’re right — the Burger resignation should have gone to Bork and then Scalia for Powell.
You are correct that Reagan should have nominated Bork for Powell's spot. His interviewing Scalia was supposed to be a formality and to prep for the next selection, but Reagan was blown away by Scalia (natch) and chose him instead, reasoning that he may not get another nomination to make.
O'Conner
You are correct that Reagan should have nominated Bork for Powell's spot. His interviewing Scalia was supposed to be a formality and to prep for the next selection, but Reagan was blown away by Scalia (natch) and chose him instead, reasoning that he may not get another nomination to make.
“He was a great president. His biggest mistake was amnesty and believing it would remain a one time deal.”
Well so far it has been.
Reagan’s amnesty was a quid pro deal. Verification of the legal right to be in the country by employers was the other half of the deal, but so far NEITHER party has clamped down and enforced that aspect.
Plus back in Reagan’s day, illegal immigration wasn’t anywhere as widespread as it later became. Members of Congress from many areas could care less, politically, because it wasn’t a problem in their areas.
But later, when the problem reached Iowa and Virginia, it gets back on the national radar screen. Now everybody has an opinion.
Me, in California, remember the Bracero program. Reagan was also from California. California and Texas have somewhat unique history about illegal immigration.
So I don’t blame Reagan, a Californian, for doing what he thought was best politically and for the nation. I blame non-enforcement on the two political parties’ legislators and Presidents, since then.
I know Bush’s instinct as a Texan was to get to a reasonable arrangement, and give the GOP a decent future at the same time. That didn’t work.
Nickle and dime incidences over an eight year presidency have no relationship to my main point.
Are you serious?
No, Bob, he gave the people — through their Representatives — what they wanted. Bush was hamstrung by the nancyboys in congress who told him that he had better pass the bills they send to him or else they would move to defund our involvement in Iraq.
See my tagline, which I’ve been using for the last couple of months.
I agree about HWB. “thousand points of light” crap. Some may have liked it. I liked that about as much as the apologetic preposition from a negative term “compassionate conservative” - hated it.
>>We’re still paying for cutting and running out of there in 83’.
What really got the ball rolling on that, was Carter undercutting the Shah. The Iranians were bankrolling the radicals in Lebanon even back in ‘83.
[M]any observers wrongly viewed Souter's selection as the handiwork of White House Chief of Staff John Sununu, a former New Hampshire governor who had promoted Souter from the trial bench to the state Supreme Court in 1983. But as anyone knowledgeable about New Hampshire Republican politics recognized, Souter was actually the protege of Senator Warren Rudman, a decidedly moderate Republican, who had energetically recommended him to President Bush. Years earlier, as New Hampshire's attorney general, Rudman had named Souter his deputy. He then arranged Souter's appointment as his own successor and later to a series of judgeships, culminating with Souter's confirmation to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit earlier in 1990.
For anyone willing to acknowledge the facts, Yarbrough's account of Souter's nomination sets the record straight. Bush himself told reporters at the time that "there was almost a certain recusal on the part of Governor Sununu" during the selection process, and soon thereafter Senator Rudman firmly warned that "it would be a mistake to associate this nomination in any way with John Sununu. John Sununu did not know David Souter at the time that he appointed him to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, other than casually." Indeed, Sununu appointed Souter as payment of a political debt to Rudman, and Sununu's famous claim that Souter's Supreme Court nomination represented a "home run" for conservatives was a bit of right-wing braggadocio that he has never managed to live down.
Five years ago Sununu acknowledged feeling "a lot of disappointment in where David Souter has ended up on the Court," and more recently Sununu broadened his complaint. "Souter is absolutely different from what Souter and Souter supporters represented he was, not only during the vetting process but during his whole career," he told Legal Times. "Everybody is disappointed, and with all due respect to those who were not, they were part of the deception."
Reagan's BIGGEST Mistake was the 1986 Illegal Alien Amnesty, plain and simple. 6 million and counting former illegal aliens are now citizens and then they are bringing in millions of more relatives who are becoming citizens and their decendents are growing at huge rates.
For proof, just look to the state of California. From 1952 thru 1988, with the exception of 1964, California was in the GOP camp when it came to Presidential Elections. Even Gerald Ford carried California in 1976.
From 1992 to the present, California has been getting deeper and deeper blue, thanks mainly to the 1986 amnesty. This last election, Obama won by over 60 percent. Even the formerly very solid GOP Orange County only went to McCain by a 50 to 47 percent margin.
Also, look at the formerly solid GOP rocky mountain states and southwest states, most with vastly increasing Hispanic populations. Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico may now be like California is...out of reach for most if not all future GOP Presidential Candidates, in large part due to the 1986 amnesty. Also, you can count on formerly GOP strongholds as Florida, North Carolina and Virginia also being less likely GOP in the future, due in part to that 1986 amnesty and having large Hispanic influxes (non Cuban in Florida) moving into those states.
The 1986 Amnesty Law is by far the biggest mistake the Gipper made while he was in office that is hurting the country and the GOP in particular today. If Reagan knew at the time what the 1986 Amnesty Law would do to his beloved California and other states, I am convinced he would have veteod the bill.
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