Posted on 07/30/2011 1:03:14 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
WATCHING today’s Republicans being led around by an extremist Tea_Party faction, with no adult supervision, I find my mind drifting back to the late 1980s when I was assigned to cover the administration of George H.W. Bush, who I believe is one of our most underrated presidents. I have long admired the elder Bush for the deftness with which he dealt with the collapse of the Soviet empire. But, in later years, I came to admire him even more for the fact that he believed that math and science were not matters of opinion — a view increasingly rare in today’s G.O.P.
Despite having run on the promise of “Read my lips: No new taxes,” when the deficit started spiraling to dangerous levels under his presidency, Bush agreed to a compromise with Democrats to raise several taxes, along with spending cuts, as part of a 1990 budget deal that helped to pave the way for the prosperity of that decade. It definitely hurt his re-election, but he did it anyway.
George H.W. Bush also believed in science. How many Republicans know that he and his aide Boyden Gray pioneered the use of cap-and-trade to deal — very effectively — with the problem of acid rain produced by power-plant emissions?
In an article, “The Political History of Cap and Trade,” published in Smithsonian Magazine in August 2009, Richard Conniff details how “an unlikely mix of environmentalists and free-market conservatives hammered out the strategy known as cap-and-trade.” As Conniff explained it, “Gray liked the marketplace approach, and even before the Reagan administration expired, he put [Environmental Defense Fund] staffers to work drafting legislation to make it happen. ... John Sununu, the White House chief of staff, was furious. He said the cap ‘was going to shut the economy down,’ Boyden Gray recalls....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Goldman Sachs and Wall Street investment banks are laying off tons of traders right now because The Kenyan failed to get Cap and Trade passed.
Now they’re betting on Mitt Romney.
“WATCHING today’s Republicans being led around by an extremist Tea_Party faction, with no adult supervision...”
He’s elitist slime. They work for us, they should be led around by us.
Tom is one smug fool.
I have long admired the elder Bush for the deftness with which he dealt with the collapse of the Soviet empire. But, in later years, I came to admire him even more for the fact that he believed that math and science were not matters of opinion...Yeah, his name is practically synonymos with that. /s
Isn’t this one of the NY Times writers who waxed eloquent about China’s superior political system?
I posted yesterday about the Bush/Ford presidents (GH Bush, don’t forget, was the author of the term “Voodoo Economics” on supply-side Reaganomics which worked better than anything else in the past fifty years in stimulating the eocnomy into high-growth, low-inflation, high-wage. These Republican presidents were and are far more popular with the Dems and their media allies than they are with the Republican base because they were ineffectual, they were “nice” (why, old Gerry Ford from the golf club appointed that wonderful John Paul Stevens to the Supreme Court who was as far left as Brennan or Ginsburg) and they could be snookered into a “bipartisan partnership” (and wonderful press from the left’s media acolytes) for a “Big Deal” where the Dems end up with 90 percent of the purported bargain.
Does this pedantic, vapid simp actually get paid for this tripe?
LOL Where do they get this stuff? From their mass brain farts, I would imagine.
ROTF. Sarcasm at its finest.
Ah, yes, Tom, for the days when the Republican presidential candidate pool was filled with, as Mark Steyn once put it, decent, dignified losers who knew how to give a great concession speech. Isn’t it a shame some of us got tired of that (not the decent and dignified part, everything after that)? Bad us! Bad! Bad!
Speaks volumes of the Bushies and Romney and wh they really are....big govt elitists which are not that much different from big govt socialists.
It was George the First that declared we will usher in the New World Order.
Are you kidding? GHWB tried even harder than Gorby to keep the Soviet Union together as it was collapsing.
“Stability” uber alles.
That’s exactly what I was thinking. The “good old days” when republicans were back benchers who knew their place, were nice and went out with democrats for a beer after work. Notice how after the repubs took over in 1995, (after 40 frickin’ years of dem control) how the “tone” in Washington changed. Only when repubs are in charge, is the political atmosphere poisonous.
oops, that should be honor “roll” of course
Ah, you Tea Party rubes! You can't even grasp the simple fact that cutting spending to sustainable levels is suicide!
The way to generate long term wealth, as any 1st year accounting student could tell you, it to spend so much money that you couldn't possibly pay it back, and no one would dare lend you any more. Then, you simply print more money until life is perfect forever.
What simpletons! How can you not grasp this self-evident light, filling the sky like the noon sun in the deep Sahara?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.