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The Reagan claim is nuts. By the logic of those links, Bill Clinton was too conservative to be nominated by today's Democratic party because he was for free tra

The Reagan claim is nuts. By the logic of those links, Bill Clinton was too conservative to be nominated by today's Democratic party because he was for free trade, signed DoMA, passed welfare reform and substantially cut the growth of discretionary spending... sorry: "investment". At least two of the GOP's nominees since Reagan would have been happy to sign more immigration liberalization. Bush the Elder raised taxes. Bush the Younger failed to cut spending just like Reagan, and added a new prescription drug entitlement to Medicare. McCain was instrumental in passing campaign finance reform, and Romney passed an individual mandate and state run health exchanges. Reagan "too liberal"? That's a fairy tale. Dead conservatives were always the moderate ones.

pessimizer 14y ago
>By the logic of those links, Bill Clinton was too conservative to be nominated by today's Democratic party No, only by the illogic of false equivalence. Obama is for "free" trade, directly said multiple times that he was against gay marriage until recently, is running on a platform to cut Social Security, and has cut a massive number of government jobs during a time of high unemployment. In other words, Bill Clinton is conservative enough to be nominated by today's Democratic party. Reagan was far too liberal to be nominated by today's Republican party.
- yummyfajitas 14y ago
  is running on a platform to cut Social Security, Citation needed. and has cut a massive number of government jobs during a time of high unemployment. As of Jan 2009, there were 2,790,000 federal employees. There are now 2,814,000. http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/CES9091000001.txt http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/CES9091000001.txt Maybe you mean he didn't increase the number of government jobs as fast as was projected?
  - jbooth 14y ago
    "Government jobs". There are fewer total people employed in government, because the states have been put through the ringer and the stimulus contained no state aid (price of getting the Maine senators on board). Anwyays, you're smart enough to know that flatlining is effectively a cut, relative to population and inflation. Certainly relative to every other recent president, Reagan and Bush very much included. And relative to Romney's plan to increase military spending (guess how many of those 2.8M are military or homeland security employees).
    - yummyfajitas 14y ago
      Actually no, there are fewer people employed in government because state and local governments chose to raise employee pay while cutting the number of workers. http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/ECIGVTWAG http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/ECIGVTWAG http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES9092000001 http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES9092000001 http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES9093000001 http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES9093000001
      - jbooth 14y ago
        Again, you're smart enough to know what 'normal' is. 'Normal' is cost of living raises, continued employer provided healthcare (which goes up in price every year), and ~~5% cost inflation for any organization that employs people. States have been cutting relative to that. The crappy part is that a huge % of the rollover cost is healthcare, so it's not even going to their employees.
        yummyfajitas 14y ago
        According to Keynesian theories of economics, recessions are the product of sticky nominal wages combined with an exogenous shock. Real wages need to go down in order for the recession to end, which is why inflation is promoted as the cure. Wages are sticky downwards, there is no reason to raise them, particularly for monopsony employers.
        jbooth 14y ago
        Sure. But healthcare is most likely driving their comp costs more than pocket wages. Healthcare is what's driving state/local government costs because of the high head count of middle class professions. Salaries might go up by 2-4% depending on the collective bargaining agreement with the union, healthcare will go up by 15%. Basically, states and local governments aren't operating with a macro worldview of the whole economy, they're trying to balance their own budget. They're going to eat it on healthcare, pay as small a COL raise as they can get the public employee unions to accept (pretty small actually), and lay off employees on the stupid last-in-first-out basis that the unions insist on. Decision makers at the state level are just trying to get through the year. The funny thing is that a liberal can look at those ballooning healthcare costs (biggest $ item in the deltas year-over-year) and see it as a private sector screwup, while a conservative can look at the total costs going up and see it as public bloat.
jbooth 14y ago
* because he was for free trade, signed DoMA, passed welfare reform and substantially cut the growth of discretionary spending* Obama's actually for all of those except for DoMa, and it took him until this year to finally come out in support of gay marriage. Obama has signed free trade agreements, cut the growth of discretionary spending, and hasn't attempted to touch Clinton's welfare reform (aside from granting states waivers that republican governors had been asking for).
- twoodfin 14y ago
  That's my point. The two big political parties nominate candidates within the broad consensus of American politics, for the most part. Or at least the candidates that get elected have to govern largely along that consensus in order to get anything done. Remember, then-Senator Obama campaigned on "renegotiating NAFTA" and generally called it a bad deal for the American worker. He was also "not a big fan" of welfare reform. But as you say, he hasn't done much about either. It's silly to claim that a modern Reagan wouldn't fit well enough within the Republican and American mainstreams to be nominated, and those links don't provide real evidence otherwise. Shocking: Reagan wasn't a hard and fast ideologue. But a hard and fast ideologue isn't going to be nominated by the Republican party today, either.
  - jbooth 14y ago
    Did you spring into existence sometime after the last debate? Romney isn't a hard and fast ideologue because he isn't a hard and fast anything. But he certainly had to make those noises to be nominated. Reagan's positions and what he did in office are completely incompatible with Republicans today. A budget deal with democrats that raises taxes? Tough love on Israel occasionally? I'm not saying Reagan wouldn't have been able to be elected, but he'd have to be a different Reagan to get the nomination. A hard and fast ideologue or, in the worst case, someone who makes the appropriate noises and can beat Newt Gingrich.

pessimizer 14y ago

>By the logic of those links, Bill Clinton was too conservative to be nominated by today's Democratic party No, only by the illogic of false equivalence. Obama is for "free" trade, directly said multiple times that he was against gay marriage until recently, is running on a platform to cut Social Security, and has cut a massive number of government jobs during a time of high unemployment. In other words, Bill Clinton is conservative enough to be nominated by today's Democratic party. Reagan was far too liberal to be nominated by today's Republican party.

yummyfajitas 14y ago
is running on a platform to cut Social Security, Citation needed. and has cut a massive number of government jobs during a time of high unemployment. As of Jan 2009, there were 2,790,000 federal employees. There are now 2,814,000. http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/CES9091000001.txt http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/CES9091000001.txt Maybe you mean he didn't increase the number of government jobs as fast as was projected?
- jbooth 14y ago
  "Government jobs". There are fewer total people employed in government, because the states have been put through the ringer and the stimulus contained no state aid (price of getting the Maine senators on board). Anwyays, you're smart enough to know that flatlining is effectively a cut, relative to population and inflation. Certainly relative to every other recent president, Reagan and Bush very much included. And relative to Romney's plan to increase military spending (guess how many of those 2.8M are military or homeland security employees).
  - yummyfajitas 14y ago
    Actually no, there are fewer people employed in government because state and local governments chose to raise employee pay while cutting the number of workers. http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/ECIGVTWAG http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/ECIGVTWAG http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES9092000001 http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES9092000001 http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES9093000001 http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES9093000001
    - jbooth 14y ago
      Again, you're smart enough to know what 'normal' is. 'Normal' is cost of living raises, continued employer provided healthcare (which goes up in price every year), and ~~5% cost inflation for any organization that employs people. States have been cutting relative to that. The crappy part is that a huge % of the rollover cost is healthcare, so it's not even going to their employees.
      - yummyfajitas 14y ago
        According to Keynesian theories of economics, recessions are the product of sticky nominal wages combined with an exogenous shock. Real wages need to go down in order for the recession to end, which is why inflation is promoted as the cure. Wages are sticky downwards, there is no reason to raise them, particularly for monopsony employers.
        jbooth 14y ago
        Sure. But healthcare is most likely driving their comp costs more than pocket wages. Healthcare is what's driving state/local government costs because of the high head count of middle class professions. Salaries might go up by 2-4% depending on the collective bargaining agreement with the union, healthcare will go up by 15%. Basically, states and local governments aren't operating with a macro worldview of the whole economy, they're trying to balance their own budget. They're going to eat it on healthcare, pay as small a COL raise as they can get the public employee unions to accept (pretty small actually), and lay off employees on the stupid last-in-first-out basis that the unions insist on. Decision makers at the state level are just trying to get through the year. The funny thing is that a liberal can look at those ballooning healthcare costs (biggest $ item in the deltas year-over-year) and see it as a private sector screwup, while a conservative can look at the total costs going up and see it as public bloat.

jbooth 14y ago

* because he was for free trade, signed DoMA, passed welfare reform and substantially cut the growth of discretionary spending* Obama's actually for all of those except for DoMa, and it took him until this year to finally come out in support of gay marriage. Obama has signed free trade agreements, cut the growth of discretionary spending, and hasn't attempted to touch Clinton's welfare reform (aside from granting states waivers that republican governors had been asking for).

twoodfin 14y ago
That's my point. The two big political parties nominate candidates within the broad consensus of American politics, for the most part. Or at least the candidates that get elected have to govern largely along that consensus in order to get anything done. Remember, then-Senator Obama campaigned on "renegotiating NAFTA" and generally called it a bad deal for the American worker. He was also "not a big fan" of welfare reform. But as you say, he hasn't done much about either. It's silly to claim that a modern Reagan wouldn't fit well enough within the Republican and American mainstreams to be nominated, and those links don't provide real evidence otherwise. Shocking: Reagan wasn't a hard and fast ideologue. But a hard and fast ideologue isn't going to be nominated by the Republican party today, either.
- jbooth 14y ago
  Did you spring into existence sometime after the last debate? Romney isn't a hard and fast ideologue because he isn't a hard and fast anything. But he certainly had to make those noises to be nominated. Reagan's positions and what he did in office are completely incompatible with Republicans today. A budget deal with democrats that raises taxes? Tough love on Israel occasionally? I'm not saying Reagan wouldn't have been able to be elected, but he'd have to be a different Reagan to get the nomination. A hard and fast ideologue or, in the worst case, someone who makes the appropriate noises and can beat Newt Gingrich.