Newt Gingrich! for President! 2012 !

[Riot]

Originally Posted by miraja2

I think the conservative counterrevolution goes back a bit further, and I think you may be underestimating how ideologically opposed many Republicans in Congress were to health care reform by 1993.
You are surely correct that the Republican "conservatism" of the Nixon/Goldwater/Rockefeller era was a whole lot different than it is today, but I don't think it just suddenly changed in the W era. The Post-Regan Republicans of the 90s were already pretty set in their anti-government (by the standards of the 60s and 70s) ways.

I do think that most of the fight against health care was that Clinton put Hilary - a non-elected official - in charge of it. Even in the Bush HR years, Republicans had a social conciousness, consideration for the old and poor and needy.

I think that's a good point, the negative influence Reagan had on the party. Yeah, he was the turning point, after Nixon ... I think that, after the night of Watergate, the country was so happy to get "such a nice guy", who "tore down that wall", they didn't care - or simply didn't notice - that he brought the financial policy disasters and the evangelicals with him. We all loved the man, nearly no matter what he did.

The financial policies that remain are what continue to astound me, the years of viewing the bad results, yet the blind adherence to completely ineffective "Reaganomics". But, when you are only interested in making good policy for the wealthy, not the entire country, it's a good thing.