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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul Smith who wrote (134323)	3/23/2010 10:06:03 AM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542152

Now you are rewriting the model to find some way to rationalize the vacuum of important Republican domestic legislation since Reagan. Face it, they are not the party of lasting change. They focus heavily on trying to preserve a status quo or roll back what other administrations have done, even when those achievements have become settled questions for the majority of Americans. What is their agenda for 2012 except trying to roll back more and more, then claiming that a wonderful era of prosperity will follow? The only prosperity under Bush came from deficit-fueled tax cuts and a credit bubble that almost wrecked the whole economy. Reagan's prosperity coincidentally lasted as long as the typical business cycle before yet another recession ensued. So you can deal in abstract models if you like. Elections are won and lost by results on the ground.

To: Paul Smith who wrote (134323)	3/24/2010 2:32:40 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542152

>>I understand but I think domestic and international are actually linked in some ways as opposed to being separate buckets. A strong domestic situation allows for international leadership and a relatively stable international situation (absence of cold war) allows for domestic initiatives.<< So you would characterize the current international situation as relatively stable? And because of that relatively stable situation, Obama and the Democratic Congress were able to concentrate on a major domestic initiative? I won't go deeply into the question of whether the end of the cold war can be correctly characterized as an accomplishment of a Republican administration. As JohnM already pointed out, there are other ways of looking at that. Those other ways involve having some real knowledge of what was going on in the Soviet Union in its last years, and how internal problems led to its collapse.