Quote Originally Posted by El Kabong View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Kirkland Laing View Post

Didn't cave on taxes. In reality, Reagan agreed to twelve tax increases to try and make up for the huge drop in revenue caused by his 1981 gigantic tax cut for the top one percent. The twelve following Reagan tax increases were all on low/middle incomes to make up for the gigantic tax cut on the wealthy. Despite this the original tax cut was so huge that Reagan trebled the national debt during his time in office. What Bush did was pass a budget that actually locked in spending cuts that Reagan had spent eight years talking about but never did. So Bush actually cut spending, that's something that conservatives claim they want to do! Bush 41 is the president who actually did reduce the size of government. He's the last Republican who even attempted to reduce the budget deficit but in the end failed. Every single GOP prez since Reagan has increased the deficit and every single Democratic prez has reduced it. At least 41 realised that you couldn't just keep cutting taxes without either cutting spending or putting taxes back up. No current Republican would dare even suggest such a thing. Bush was the last non-crazy fiscal Republican.


Bush 43 never fought back against Democratic attacks? What the fuck are you on about? Can you provide any examples of this that aren't just figments of your imagination like the 41 caved on taxes claim?


These six words changed George H.W. Bush's presidency
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/whi...w-bush-n943391
It became the most famous broken promise in modern political history.


Huh, first sentence in the Goddamned article calls it a "broken promise"...yeah I guess you're right again Kirkland just like with the Senate and all. And LOL one of these days that ENTIRE Senate will be up for election



And you're asking me to prove a negative? "Bush 43 never fought back against Democratic attacks?" ... "Can you provide any examples of this".....examples of W NOT fighting back. You want me to show you W NOT performing an action.


How about you find me something where George W. Bush dogged a Democrat or anyone who spoke ill of him, go ahead I'll be patient. I mean Trump slapped his brother silly in the debates and the most W could muster even OUT of office was NOT EVEN MENTIONING TRUMP BY NAME ....yeah I know, ballsy
The GOP had already agreed a budget outline with the Democrats involving spending cuts and tax increases. They didn't want to push it through before the election because Republican voters were furious at the previous dozen tax increases. Bush was attacked by Buchanan all the way through the primary and even after Bush won the nomination for being part of a tax raising administration and for agreeing to raise taxes after the election. The whole thing dogged Bush all the way through the campaign and threatened to cost him a significant chunk of GOP votes so he said what he said at the GOP conference. It worked enough that GOP voters turned out for him but there was never any question that he wouldn't go through with the budget deal.

And the reason for that was he was a relatively sensible, sane Republican. He knew that the deficit was enormous and the national debt was still increasing much faster than GDP was so he had to make the deal and an election promise to not raise taxes was worth as much as Trump's election promise to raise taxes on the wealthy or any other politician's election promise. So he didn't "cave". He did something any sensible politician would have done in his situation in order to be able to fulfil a deal the Reagan administration had already made.

Yes, show me where the Democrats attacked Bush for some issue and Bush didn't return fire. Produce one example of the thing you're claiming happened repeatedly.