The George H.W. Bush promise that changed the Republican Party

Presidents give hundreds of speeches. But, for better or worse, we tend to remember some one-liners. We have to go again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman. Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. You know if she had a son, she would look like Trayvon. For President George H.W. Bush is: read my lips. No new taxes. And the thing about that line is that it's about a lot more than taxes. This is the battle for the soul of the Republican Party. A battle that Bush lost. And a battle whose repercussions we still live through.

Tonight he accepted the nomination for president of the United States, portraying himself during the course of his speech as his neighbor. With their values ​​of hard work, family, sensitive to greed, sensitive to the homeless, sensitive to the need to improve women economically, but tough on crime, on guns, on taxes, on the environment . He presided over a divided

party

. George Bush represented one wing of the

party

, which was a kind of northeastern, patrician Republican party, which some call the country club. These Republicans were wealthy, educated at prestigious universities, and often quite moderate when it came to economic issues like budgets and taxes, and social issues like abortion and gay rights.

That had certain characteristics that were very different from the Reagan wing. Spurred by the antiwar movement, the legalization of abortion, and the civil rights movement, groups with more conservative beliefs about race, gender, and culture rallied behind Reagan. They all come together in a new coalition called the Reagan coalition. George Bush is not the one who brought them together. Many Reaganites considered George Bush a false conservative. Frankly, they didn't trust him. Bush tried to appear less elitist, less country club. He used to talk about how much he liked to eat pork rinds. He needed to put in some effort to be culturally acceptable.

It wasn't just cultural issues. Bush's brand of economic conservatism also differed from that of his predecessor. While Bush focused on pragmatism: balancing budgets without increasing spending. Reagan had a different plan. It was called supply-side economics. That he could cut the amount of money the federal government gets in tax revenue and, at the same time, spend more money on the military. This appealed to a broader base of middle-class voters and small and large business owners, and in theory it was a great idea. Well, it didn't, it just didn't work out that way. In fact, the United States started having these huge budget deficits.

What was George supposed to do? He never believed in Ronald Reagan's economic approach. Voodoo economic policy! It's just not going to work. Reagan's trickle-down economics meant that Bush inherited a huge budget deficit from Reagan. That's why even though he said, "Read my lips, there will be no new taxes." He had no other alternatives. The writing is on the wall for George H.W. Bush as president of the United States. He realizes that he will not be able to keep his "No New Taxes"

promise

. I did it because I thought it was right. And I made a mistake.

He recognized that he had to put country before party. Democrats controlled the House and Senate, so Bush joined them in passing a bill to fix the deficit by raising the top tax rate on the rich. He had very little support on his own side of the political aisle. His desire to create a "kinder, kinder nation" did not sit well with right-wing Republicans. Bush's presidency was characterized by his ability to build bridges and close bipartisan agreements. Passage of the historic Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. May the shameful wall of exclusion finally come down. What the New York Times called the most sweeping anti-discrimination bill since the Civil Rights Act.

After the Exxon Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska, he formed another bipartisan coalition to strengthen the Clean Air Act and signed an immigration bill into law that kept families together and allowed more people to enter the country. Immigration is not only a link to America's past, but also a bridge to America's future. Abroad he won the trust of Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and got him to accept a unified Germany. More than a million people here, celebrating a day they never thought would come. The day Germany became one country again. He was a man who understood diplomacy.

He understood that to connect with people who represent other countries, you have to put yourself in their shoes. But his successes abroad did not calm cultural and economic discontent in the United States. From NBC News: Decision '92, election night. These politicians who try so hard work and then are effectively crushed. The people have spoken and we respect the majesty of the democratic system. The new president of the United States, his wife Hillary and his daughter Chelsea. Bush's defeat led Reaganites to abandon a moderate bipartisan approach to politics, and the Republican Party has since moved further to the right.

They see '92, they see the collapse of the Bush presidency, and they know this is the time to take action. The House is seen to be moving more and more to the right. Political scientists actually measure this. They take individual members of Congress, look at all the bills they voted yes and no on, and assign them a score based on those votes. They get one score for their votes on economic issues and another for their votes on social issues. Do this for each member and you'll get a kind of ideological map of Congress. And that map has been changing since before Bush lost the presidency.

If you look at the average ideological scores of both parties over time, House Republicans have become more conservative faster than their Democratic peers have moved left. It's also true for presidents. From Eisenhower to George W. Bush, Republicans' ideological scores become increasingly conservative, while Democrats' scores remain more or less constant over time. I think George H.W. Bush becomes a turning point not only for the presidency, generational movements, the last World War II, the president of the Greatest Generation, but also for the last Republicans of that country club, Northeastern Republicanism. In an interview with journalist Mark Updegrove, Bush confirmed that he voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

His party had become so unrecognizable during his lifetime that the former president voted for the wife of the man who had defeated him 24 years earlier. .