I can never be sure with Americans: I mean if you said Reagan without the charm about some racist poor hating scumbag would that also be the joke? Lots of English Tories think as highly of her as Americans often do of Reagan…
@nimelennar is Canadian. The national sense of humour can be somewhat sneaky. I mean, we’d probably describe Stephen Harper as a particularly charmless version of Stephen Harper…
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In most cases, yes; particularly when proposed policies differed substantially from the electoral manifesto. This is natural: MPs campaign on manifesto promises, they don’t want to go back to the electorate empty handed after winning if they can avoid it. Once all the knifing is over, if the ideological shift the new PM pushes is very different or particularly unpopular, MPs will start clamouring for an election, which usually involves a discussion to agree a party platform beforehand. One of the ideas behind the Fixed-Term Parliament Act was to formalize this process, which used to rely entirely on the PM being a good sport; so now there are formal votes that can lead directly to a GE, if necessary. As of today they’ve never been attempted, but if they’re ever used, I expect it will be against a PM who did not win a direct mandate from the polls.
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Please don’t hold back, tell us how you really feel.
While among conservatives Reagan is considered in the same sort of rarefied company as Mother Fucking Jesus, and much of the political class (regardless of affiliation) panders by dropping his name as if he’s universally respected. Large chunks of the US couldn’t give a shit, or actively hated the guy. Big chunks of the working class did terribly under the guy. The whole GOP as the racial dog whistling party for rich white dudes largely traces its roots to his campaigns and presidency. He fucked the unions hard. Among other problems. Nearly every (former or current) Republican in my family has consistently voted Democrat since his administration, viewing nearly everything he did as a massive betrayal of the principals that had them voting GOP in the first place. The rightward shift of the Dems following his election through the 90’s is at least partially down to that factor. Pissed off moderate GOP members decamping for the DNC. Actual love for Reagan and the out and out hagiography are fairly limited in my experience to vocal conservatives and active GOP members. He’s more of an internal party hero than a beloved American leader. And you can see that in the consistent failure the GOP has in getting his name and face splattered all over our currency and myriad other places, even when they’re in control.
For my part Reagan put my family in the poor house (Dad was PATCO .)
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A bit OT, but – when I was working in the archives, one of the oral histories I listened to was with a labor lawyer who worked with the IAM. He talked about the PATCO strike and his theory was that, since the union was the one to back Reagan in the election (at least the leadership, that says nothing about the support of the rank and file), that the reason Reagan did what he did regarding the PATCO strike (which the lawyer had advised to union not to do, as he thought it was illegal, thus opening them up to just the sort of action that Reagan took) was to show the Russians that Reagan would play hardball, even with an organization that had backed him.
Sorry to hear about your dad, though.
If memory serves a surprising number of unions backed Reagan. He was a former head of one of the Hollywood guilds, had a history with union organization and supporting unions, and for his first term actively campaigned on that history. From what I can tell he broke PATCO to shore up his conservative bonafides and put the unions on notice, that wasn’t the last thing he did to fuck labor. The unions always had a closer relationship with the left, but its always struck me that that moment was when the right really broke from the working class entirely. The first step in the still ongoing GOP campaign to neuter the Unions. I don’t think you need the “Reagan was strong against the Russians” narrative to understand that, and that story line itself is something of a myth widely questioned outside of conservative politics.
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From what I remember of my labor history, he got lots of rank and file support by building off the white working class support that Nixon built up in 72, but PATCO and the Teamsters might have been the only ones to back him officially? I’m trying to find a list of all the unions that endorsed him (besides these two) and am having no luck:
Also, this:
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/02/25/146460/flashback-reagan-union-right/
So, you’re right on… I want to say that IAM backed Carter?
You should check out Jefferson Cowie’s book, if you’re interested in this history, as he puts Nixon as the first GOP leader to actively court union members in a substantive way:
http://jeffersoncowie.info/stayin-alive/
True. I do think the context matters, it was a labor lawyer and a labor archivist in a conversation about the lawyer’s experiences working with a union. I see no reason why both can’t be true, though?
If you interested, here is the website for the IAM collection GSU has… some of the stuff is up online and at some point, the archivist plans to get the transcripts and recordings up online (I don’t know when, though):
Much of what Reagan did, and what constitutes the current Republican party can be traced to Nixon. The dog whistle racism, silent majority, union fucking, current approach to states rights, early versions of neoliberal economics ETC. And Reagan wasn’t exactly quiet about it. Hell an awful lot of people from Nixon’s administration were still stock characters of GOP power structures straight up to G-Dubs. Basically Reagan just sold it better, and avoided being a supervillian. The maybe dying version of the GOP likes to paint themselves as the Party Of Reagan TM. But you trace the trends, the rhetoric, the policies, the campaign approach. They’re the party of Nixon. Reagan just perfected it. His only major addition to the model was the closer ties to Southern Evangelical Christian churches, whence we get the religious right as the supposed only valid form of Christianity and only correct way to be American.
On unions. I remember seeing a list at some point. I think PATCO and the Teamsters were the only big unions that went all for Reagan. But I remember the list being more than 2. Its possible a lot of that support wasn’t in the form of official endorsement, and I’d be curious to see if any of the other big unions made it a point not to endorse anyone.
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I totally agree with all you said… Blame Nixon! 
That’s a good point… I wish I knew… The Cowie book I linked to does a great job in showing how unions in general and the democratic coalition were in utter disarray, which is nuts to think about given that the GOP was the party in executive power when Watergate went down. But a half a decade later or so, Carter was out of there. The state of the economy, utter chaos in society, and things like the oil shocks and the situation in Iran didn’t help Carter’s case that he was a good president. But there was much going on outside the control of either party, that it’s hard to pin blame for the troubles of the 70s.
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I own that in button form. Wear it (and several others) every 4 years. This year I’ve gone with a large button reading “Nixon Now”.
Still looking for one of these:
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