Obamacare.
I almost responded to panache’s post as well, but since it has absolutely nothing to do with the OP it’s probably better just to let it be.
Good Republican ideas: Nixon’s EPA, OSHA, Clean Air Act, etc.
Bad Democratic ideas: Getting into a land war in Asia.
More Good Republican Ideas:
Roe v Wade 1971, noting correctly that a right to privacy exists under the Due Process clause of the 14th amendment, written by the Republican Harry Blackmun.
Miranda v. Arizona 1966: wiki: “Police must advise criminal suspects of their rights under the Constitution to remain silent, to consult with a lawyer and to have one appointed if he is an indigent. The interrogation must stop if the suspect states he or she wishes to remain silent.” Written by the Republican Earl Warren.
Woodson v. North Carolina 1976, Wiki: “North Carolina’s mandatory death sentence statute violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.” Written by the Republican Potter Stewart.
Bad Democratic Party Ideas/Platforms: Stronger gun control laws, opposition to nuclear energy (if that’s an accurate generalization to democrats).
Good Republican Ideas: Strong national defense policy
Democrats don’t have a strong national defense policy?
Cash for clunkers was a terrible idea by the dems. The vast majority of cars sold would’ve been sold w/o the subsidies, it destroyed billions in wealth by destroying good used cars and it drove up the price of used cars by reducing the supply.
The best idea by the republicans? The best ones I can think of are liberal ideas (the EPA, the interstate but that was 60 years ago, Obamacare which was a GOP idea in the early 90s).
Maybe school vouchers, vouchers to pick which public and/or private school you want to go to. Although I ‘think’ GOP vouchers tend to prefer private schools. According to Elizabeth Warren in her book the 2 income trap, a major factor of why real estate is going up so fast (or was going up so fast) is people competing to live in good school districts.
People tend to confuse Republican hyperaggressiveness with “strong”.
Nixon to China, as **Ravenman **noted, was a good idea, and the EPA of his administration was a good idea. The appointments of moderate or at least open-minded justices of the Nixon and Eisenhower adminstrations were at times decent, though did complain that his appointment of Earl Warren was his worst mistake. Personally, I think it was choosing Nixon as his running mate, but that’s a side issue.
nm
Best Republican idea: maybe the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act
For Democrats, the Vietnam War is rather the eight thousand pound purple gorilla in the room, is it not? Never mind “escalation,” Kennedy and Johnson have their bloody hands all over it.
Not to mention “defense”.
It’s a bit sad that the most obvious options require going back a bit. On the GOP side, Nixon did some great work in foreign policy (e.g. reaching out to China) and at home (e.g. creating the EPA). On the Democratic side, Carter reestablished draft registration as a useless dick-wave that merely wastes money and effort that could go to worthwhile defense enhancements.
More recently… well, the GeeDubya Bush administration established the Do Not Call list, and Obama blew too much political capital on Obamacare when the economy was still much too close to the precipice.
Out in punditland, this argument is made a lot, but is rarely if ever given sufficient elaboration.
I disagree with this assessment. Congress was simply not going to pass a second stimulus package, no matter how much additional pressure was applied. In terms of rhetoric, Republicans segued seamlessly from “Wait and see” to “See? It didn’t work.” There might have been some hardball strategy that could have given them a second bite on the apple, but that’s a separate issue from ACA. I say Obama should have bargained for bigger stimulus from the beginning, but even that argument is far from air tight.
Meanwhile, the only route to budgetary sustainability lies with health care reform of one sort or another. Pursuing health care reform was the right thing to do morally and fiscally.
What Measure for Measure said about cap and trade. I find it illuminating that when the Obama administration suggested a similar approach to reduce greenhouse gases (instead of sulfur emissions), it was roundly criticized by the usual suspects as being unworkable.
Good Republican idea:
Dubya committed billions in funds to fight AIDS in Africa. I was amazed that he did it. AIDS still ravages sub-Saharan Africa, but at the time Dubya committed the funds there were real fears that whole swaths of the continent would be depopulated. He did the right thing there, which is so WEIRD considering everything else he did.
Bad Democratic idea:
Selling out to Wall Street lock, stock and barrel. Perhaps they did not have a choice, but they are gonna lose their progressive base as it becomes more and more evident that their owners won’t let them make any meaningful change on economic issues. And America will become more and more like a Third World nation as a result.
What can they really do? Democrats have pretty much reached and maybe even exceeded the limit on what they can fund with the taxes the public is willing to pay. What further economic changes are possible in that environment?
- Write legislation to keep the banks from playing at the casinos with taxpayer money, particularly to curb the abuses of CDOs.
- Get actual homeowners out of trouble instead of the banks wrt the mortgage crisis. Obama and the Dems have done little or nothing in this regard. But trillions went to the banks.
- Looking to the future, enact legislation to make things more economically equitable in the US. Make it illegal for a CEO’s TOTAL earnings to be more than, say, 100 times that of the average employee in any given year.
- Legislate that a corporation making profits beyond a certain amount plow a percentage of those profits back into employee salary, instead of giving it all to shareholders who are for the most part wealthy anyway
- Enact jail terms for CEOs and boards of directors of corporations that transfer their money overseas to avoid taxes on it … and jail terms for the accountants and lawyers that enable them.
- Rebuild the social safety net for the poor. Not necessarily restarting welfare – that didn’t work out – but find a way to allow a person to have health care, food and shelter if unemployed.
- Enact tax penalties that will encourage corporations not to sit on large bundles of capital. Make them invest it in America. Penalize companies that spend money overseas. Reward companies that create decent jobs in the US.
All of that should get the economy going by getting money in the middle class, where it will be spent, getting a multiplier effect going, instead of lying in some Cayman Island account. Also, der lamentations of der wealthy will be fun to hear.
One of the best Republican ideas was the individual mandate for health insurance.
Another one I’m surprised hasn’t come up: Interstate highway system.