# Republicans Sabotaged Carter's Re-election via the Iran Hostage Crisis **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [March 19, 2023, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-sabotaged-carters-re-election-via-the-iran-hostage-crisis/981346 "2023-03-19T06:58:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2023, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-sabotaged-carters-re-election-via-the-iran-hostage-crisis/981346/41 "2023-03-20T01:29:44Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#): > > Imagine Cruz, or DeSantis, let alone Trump, making, or letting their speech-writer make, such an admission. “Better than Cruz, DeSantis or Trump” is a pretty damn low bar, IMO. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2023, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-sabotaged-carters-re-election-via-the-iran-hostage-crisis/981346/42 "2023-03-20T01:31:31Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > They also obtained Carter’s debate prep materials “Obtained them”. Sounds like it was basically Watergate, only this time the Plumbers did not get caught. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2023, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-sabotaged-carters-re-election-via-the-iran-hostage-crisis/981346/43 "2023-03-20T17:10:50Z")
I disagree that he was a phenomonally bad president. He just had the worst luck. As they said at the time if Reagan went out in the rain without a coat, Carter got wet. If you think inflation is something that presidents can control, I think you’re quite misinformed. Carter told us that times were tough and that we had to sacrifice, Reagan told us if we cut taxes all would be fine and dandy. Carter spoke to us as adults, Reagan talked to us as if he was Santa Claus and we were sitting on his lap. Honesty from a politician is a good feature, although it is bad politics. Unfortunately Republicans have learned from Reagan that deficits don’t matter as long as they’re caused by cutting taxes and have learned from DJT that it doesn’t matter if you don’t have actual policies or ideas, merely hating the same people as your voters is good enough. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2023, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-sabotaged-carters-re-election-via-the-iran-hostage-crisis/981346/44 "2023-03-20T17:30:13Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > Anybody back then who thought it was just coincidental that the hostages were released the day after the inauguration had his head up his ass. I’m glad the truth is now out. I don’t think that anybody thought it was a coincidence, they instead thought that it was a just a final FU by Khomeini against Carter that he decided to do on his own, rather than because he was influenced by Republicans. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2023, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-sabotaged-carters-re-election-via-the-iran-hostage-crisis/981346/45 "2023-03-20T19:11:48Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > I disagree that he was a phenomonally bad president. It’s a bad rap that is still around because people parrot it without actually having any knowledge about him. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2023, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-sabotaged-carters-re-election-via-the-iran-hostage-crisis/981346/46 "2023-03-20T23:13:15Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > I don’t think that anybody thought it was a coincidence, they instead thought that it was a just a final FU by Khomeini against Carter that he decided to do on his own, rather than because he was influenced by Republicans. One other thing I took away from the book I read was that Khomeini didn’t really have much to do with the hostage taking. It suited his agenda at the time to leave things pretty much alone. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2023, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-sabotaged-carters-re-election-via-the-iran-hostage-crisis/981346/47 "2023-03-20T23:16:57Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > The thing here is that Iran already hated Carter more than enough to help sabotage his re-election. They were probably already planning to hold hostages beyond the election just out of the pure spiteful joy of fucking over Carter. I remember when the hostages were released and this was pretty much assumed when it happened. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2023, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-sabotaged-carters-re-election-via-the-iran-hostage-crisis/981346/48 "2023-03-21T00:17:56Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > It’s a bad rap that is still around because people parrot it without actually having any knowledge about him. If you put your ideology, and policy preferences aside, it is quite difficult to tell whether a President was skillful. But the only really practical way to make the skill judgment may be to look at outcomes like inflation, unemployment, and military success. It probably was bad luck, but on all three, Carter’s outcomes were deficient. In 1980, American voters, much more than today, tried to put aside ideology and policy aside, instead voting for the best man (or, much less likely, woman). While it’s easy to ridicule ignoring policy preferences, I find it hard to see such voters preferring Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton. P.S. I thought that Hillary would beat Donald Trump because median low info voters remembered the good Bill Clinton economy, and figured the husband would properly guide his wife. If voters thought in 2016 the way they did in 1980, I would have been correct. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2023, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-sabotaged-carters-re-election-via-the-iran-hostage-crisis/981346/49 "2023-03-21T00:26:03Z")
Or you could look at it as a convenient narrative pushed by the Republicans just in case the truth came out sooner than it did-“I’m not saying we did it, but since it would have happened anyway it is no big deal, right?”. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2023, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-sabotaged-carters-re-election-via-the-iran-hostage-crisis/981346/50 "2023-03-21T00:57:45Z")
I remember that part of Reagan’s 1980 campaign involved complaining about the “enormous” federal deficits under the Carter administration. And then when he was elected, he demonstrated just how enormous federal deficits could get. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2023, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-sabotaged-carters-re-election-via-the-iran-hostage-crisis/981346/51 "2023-03-21T14:32:03Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Or you could look at it as a convenient narrative pushed by the Republicans just in case the truth came out sooner than it did And NASA is pushing the convenient narrative that the Earth is a sphere so we don’t find out it is really flat? ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2023, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-sabotaged-carters-re-election-via-the-iran-hostage-crisis/981346/52 "2023-03-21T16:42:12Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Or you could look at it as a convenient narrative pushed by the Republicans just in case the truth came out sooner than it did-“I’m not saying we did it, but since it would have happened anyway it is no big deal, right?”. It’s an undisputed fact that Iran’s revolutionary government despised Carter, both for sheltering the Shah, an autocratic puppet of the US whom they wanted brought to justice, and for attempting a military rescue of the hostages. Iran did (and still does) have a multitude of legitimate reasons to hate the US, and in 1979 Carter was the prime target of that hatred. I don’t think there’s enough information to prove whether Reagan intervened. I think the actual outcome didn’t require Reagan’s intervention, and I’m highly skeptical that Iran’s revolutionary government (at that time) would have trusted Reagan to any extent whatsoever. His bona fides as an imperialist war hawk were well known to all at the time, but otherwise he was an unknown quantity (to Iran). ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2023, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-sabotaged-carters-re-election-via-the-iran-hostage-crisis/981346/53 "2023-03-21T17:10:04Z")
I will state once again that it was Jimmy Carter that brought down the Soviet Union by boycotting the '80 Olympics and sending them into an economic crisis that they never recovered from despite Reagan’s best efforts to prop them up. Reagan didn’t know how bad off they were because our intelligence services had their heads up their asses and no idea what was going on. Carter acted on moral grounds following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan but didn’t know either what the results would be. But if Reagan wasn’t busy giving the Soviets wheat on our dollar to buy votes from midwestern states the Soviet Union would have fallen apart years earlier. Again, can’t place all the blame on him when US intelligence never had a clue. ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2023, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-sabotaged-carters-re-election-via-the-iran-hostage-crisis/981346/54 "2023-03-21T17:21:12Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Jimmy Carter that brought down the Soviet Union by boycotting the '80 Olympics and sending them into an economic crisis Why did the boycott send them into an economic crisis? I hadn’t heard that before. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2023, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-sabotaged-carters-re-election-via-the-iran-hostage-crisis/981346/55 "2023-03-21T18:35:08Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I will state once again that it was Jimmy Carter that brought down the Soviet Union Then we should villify Carter for bringing about the collapse of the USSR. What has happened with Russia and the other former Soviet states is not an improvement over the former Soviet system, and in some ways it is worse. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2023, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-sabotaged-carters-re-election-via-the-iran-hostage-crisis/981346/56 "2023-03-21T18:46:39Z")
They were already in economic trouble because of communism. They banked on bringing in a lot of real western money from visitors and supplying the games. They were also spending money they didn’t have on invading Afghanistan. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2023, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-sabotaged-carters-re-election-via-the-iran-hostage-crisis/981346/57 "2023-03-21T18:46:58Z")
No, we shouldn’t. It was worth a try. That they messed it up big time is nobody else’s fault. And Eastern Europe is much better off. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2023, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-sabotaged-carters-re-election-via-the-iran-hostage-crisis/981346/58 "2023-03-21T18:51:33Z")
Do the people in the former East Germany and the Baltic States and Hungary and… agree with you? ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2023, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-sabotaged-carters-re-election-via-the-iran-hostage-crisis/981346/59 "2023-03-21T20:46:46Z")
Was he being serious there? Does anyone aside from Putin hold that opinion? ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2023, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-sabotaged-carters-re-election-via-the-iran-hostage-crisis/981346/60 "2023-03-21T21:03:05Z")
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