Thread by @YossiGestetner

1/ If you are a “conservative” that follows politics since at least 1986, I would like to slap around you and/or the clowns in your midst.

In 1986, people around Reagan who buy whatever Dem Narrative that the NYT/WashPost sells, told Reagan that he needs to sign off on a

2/ massive immigration amnesty that has made its way through the House and Senate with strong majorities or else he will loss the mid-terms. Reagan, like Republican politicians before and after him, went for it. He didn’t sign it before the election but his signature was a given.

3/ In the Nov 4th, 1986 mid term elections, Republicans lost 8 seats in the Senate in part due to angry conservatives not voting. The GOP majority dropped from 53 to 45 while Dems rose from 47 to 55. Part of the loss was built-in from 1980 when Republicans won 12 Senate seats

4/ on Reagan’s 1980 coattails and the seats were up.

At any rate, in late 1987 Regan nominated Robert Bork for the SCOTUS. His nomination was rejected in a 58-42 vote with most senators sticking to party lines except for 2 Democrats and 6 Republicans flipping side. In his place,

5/ Reagan appointed Kennedy who was easily approved but he had spent decades giving conservatives heartaches. But they brought it on themselves by checking out of the 1986 elections because Reagan was not conservative enough on the immigration issue. It gets worse:

6/ In Nov 1988, Bush Senior (who was Reagan’s moderate VP) won the elections. Democrats were firmly in control of the House (since the 1954 elections) and in control of the Senate too. Bush said he will not raise tax but the Dem Congress pushed him to do it. Then in 1990, he

7/ nominated David Souter to the SCOTUS and he was a reliable Liberal vote. Conservatives were very angry with Bush for these two things, so in 1992 when Bush ran for reelection they stayed home and/or voted in droves for Ross Perot. In the end, @BillClinton won 43% of the

8/ popular vote; Bush won 37.4% and Perot won 18.9 of the vote. It was the first time in many decades that a third party candidate won such a large portion of the vote and this gave Clinton the WH despite winning a smaller portion of the popular vote than Dem Dukakis in 1988.

9/ Small detour here: Democrats claim that if not for Perot in the race, Clinton would any win because many would-be Clinton votes went for Perot. Perhaps some votes did but Perot ran to the right of Bush; not to the left of Clinton so on net Bush lost more. Besides, Bush as

10/ the incumbent had two major candidates chipping away at him which sure came at a cost in votes. Another detour: James Carville was a key advisor to Clinton in 1992 and created the slogan “It’s the economy, stupid” which buzz has it that this led Clinton to win in 1992 but no.

11/ The Dem nominee Dukakis in 1988 won 45.6% of the vote despite being considered a clown so what’s the big shtick that @BillClinton four years later won 43% of the vote? To pin this on one buzzword is a joke. Besides, the economy in 1992 was speeding upwards like a rocket.

12/ Quarter after quarter, the GDP reports came in at/above 4%; the stock market was rocketing for a while and more and more jobs were added monthly. Never in recent history did a new POTUS inherit such a strong economy from a predecessor than did Clinton from Bush. Anyway, once

13/ in office, @BillClinton nominated RBG to the SCOTUS in the summer of 1993. It was his first SCOTUS nomination in his first year in office brought to you by righteous-principled Conservative who were angry with Bush and caused him to lose the 1992 election. Then in 1994,

14/ @BillClinton nominated Stephen Breyer to the SCOTUS. Those two were the most reliable lib votes on the court in recent decades made possible, again, by principled Conservatives who wanted to teach Bush and the party machine a lesson not to be moderate.

This is not all:

15/ The midterm elections of 2006 was in the second term of George W Bush. The Republicans had the House since the 1994 elections and the Senate since then too (except for a while May 2001 through 2002 when Senator Jim Jeffordd left the GOP). At issue was domestic spending. The

16/ GOP Congress forced cuts in the rate of growth of domestic spending in the late 1990 when Clinton was POTUS. Dems hit Republicans for it but then Dems took credit for the budget surplus that it created. Bush and the GOP spent like crazy at home and overseas. The deficit for

17/ Fiscal Year 2006 was $248 billion which while it was the lowest since the $157 billion deficit of FY2002, it was still a large deficit at the time. Righteous Conservatives were very angry at the GOP and decided to teach them a lesson by not voting in the midterms. Result?

18/ Democrats swept the House and Senate. The deficit for FY2007 which was based on a budget that was still approved by the GOP Congress, was smaller than the 2006 one but the first Pelosi/Schumer/Bush budget had a huge deficit so Conservatives accomplished nothing with their

19/ self-sabotaging voting in the 2006 elections. Bush also signed off on a hike in the minimum wage in 2007. By the end of the year the economy was in a recession. This plus the Iraq war made Bush a bad name for the 2008 elections. The GOP ran from him. Obama won and within two

20/ years he appointed 2 new liberals to the SCOTUS. Basically, the reliable 4 Liberal Justices (2 by Clinton and 2 by Obama) can be traced back to conservatives not making a cost-benefit analysis before deciding how to vote. They messed up in 1986, 1992, 2006 and this led time

21/ and again to Dems winning the WH and with it the power to appoint Libs to the Court. I understand that had the 1986 mid-terms and 1992 general gone the other way, then the last 24 years would be different too. I am not suggesting that the court would be 9-0 Conservative,

22/ but the point is that time and again conservatives were given the chance to “save” the court but they messed it up. More recently in 2016, many legit conservatives (I am not talking about the grifters who oppose Trump as a racket to cash in on it), were ready to let a

23/ corrupt, war monger Dem win the White House because Trump was not conservative enough for them. Ok. But how is Hillary better for you? Was a Dem Senate in 1986 better? Clinton 1992 better? Dem House/Senate in 2006 (which generated Obama 2008) better? Please.

24/ Also note how the “moderate” wing of the GOP has its hands full with this mess too. In 2005, at the start of Bush’s second term, then-Senate majority leader GOPer Bill Frist grew tired of how Senate Dems filibustered ten judicial nominees from Bush. Basically, each

25/ nominee needed 60 Senate votes to end debate but the GOP had only 55 seats so Frist, backed by conservatives, wanted to “go nuclear” which would change Senate rules so that a 51-49 majority would be enough. As always, the moderates undermined it and they said that if the

26/ shoe is on the other foot (Dem POTUS with a Dem Senate Majority) the GOP will have no power to stop nominations. So a “Gang of 14” formed of 7 Dems and 7 GOPs. The Dems in the gang promised not to filibuster a few of those nominees and the GOP in the gang promised in

27/ exchange not to vote for the Nuclear Option. Basically, by losing those 7 Dems, the Dems (who had 45 seats) would not have the needed 41 votes to filibuster, and the GOP (with its 55 seats) would not have the needed 51 to go nuclear. In the end, six of the ten filibustered

28/ nominees were confirmed. The only two Gang of 14 members still in the Senate are @SenatorCollins and @LindseyGrahamSC. McCain was a leader in it and @MikeDeWine is now Gov of OH.

In 2013, the shoe was on the other foot: Dem Obama was POTUS and @SenateDems had 55 seats.

29/ Republs kept filibustering judicial nominees and Harry Reid, the the Dem Leader, decided to go Nuclear on most nominations except that of SCOTUS. Only 3 Dems voted against it: @Sen_JoeManchin (who breaks from Dems on key votes only if his vote does not change the outcome);

30/ Mark Pryor from Arkansas who was a Gang of 14 Member and Carl Levin from MI. Other than those, there were no pearl-clutching @SenateDems worried about “breaking norms,” and no Dem withheld their vote as a thanks to what @LindseyGrahamSC and @SenatorCollins did in 2005.

31/ In 2017 when @senatemajldr wanted to go nuclear on SCOTUS nominees, ALL Republicans went along including McCain, Collins, Graham because they felt betrayed by what @SenateDems did in 2013 despite the efforts in 2005 to stick to rules. Thank you for reading and retweeting.