Conservatism Unravels, Part Four

With the country in recession and unemployment around 7%, and with George H.W. Bush seemingly unable to offer anything new to the country, the election of 1992 brought an end to the conservative dominance of the White House which began with the election of 1980. The election of Bill Clinton brought new opportunities for conservatives, however. While Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, it was still not easy sailing for the Clinton Administration. The administration seemed unable to get their own appointments to various government positions in order, as many nominees were found to have something in their life's record to give Republicans a target, and the Republicans frequently hit the bulls eye. To keep the "firing" metaphor in place, the administration began to be known to the media as the "administration that can't shoot straight." Then the administration announced that it was offering up a "stimulus" plan of something like sixteen billion dollars. Economists in both parties had a laugh, as even at that time, sixteen billion was a drop in the bucket in the multi-trillion dollar American economy. Social issues, a tax increase on the wealthy, "midnight basketball" as a solution to then rampant crime, and Hillary Clinton's secretive health care plan brought Republicans, their Religious Right allies, independents, and many "Reagan Democrats" back to the ballot box in droves for the midterm elections, and Republicans took control of both houses of Congress, in a sweeping landslide.
It needs to be noted that Clinton and Gore were NOT all that far from the Republicans on one thing....TRADE! To this day, some Democrats are in denial about Clinton and his trade policies. It was Bill Clinton and Al Gore who pushed through NAFTA, with Gore in a famous and highly watched television debate with Ross Perot about American trade policy. Clinton brought together ALL of the living ex-presidents to endorse his trade policy.*** Those favoring these policies scoffed and made fun of Perot's premise that Americans would hear "a large sucking sound,"^^^ and that sound would be American manufacturing jobs going southwards, primarily to Mexico. It wasn't long before things like washing machines came labeled "Made in Mexico."
To be continued.... (a word history is below)

***It was quite a remarkable picture; Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and George Bush (Sr.). Those in BOLD were Republicans.
^^^This was before the Monica Lewinski scandal.

Word History:
"I"-Pronoun-It doesn't get any more personal than this word! It goes back to Indo European "ego/egom." To my knowledge (ah, you better watch that statement), all of the Indo European languages still share a form of this word for the first person singular pronoun, and it passed into Old Germanic as "eka." In Old English it was "ik/ic/ich," and it wasn't until the 1300s that many in English began using the shortened form "I." The capital letter began to be used to avoid any misreading. Interestingly, the form "ich/ik" continued in use in parts of southern England until the 18th Century!!! In the closest relatives of English, German has "ich," but it should be noted, that in my experience, in southern German dialects they say "I," pronounced like our long "e," and it shows how these dialects shortened the form, just as happened in English. Dutch has "ik," Norwegian and Danish have "jeg," Swedish has "jag." By the way, some linguists feel it is possible that the affirmative "aye," (as in "All those in favor say "aye") is actually just another form of "I."