It's About Coalitions Not Purity, Part Eleven

"The Reagan Coalition and the Rise of the American Political Right" Part Three

With Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy opposing President Jimmy Carter for the 1980 Democratic nomination, Carter's weaknesses were magnified. Many labor people, a significant element of the Democratic coalition, went with Kennedy, and many liberal Democrats saw Carter as too conservative. However, just as had happened with Gerald Ford in 1976, when Ronald Reagan challenged him for the Republican nomination, enough Democrats stuck with President Carter to eventually ward off Kennedy's strong challenge.* While Carter has often appeared to be exceedingly idealistic, both then and now, he came to the presidency in 1977 (the election was in November 1976) in the aftermath of the Watergate scandals. Carter slyly would remind voters of Watergate, a Republican scandal, while seeming to be above playing hard nose politics, by often telling reporters, "I'm not here to answer questions about Watergate." He did much the same in 1980 against Kennedy, as Kennedy had been involved in an auto accident in 1969 which claimed the life of a young woman passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, as his car veered off a bridge and into the water. The accident, on Chappaquiddick Island (Massachusetts), saw Kennedy save himself, but leave the scene, only to report the accident many hours later. The deadly accident spawned many a conspiracy theory, and even a number of Democrats were skeptical of Kennedy's story. Senator Kennedy's 1980 run for president brought the issue, which had never completely died out, back to the front pages throughout the country. Carter would steadfastly and repeatedly announce that he didn't want to talk about "Chappaquiddick," which was a way of talking about it. Comedian Bob Hope had a great quip which summed up the whole thing. Carter had a young daughter, Amy, and Hope said something to the effect that while Carter said he didn't want to talk about Kennedy's auto accident, he spent each night teaching Amy how to spell "Chappaquiddick." In the end, Carter won the nomination. Meanwhile, on the Republican side...

Ronald Reagan and his conservative supporters moved quickly to secure the Republican nomination from the Republican moderate wing, then basically led by George Bush (Senior). Bush's campaign was unable to halt the Reagan juggernaut, but he gave Reagan's opponents a highly quotable comment about Reagan's economic proposals of tax cuts and large defense spending increases, calling them "voodoo economics." ** Voodoo or not, Reagan easily captured the Republican nomination and he tagged Bush to be his vice presidential running mate, which caused Bush to use some voodoo of his own to distance himself from his previous remark. John Anderson, a long time moderate Republican congressman from Illinois, chose to run as an independent in an effort to attract moderate Republicans and disaffected Democrats. So the race for the presidency was set.

* For those unaware, Ted Kennedy was the brother of President John F. Kennedy (also known by his initials "JFK"), who was assassinated in November 1963, and Robert Kennedy, a former Attorney General of the United States, assassinated in 1968 as he campaigned for the Democratic nomination. John Kennedy was the first, and thus far only, Roman Catholic to be elected president. Even by 1980, the lingering divisiveness over religion played a role in the primary, as some staunch Democratic acquaintances of mine, who were Protestant, chose Carter, solely based upon the fact that Kennedy was Catholic. Carter was a Baptist and a Sunday school teacher.

**  In 1992 when Ross Perot was running for president as an independent, he recounted how Reagan's policies led to huge deficits and he repeated the "voodoo economics" label, then saying "we are now in deep voodoo." 

WORD HISTORY:
Bring-This word traces back to Indo European "bhrengkh," which generally meant "carry, bring," and also by extension, "worry" ("carry concerns with you"). This gave Old Germanic "bringanan," which meant "to bring, to carry." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "bringan," with the same general meaning, and by extension, "to produce," from the notion "bring forth." This then became "bringen," before the modern version.^  Common in the other West Germanic languages: German and Low German Saxon have "bringen," Dutch has "brengen," and West Frisian has "bringe." The North Germanic languages did not use forms of the word until later, although I "assume" other forms replaced it during the Old Norse period,^^ but Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish all borrowed forms from Low German: Norwegian and Danish have "bringe" and Swedish has "bringa." Icelandic never borrowed a form of the word, as it was already established in Iceland by the time the other North Germanic languages borrowed forms of the word. In some Germanic languages, forms of "bring" can also mean "take," depending upon context.

^ In modern everyday English we have to use two words to represent the infinitive form of a verb; as in, "to bring." In the past however, English, like its Germanic cousins, used just one word, the main word + an ending, typically of "an" or "en," to mean the same thing. This ending then changed according to how the verb was used in a sentence (these changes are called "inflections," see below). Some quaint dialects and non modernized texts, like some Bibles and hymnals, still use the old forms; thus you still see things like "hast" ("have," German still uses "hast"), "cometh" (German uses "kommt"), "sayeth" (German has "sagt"). The other Germanic languages have generally retained some form of this grammar, with lots of inflections, into modern times; thus, in German for example, "bringen" means "to bring" (also "to take," not in the sense "accept," but rather "to take something or someone from one place to another"). English simplified its verbs, thus when "to bring" is conjugated, it is: I bring; you bring; he/she/it brings; we/they bring, so there are only two grammatical forms needed to express ourselves, "bring" and "brings." German, on the other hand, is still like the English of several hundred years ago: infinitive "bringen:" ich bringe; du bringst; er/sie/es bringt; wir/sie bringen, so there are four forms needed.  

^^ Old Norse is the ancestor of the North Germanic languages: Norwegian, Icelandic, Danish and Swedish (actually also Faroese, from the Faroe Islands), having come from Old Germanic, and generally dates from about 700 A.D. until about 1200/1300.