Word: social
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...other hand, Bruce Cook, Democratic state central committeeman for St. Clair County, recalls a coal miner telling him that "once a guy makes $30,000 a year, he buys a riding lawn mower and votes Republican." These voters, many of them Reagan Democrats, are conservative on social issues. Cook admits that Dukakis' veto of a compulsory Pledge of Allegiance to the flag is not going to help. But he counters by asserting, "Dan Quayle really hurts Bush with these people. They are macho, patriotic people who are working really hard to send their kids to college," qualities they...
...advisers predict -- strictly off the record and perhaps in a sly effort to lower expectations -- that he will. But in the past two months, Dukakis' once commanding lead in the California polls has disappeared, shrinking from 16 points to a statistically meaningless 1 point. One reason: several of the social issues Bush has been hammering on (opposition to new taxes and gun control, approval of the death penalty) have already been endorsed overwhelmingly by California voters in recent ballot initiatives. Republicans have greatly increased their registration and popularity over the past ten years. Polls show that the percentage of respondents...
Transportation experts generally agree that in most cases a huge highway- building program is not the answer. "We cannot pour asphalt and concrete on the ground fast enough, and in the face of today's political and social environment, I am not sure that people would accept it," says Robert Farris, chief of the Federal Highway Administration. As a practical matter, the cost of buying up suburban houses worth at least $250,000 apiece for a right-of-way would be prohibitive...
...rhetoric notwithstanding, neither Bush nor Dukakis has made the conceptual breakthrough that would permit the U.S. to fashion the school system it deserves. While looking through different lenses, both seem to view federal education spending as a frilly, bloated social program rather than as a vital national-security program at least equal in priority to maintaining strong armed forces. During the Reagan years, despite growing concern about huge deficits, the largest peacetime military buildup in the nation's history boosted spending for defense 37% in inflation-adjusted dollars to annual levels of nearly $300 billion. Federal outlays for elementary...
...President's job. For the $3.6 billion cost of one nuclear aircraft-carrier task force, of which the U.S. already has five, the country could pay the full four-year tuitions of 90,000 private-college students. By forgoing one year's cost of living increase in Social Security benefits, the U.S. could raise the average salary of the nation's 2.3 million public schoolteachers by $3,260. The question the next President must decide is which of these expenditures will make the U.S. stronger and do more to ensure its future economic vitality. In answering it, he should keep...