What made conservatives flip on this issue?

Kizzume

In the 80's, everyone, especially conservatives, were always saying, "Buy American! Buy American!", almost to the point of looking like fanatics.

What specifically was it that made them all flip to the mindset of "Buy things, because cheap prices are part of living in a free market!"--and you just don't hear them saying "Buy American!" anymore because you really can't buy everything American anymore. Food, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, and airplanes. Yeay. Why is the idea of buying American-made products the LEAST important thing to them now? It's as if they don't want things to be made here anymore. Could this be true? I doubt it.

To me, this is the most significant position flip that the republicans AND the conservatives have made in the past 25 years. It's quite frankly a night and day difference in mindset. I don't get how some of these same people can claim that they like the Reagan years when those years were STILL all about BUYING AMERICAN.

Kizzume · Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 5:01 pm Post subject:

Back in the 80's it was the LIBERALS who were the ones saying "What's the big deal if it's made in China?"

I guess I should be questioning the liberals on this too--they flipflopped on this radically as well.

In the 80's, the conservatives in their opinion about job outsourcing (which didn't have that term at that time) seemed like a bunch of extremists running around saying "the sky is falling", but now we have exactly the situation they had warned us about, and now they support it and the ones who were saying it's not a big deal are the ones saying, "We have to save our jobs! We have to cut back on job oursourcing! We have to buy American!"

debo · Joined: 16 Jun 2008 Posts: 10 Location: US

As to the flip, no idea here, but, maybe, and this is pure speculation, but maybe the economic nature of the world in a whole has started permeating their minds. Truly, I doubt it to be quite so simple.
Now, as to the libs, Buy American would be so much easier if their desire for tax money would leave a few more dollars in the old pocket.

Kizzume · Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 11:22 pm Post subject:

True, but it doesn't seem like the libs have flipped quite as much as the republicans.

jq · Joined: 02 Dec 2007 Posts: 1089

I think its just that lobbyists have increased tenfold since they 80s. More corporate interest invest in our political leaders-- they've been bought off!