[laplata]

RIP

[Gay State Conservative]

Sorry...nothing good to say about him.

[teeman8r]

The first person I cast a vote for

[AppyPappy]

Wow. I thought he was long dead.

[FlipWilson]

Ah yes, before there was Egg McMuffin there was John Anderson, the GOPe’s 1980 attempt to derail a Reagan presidency.

The GOPe’s hatred of anything not them is nothing new. Never forget that.

[Angels27]

RIP. He helped Reagan score the electoral vote landslide in 1980. As a “moderate” Republican he syphoned off dissatisfied Democrat votes from Carter, especially in Carters home south.

[the OlLine Rebel]

Yes, I remember that. Even at 10yo.

6% of the vote.

[rdl6989]

I hadn’t heard anything about him in ages.

[Enchante]

"Anderson spent many years in lock step with Republican Party orthodoxy"

Funny, we never seem these MSM clowns describe Democrat pols as "in lock step with Democrat Party orthodoxy" on myriad liberal issues. If liberals are to be praised for any ideological deviation, it's only for going further "left" i.e. even more radical. Republicans, of course, can only be praised as "maverick" (John McVain, for example) when they embrace the MSM's liberal talking points.

[Dilbert San Diego]

Interesting reactions here.

Some say he was the GOP-E candidate intended to take out Reagan, drain votes from Reagan, so that Reagan would get taken out.

Others say that he took more votes from Carter than Reagan,and got dissaffected Democrat votes, since he was a more liberal Republican.

[research99]

John Anderson’s campaign platform in 1980 was for a a 50-cent gas tax to reduce dependence on foreign oil, at a time when the retail cost of a gallon of gas was just over $1.00.

Gas prices dropped in late 1985 following a refusal by Saudi Arabia to cut its output when the OPEC nations had a surplus of production, partly because Iraq had to finance its ongoing 1980’s war with Iran.

The effect of the gas tax increase would be compensated by a 50 percent reduction in Social Security taxes. This contrasts with 1983 changes in the tax code which raised the rates and standards for taxes affecting Social Security.

Would Anderson’s platform have solved issues of the early 1980’s? It certainly would have cut into discretionary spending such as travel, and would have affected retail. It also would have largely defunded Social Security at a time of high inflation.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Started out good, but went native in DC. RIP.

[Architect of Avalon]

Change, changing places

Root yourself to the ground

Word to the wise

Well, you get what’s coming

One word can bring you round

Changes

[Verginius Rufus]

I thought at the time that without the free publicity he received from the comic strip Doonesbury, he could never have mounted a national campaign.

He received 5.7 million votes--which is more than Abraham Lincoln got in 1860 and 1864 combined.

[Arthur McGowan]

His platform was: Signal your virtue by voting for me.

Anderson was the candidate for Republicans who just couldn’t pull the lever for Reagan, because he was so...you know...stupid.

John Kasich appeals to the same sort of voter. He talked the way dumb people think smart people talk.

[alternatives?]

It seems like a disproportional share of members of the establishment live well into their nineties.

[SgtHooper]

Did he die in office!? I hope not. Term LIMITS!

[TBP]

He tried to get President Carter re-elected.

I loved one of the debates when the GOP field was down to Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Phil Crane, and Anderson (before he decided to go independent.) At one point, Phil Crane looked at John Anderson and talked about how much he liked Anderson, what a nice guy he was, and then he dropped the bomb: “John, you’re the classiest Democrat running.”

[TBP]

A bit of trivia:

Who was John Anderson’s running mate? (He was a Democrat.)

[SamAdams76]

I was just thinking about John Anderson and I do not remember him dying last December. It's strange that I missed this. I thought his death would get more play here on the Free Republic. Then again, his death went without mention in a lot of other places too.

He made it to be age 95. That's pretty impressive. He was an old man back in 1980 too. At least from the perspective of a 17-18 year old like me.

So on the radio this morning, when driving some Connecticut backroads and drinking some black coffee, comes up this song from 1980 called "99" by Toto. Hadn't heard that song in a while and it brought back memories of early 1980 when the American hockey team was winning a gold medal in Lake Placid and Ronald Reagan was battling for the Republican nomination.

I was just a kid living in Massachusetts at the time. I had joined up the U.S. Marines on the delayed entry program because I was a senior in high school and did not want to go to college - yet I did not want to live at home with the parents and hang out with the kids on my street who were all headed for prison (and many of them ended up there) working some dead-end job.

I was washing dishes in a restaurant at that time called the Cloud 9 at Logan Airport. Also, I was doing many other things such as busing tables, filling up the orange juice machine, taking the trash down to the dumpster out on the runway apron, filling ice buckets for the bartenders, (you never want to order anything on the rocks in a restaurant bar - sorry) and about a hundred other odd jobs. When you are dishwasher in a restaurant, you get all the scut work. But I didn't mind, the cooks up front gave me lots of food, heaping plates of boiled jumbo shrimp and steaks that they were charging the customers up front big money for. And some of the bartenders were coming back to see me with paper cups full of draft beer - they were good to me because I took care of them. I was only 17 but those were different times.

Anyway, back to the election. I wasn't all that political back then but I knew that Jimmy Carter was doing an awful job and would probably get replaced by whatever Republican got nominated. Remember the botched rescue attempt of the Iran hostages in April of 1980? That basically summed up the Carter presidency right there. Everything Carter did was botched or ended up in colossal failure. Remember the long gas lines and the Carter speech on how America was stuck in malaise? Yes, a U.S. president actually went on prime time TV to lament the fact that America was in decline. Even Obama didn't do that.

So that was the political environment in early 1980 when that "99" song by Toto was all over the radio. Like I said, I wasn't really politically minded back then. I was just a dumb long-haired kid wondering waiting for the new Rolling Stones album (it was called Emotional Rescue and ended up mostly sucking).

So there we were back in 1980, waiting to see what Republican was going to emerge to challenge Jimmy Carter in November. This was Massachusetts so most people hated all the Republicans, especially Ronald Reagan, who was said to be the next "Hitler" and would plunge us into World War III. Being a dumb kid, I pretty much didn't want Ronald Reagan, especially since I just joined the Marines.

I didn't like George Bush either. Even back then, I saw that he was just a deep establishment operator who wouldn't change anything if he got in. Also, Bush just radiated that noxious "I'm from Yale" elitism. Didn't like him.

So here comes this white haired guy from Illinois called John Anderson. Didn't know anything about him except the liberal Massachusetts media swooned over him for some reason or other. In my high school, there was definitely a John Anderson buzz going on - not too unlike the Bernie buzz that would afflict high school kids some 36 years later. So I got on the John Anderson train. And when he decided to go Independent after losing the nomination to Reagan, I cheered him on. He was a hero, taking on the establishment. Go Anderson go!

All that spring and summer of 1980, I was a big Anderson supporter and I don't even remember why. I might even have worn the button you see below. I was crazy for John Anderson back then. I thought his maverick campaign would change the country!

Anyway, cue up the song "Sailing" by Christopher Cross. I think that song crossed me over into respectable adulthood.

On Labor Day weekend, Ronald Reagan gave a speech in New Jersey, right across from the Statue of Liberty. Boats were going back and forth in the background. The TV showed that speech. I was mesmerized. That's when I became a Ronald Reagan supporter.

So "99" by Toto is for John Anderson but "Sailing" by Christopher Cross is for Ronald Reagan.

I can say so much more about that year but I'll stop here.

Rest in peace John Anderson. I didn't even know you were dead until today. I will go into YouTube and play "99" one more time in your honor.