George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

Sometime during the spring of 1980, Bush began attacking Reagan for his "supply-side"
economic policies. Bush may have thought he still had a chance to win the nomination,
but in any case he coined the phrase "voodoo economics." Bush later claimed that the
idea had come from his British-born press secretary, Peter Teeley. Later, when the time
came to ingratiate himself with Reagan's following, Bush claimed that he had never used
the offending term. But, in a speech made at Carnegie-Mellon University on April 10,
1980, he attacked Reagan for "a voodoo economic policy." He compared Reagan's
approach to something which former Governor Jerry Brown of California, "Governor
Moonbeam," might have concocted.
Bush was able to keep going after New Hampshire because Mosbacher's machinations
had given him a post-New Hampshire war chest of $3 million. The Reagan camp had
spent two thirds of their legal total expenditure of $18 million before the primaries had
begun. This had proven effective, but it meant that in more than a dozen primaries,
Reagan could afford no television purchases at all. This allowed Bush to move in and
smother Reagan under a cascade of greenbacks in a few states, even though Reagan was
on his way to the nomination. That was the story in Pennsylvania and Michigan. The
important thing for Bush now was to outlast the other candidates and to build his
credentials for the vice presidency, since that was what he was now running for.
One of Bush's friends did not desert him. When Bush came to Houston on April 28 for a
lunchhour rally, he was introduced by former Watergate special prosecutor Leon
Jaworski, a man devoted to his cause. Jaworski condemned Reagan as an "extremist
whose over-the-counter simplistic remedies and shopworn platitudes of solutions trouble
open-minded and informed voters." Jaworski assailed Carter as a "Democrat in despair,"
and called on the Texas voters "to pay no attention to the also-rans who marched to the
altar of public opinion, wooing the voters with large campaign chests and who are now
back home licking their wounds as rejected suitors." This was a veiled attack on
Connally, who had spent $12 million getting one Arkansas delegate, dropped out, and
endorsed Reagan. Jaworski's Watergate-era loyalties ran deep. [fn 24]
Bush still claimed that Texas was his home state, so he was obliged to make an effort
there in advance of the May 3 primary. Here Bush spent about half a million dollars on
television, while the Reaganauts were unable to buy time owing to their lack of money;
Reagan had now reached his FEC spending ceiling. The secret society issue was as big in
Texas as it had been in New Hampshire; during an appearance at the University of Texas
Bush delivered a whining ultimatum to Reagan to order his campaign workers to "stop
passing out insidious literature" questioning Bush's patriotism because of his membership
in the Trilateral Commission, which Bush characterized as a group that sought to improve
US relations with our closest allies. He wanted Reagan to repudiate thie entire line of
attack, which was still hurting the Bushmen badly. During a five-day plane-hopping blitz
of the state, Bush came across as "cryptically hawkish".
Despite the lack of money for television, Reagan defeated Bush by 52% to 47% of the
half a million votes cast. But because of the winner-take-all rule in individual precincts,
Reagan took 61 delegates to Bush's 19. Bush's only areas of strength were in his old