Word: contra
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...take over the White House after 1988. They made a bravura start, quickly passing a clean-water bill over the President's veto and approving the $88 billion highway bill over another Reagan veto. The Republicans, shell-shocked by the midterm election loss and defensive over the Iran-contra affair, were reduced to the role of helpless spectators...
...week an outside agitator stepped forward and concentrated congressional attention. The unlikely catalyst: Ronald Reagan, who had resolutely ignored Congress's budget dilemma after his own spending plan had been rejected by both Democrats and Republicans. Returning from a humdrum summit in Venice and limping from the continuing Iran-contra revelations, the President was looking for a quick score. So Reagan did what he does best: he took to the airwaves and attacked the old "tax and tax, spend and spend" ways of the Democrats. The assault pushed Byrd and House Speaker Jim Wright into hurried meetings with their deadlocked...
...backed contra war. As long as the war goes on, it will be impossible to demand that the government in Nicaragua advance toward democracy and political pluralism. The contras are the excuse for everything: to eliminate all traces of liberty, to make the state more dictatorial and to justify the failure of a centralized economy...
Even before the White House statement, charges had been flying throughout Central America that the U.S. was once again working to stymie the convoluted regional peace process. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega Saavedra, whose Sandinista government is fighting off the attacks of U.S.-supported contra rebels, accused the U.S. of a "direct attempt to kill any possibility of a negotiated settlement in the region." Ortega once again charged the U.S. with foiling peaceful negotiations in order to "isolate Nicaragua and launch a direct invasion against our country." The Nicaraguan President declared that he would not agree to a summit postponement...
...economic summit in Venice, Ronald Reagan is upstaged by an absent adversary, Mikhail Gorbachev. -- Fawn Hall reveals details of a cover- up at the end of the first phase of the Iran- contra hearings. -- A sharp tongue may be Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden' s greatest asset -- as well as his greatest liability...