Presidential campaign

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Presidential campaign

by YellowSapphire » Sun Aug 01, 2010 8:27 am
During the 1992 Presidential campaign, President George H. W. Bush and his promise four years earlier to never raise taxes experienced considerable criticism from economic conservatives who felt betrayed by Bush's 1990 tax-hike, which he implemented over the objections of economic conservatives who decried tax hikes, insisted that low taxes created wealth, and contended that deregulation promoted innovation.

A) President George H. W. Bush and his promise four years earlier to never raise taxes experienced considerable criticism from economic conservatives who felt betrayed by Bush's 1990 tax-hike, which he implemented over the objections of economic conservatives who decried tax hikes, insisted that low taxes created wealth, and contended that deregulation promoted innovation
B) President George H. W. Bush experienced considerable criticism from economic conservatives who felt betrayed by Bush's 1990 tax-hike, which he implemented despite his past promises and the objections of economic conservatives who decried tax hikes, insisted that low taxes created wealth, and contended that deregulation promoted innovation
C) President George H. W. Bush and his promise four years earlier to never raise taxes experienced considerable criticism from economic conservatives who felt betrayed by Bush's 1990 tax-hike, which he implemented despite his past promises, the objections of economic conservatives who decried tax hikes, the insistence that low taxes create wealth, and the contention that deregulation promoted innovation
D) President George H. W. Bush experienced considerable criticism from economic conservatives who felt betrayed by Bush's 1990 tax-hike, which he implemented despite his past promises and the objections of economic conservatives who decried tax hikes, having insisted that low taxes created wealth and contending that deregulation promotes innovation
E) President George H. W. Bush experienced considerable criticism from economic conservatives who felt betrayed by Bush's 1990 tax-hike, which he implemented despite his past promises and the objections of economic conservatives who decried tax hikes, insist that low taxes created wealth, and contend that deregulation promoted innovation

OA: B
Last edited by YellowSapphire on Sun Aug 01, 2010 9:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
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by grockit_andrea » Sun Aug 01, 2010 9:02 am
The first issue that I noticed here was parallelism: the list of things that the economic conservatives did needs to be in parallel form. Every choice mentions the "economic conservatives who decried..." so we know that the other two verbs in the list ("insisted" and "contended") must be in the past tense in order to be parallel to "decried." That allows us to eliminate C ("decried... the insistence... the contention"), D ("decried... having insisted... contending") and E ("decried... insist... contend"). That leaves us with choices A and B. Choice A is awkward for a couple of reasons; it's unnecessary to say that Bush and his promise experienced criticism, and probably inaccurate as well. After all, it's not the promise that was criticized, it's the BREAKING of the promise. Choice B handles it much more smoothly by mentioning the promise later in the sentence. Choice A also has a split infinitive, "to never raise," and while split infinitives are acceptable if they sound better than the alternative, here splitting the infinitive doesn't improve the flow of the sentence.
Based on all of this, I'd go with choice B.
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by dinesh19aug » Sun Aug 01, 2010 1:21 pm
The answer choice C, D and E are ruled out because there is a paralleism error,
decried, insisted and contended should be parallel. This rule is violated in c, d and e.

In choice A, the president and his promise are criticized, which is a little awkward. It should either be his promise or the president himself.

For example:
RIGHT: President Bush and vice president experienced criticism ......
RIGHT: President Bush's and vice president's promise to xyz ... experienced criticisms

Criticism should refer either to an idea or to a person.

That rules out A and hence B is the answer.

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