Why Reagan Came Back
TONELSON, ALAN H.
Why Reagan Came Back. BY ALAN H. TONELSOn Until Ronald Reagan's candidacy came back from the dead in late April, one of the biggest political mysteries of 1976 was how it got there in the first...
...But instead of igniting the passions of the GOP—the only way to get the rank-and-file to oust the Me-Tooers—Reagan conducted a Me-Too campaign of sorts himself...
...Now that the battle is out of the primaries and into the caucuses, electability has turned into the contest's paramount issue...
...These arch-conservatives sought to lay the ideological groundwork for Goldwater's nomination and his certain destruction of the welfare state...
...Moreover, Reagan's proposal to cut Federal spending by $90 billion reinforced the image many had of him as an intellectual lightweight...
...If not for the Depression, World War II and the Kennedy assassination, the Republican Right believes, the GOP would be as strong today as it was in the days of Coolidge and Hoover...
...Not that the faithful regard the situation as hopeless...
...Just three months later he was on the ropes and, while Gerald Ford's comic potential remained undeniable, the former California governor looked like the biggest political clown around...
...Reagan has eaten away almost all of Ford's lead, and in these last few weeks before the Kansas City convention he is pushing a skillful blend of pragmatism and fervent ideological commitment that is at least an even bet to gain him the nod...
...The former governor has managed the delicate business of campaigning emotionally but not foolishly, of successfully aping Goldwater's slam-bang style and tone and at the same time keeping the discussion within the bounds of political sanity recognized by most of the electorate (if not the New York Times editorial board...
...Explanations abounded for Reagan's post-New Hampshire swoon...
...Not only is he likely to be the most conservative Democratic nominee in recent memory, but he represents much that is very dear to old-line GOP hearts...
...An outsider might conclude that nothing less than a willing suspension of disbelief could induce the GOP to fall for that routine a second time...
...His rise has reinforced the Right's conviction that the time is ripe for a conservative victory...
...Still, conservative Republicans are taking another factor into account this year, one that weighs heavily in Reagan's favor: Jimmy Carter...
...This was woefully out of synch with the complex mood and needs of today's Republican party...
...is an editor and a free-lance journalist...
...A sense of urgency soon permeated his bid for the nomination, and the Republican majority that forms his natural constituency in the South and Western states, as well as Nebraska and Indiana, responded accordingly in the primaries and the caucuses...
...He had to launch a hard-hitting, hell-raising, emotional campaign that would persuade his party to reject the compromisers typified by Ford and return to a pure, classical stance that, in 1976, could carry the Republicans and their philosophy to victory...
...As for the memories of Watergate, their man would run against the mess in Washington...
...Conservatives loved it all...
...The post-Watergate GOP, purged of its remaining liberals and moderates, was perfect for him—a hard core of the ultraconser-vative faithful anxious for a Right-wing crusade...
...Reagan's pitch, on the other hand, goes down as smoothly as ice cream?I can beat Carter at his own game because it's our game...
...Even more impressively, Reagan seemed to have some genuine national issues going for him...
...The removal of Nelson Rockefeller from a prospective Ford ticket soothed many possible Reagan backers, as did the President's shift to a more strident brand of conservatism...
...This irreducible Republican hard core has always possessed a certain fatalism, an inclination for lost causes and a willingness to fight the good fight in the face of almost certain defeat...
...In fact, Reagan had fallen so far that hardly anyone remembered the golden days of December, when the Republican Presidential nomination seemed ready to drop into his hands...
...For although the rank-and-file, dispirited by the Nixon ordeal, would have liked nothing better than to avoid the fratricidal strife required to unseat a solid and conservative—if uninspiring—incumbent, a critical segment of the Republican mind is positively contemptuous of Ford...
...Nonetheless, they have a sneaking suspicion that the discouraging numbers do not tell the whole story—that the root cause of their troubles is not the irrelevance of their political message, but a combination of extraordinary bad luck plus the faint hearts of the party's moderate wing...
...And the numbers were favorable, too: In December a Gallup poll showed Reagan leading Ford among Republican voters...
...The popular wisdom, reflected in Senator Goldwater's mild support of the President, gives Ford the edge here...
...Some credited the improving economy, others pointed to the emergence of a new Ford...
...Carter's triumph also enables Reagan to use the electability issue in a far nobler way than Ford...
...To be sure, they frequently feel beleaguered and besieged, stern custodians of a fading web of values...
...Unlike Ford, he was completely free of the Nixon taint...
...Now, of course, roles are somewhat reversed...
...Only a bumbler of the first magnitude could have squandered the advantages Reagan enjoyed by New Year's Day...
...The gaffes he has committed—over Rhodesia, Panama, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the $90 billion-budget cut—have been too few and far between to do any serious damage...
...Since no such extraneous events were on the horizon at the start of the present campaign, for the first time in 40 years the hard core were confident they could run one of their own without the odds being stacked against them...
...As the party has become smaller and more conservative, these feelings have grown and sharpened...
...His personal appearance, golden voice, and confident delivery combined to create an impression of Presidential stature the President could never hope to match...
...But outsiders won't make the decision...
...BY ALAN H. TONELSOn Until Ronald Reagan's candidacy came back from the dead in late April, one of the biggest political mysteries of 1976 was how it got there in the first place...
...He sought to conduct a respectable campaign that could pave the way to victory in November...
...Ronald Reagan is a past master of this brand of seduction, and he's won over far more skeptical audiences before...
...In his determination to out-President Ford, though, he failed to give Republican voters compelling reasons to gamble and dump the incumbent...
...What Reagan forgot was that the nomination had to come first, and as it turned out, a little bit of fringe Goldwaterism would have averted his early collapse...
...Carter's principal themes—the need to return to past values, the priority of moral leadership, the virtue of reform as opposed to social and institutional change—are ideas the GOP has been pushing in one form or another for over a century...
...Of course this scenario, so attractive to the Republican Right, can look rather far-fetched from a liberal or Democratic viewpoint...
...Yet when he threw his hat into the ring last November, Reagan appeared to have the Republican world by the tail...
...they were certain Reagan was not a fringe figure, but a Goldwater with a difference...
...Four years after the new Republican majority seemed upon us, fewer than 20 per cent of the electorate identifies with the GOP, and those who have hung on despite the Nixon Administration's debacle tend to be clustered on the far Right end of the political spectrum...
...The main damage, however, stemmed from the style he originally chose for his campaign: cool, "respectable,' somewhat benign...
...He obeyed the Eleventh Commandment ("Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican") in the critical early stages of the race and settled for carping, indirect criticism of Ford's record...
...And while Reagan's measured stridency and rhetorical loyalty to the classical Republican dogma has endeared him to the pessimistic side of his party's character, his equally strong appeal to the optimistic, nearly pugnacious streak in the GOP has given him the strength to stay with Ford in the final stretch...
...It longs for a showdown against the welfare-state liberalism whose ascendance it will never completely accept, no matter what the odds, and looked to Reagan to lead the fight...
...Reagan dropped the Eleventh Commandment scant days before his defeat in the Florida primary —with stunning results...
...The President, by claiming that Reagan is too conservative to win, opens himself up to damaging accusations of compromise and sellout...
...And their candiAlan H. Tonelson, a past contributor to these pages...
...In addition, a recent New York Times/CBS News poll showing both contenders running about even in the Sunbelt undercuts Reagan's contention that he is stronger in those areas most likely to go Republican in the general election...
...He rode the swelling anti-Washington wave by pledging to cut the Federal budget to the bone...
...Much of the noise emanating from the Reagan camp today, advertising its inherent dynamism and rosy prospects in November, resembles the arguments made by such men as Ralph de Toledano and former New Dealer Raymond Moley in the early 1960s...
...Basking in the consequent glow of praise from the always fickle newsmagazines, the Californian continued on this course, becoming a passive challenger...
...He promised forceful direction in place of the drift of a caretaker President overwhelmed by pressing domestic and foreign policy problems...
...date was determined not to disappoint them by repeating the 1964 disaster...
...Perhaps more important, at the core of Carter's message Republicans sense an emphasis on personal character and a commitment to individual responsibility, two qualities they feel their candidate possesses in abundance...
...Jerry, you've got one year to get out of town," snarled a Reagan caricature looming over a Hollywood mockup of Washington on the cover of New York Magazine's December 15, 1975 issue...
...Carter is fascinating to Republicans who have felt cheated since 1932...
...There is, after all, ample reason to believe that the crisis of the Republican party is due less to capricious twists of fate than to its utter inability to understand the forces that have shaped American history in this century...
...He places himself in the unenviable position of telling his party they have no chance if their standard bearer runs as a true Republican...
...Pleagan's task, then, was clear: To win the nomination he had to rouse the Republican fanaticism lying just below a thin veneer of caution and yearning to break free...
Vol. 59 • July 1976 • No. 15
