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57 3 Reagan Changes the Course It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the federal government and to demand recognition of the distinction between powers granted to the federal government and those reserved to the states or to the people. All of us need to be reminded that the federal government did not create the states; the states created the federal government. —President Ronald Reagan (1981) Let us go forward with an historic reform for fairness, simplicity and incentives for growth. I am asking . . . for a plan for action to simplify the entire tax code, so all taxpayers, big and small, are treated more fairly. —President Ronald Reagan (1984) In the mid-1970s, the conservative movement in the United States experienced a revival of sorts, giving a timely boost to the fortunes of the Republican party. Socalled New Right social conservatives organized, and new groups representing their interests sprang up across the country. These single-issue grassroots interest groups, organized around such themes as opposition to abortion, crime, and gun control, eventually coalesced around the Republican coalition. Within a short time, the Moral Majority and other Christian-based movements became powerful constituents within the GOP. While not entirely at home in the Republican party of the 1970s, they essentially had nowhere else to go in the political arena with their agenda for school prayer, education vouchers, tax benefits for families, and opposition to gay rights and most of the secular values of modern “liberal” society. In the end, they cast their lot with the Republican party, supporting the conservative candidate who ran for the presidency in 1980. While the Republican party moved to the right, the moderate center in both major national parties weakened. Not only did the liberal wing of the Republican party virtually disappear during the 1970s, but the moderate center also declined dramatically. On the other side of the aisle, the Democratic party moved toward the left as Southern conservatives abandoned the party over the Reagan Changes the Course 58 issue of civil rights. This reshuffling of Southern conservatives into the Republican fold created greater unity within each party and greater polarity between the two parties. This trend was evidenced in a number of ways. For instance, after the mid-1970s, there was a discernable decline in the number of roll call votes in Congress in which there was significant division within each party—a much more common phenomenon in the years from 1945 to 1975.1 This ideological unity within the parties was accompanied by an increase in the tension between them, as the Republicans drifted to the right and the Democrats to the left. The polarization within the congressional parties reflected a similar trend at the level of congressional districts, a greater number of which became either uniformly liberal or conservative, with fewer a competitive mixture.2 With the parties more clearly defined ideologically, the ground was laid for the conservative Right Wing of the Republican party to reassert itself first within the GOP, and then within the national party system. The Reagan Revolution After giving an electrifying nominating speech for Barry Goldwater at the 1964 Republican convention, former movie star Ronald Reagan emerged as a prime contender for the GOP presidential nomination sometime in the near future. In 1966, Reagan took the first step by running for governor of California. Surprisingly , he defeated the incumbent Democrat Pat Brown by over a million votes. Immediately after the election, Reagan and his supporters looked toward the White House.3 Blocked in his quest for the presidency by Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972, Reagan made an ill-fated bid to seize the GOP nomination from Gerald Ford in 1976. Ford, a moderate Republican and former House minority leader, had been appointed vice president by Richard Nixon following Spiro Agnew’s resignation from that office in 1973. He then ascended to the presidency in August 1974 upon Nixon’s own resignation under intense pressure during the Watergate investigation. The chance of Reagan dethroning the incumbent Republican president in the primaries was a long shot, at best.4 Nevertheless, Reagan ran as a conservative bidding for support from social conservatives and the Right Wing generally. He fared poorly in the New Hampshire primary, and then was trounced in Florida. Like Goldwater before him, Reagan made some politically ill-advised statements about the viability of Social Security. These surely contributed to his loss in Florida, where senior citizens...

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