Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years, 1976-1980 by Craig Shirley

By Craig Shirley

With a Foreword through Jon Meacham

New York Times bestselling biographer Craig Shirley charts Ronald Reagan’s fabulous upward push from the ashes of his misplaced 1976 presidential bid to overwhelming victory in 1980. American conservatism—and the state itself—would by no means be the same.

In 1976, while Ronald Reagan misplaced his moment bid for the GOP presidential nomination (the first used to be in 1968), such a lot observers believed his political profession used to be over. but twelve months later, on the annual Conservative Political motion convention, Reagan appeared like a brand new guy. He brought conservatives to a "New Republican Party"—one that seemed past the conventional kingdom membership and company boardroom base to include "the guy and girl within the factories . . . the farmer . . . the cop at the beat. Our party," Reagan acknowledged, "must be the get together of the person. It must never promote out the person to cater to the group."

Reagan’s stream fast unfold, championed by way of rising conservative leaders and influential imagine tanks. in the meantime, for the 1st time in sleek background, Reagan additionally started drawing teens to American conservatism.

But it was once not just the previous governor's political philosophy that used to be altering. a brand new guy was once rising besides: The indignant anticommunist was once evolving right into a extra reflective, considerate, hopeful, and extra non secular chief. Championing the person at domestic, rejecting containment and détente out of the country, and advocating for the defeat of Soviet communism, his charm crossed celebration lines.

At a time while conservatives are trying to find to redefine their id in mild of the Donald Trump phenomenon, Reagan Rising bargains perception into the improvement of Reagan’s confident and unifying philosophy, and gives classes for either demonstrated Republican leaders in addition to rising hopefuls.

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Yet many social conservatives, perturbed at Mrs. Ford’s outspoken support for the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion, thought she’d already spoken too much for the president. * * * Reagan wasted little time moving ahead. He immediately knew that if he ruled himself out, his appeal on the stump would dry up. Exasperated, he later wrote in his memoirs that he and Nancy simply could not believe his aspirations “wouldn’t—couldn’t—end in Kansas City. ”7 Of more immediacy to Reagan than the GOP nomination four years hence was the fact that he had to eat.

It was also the closest election, in terms of the popular vote, since 1960, despite Carter’s desire for a mandate. For a time, some in the Ford campaign debated a recount, given the history of dirty politics in labor-dominated Ohio, but the president quashed the notion before it got very far. Ford was intent on leaving with the same dignity and style with which he’d entered the White House. His chief of staff, Richard B. Cheney, handled the transition of power adroitly. Cheney wanted to ensure that Ford’s legacy would not simply be that he came into office in turbulent times that shook the nation to its core, but also that he brought his personal decency to the office.

Both FDR and JFK were Harvard alumni who had gone to elite New England prep schools and grown up in great wealth. To be sure, Carter had grown up comfortably as a child, and lived even more so as a successful businessman, but he was truly a populist, suspicious of the Washington culture, unlike the majority of his fellow Democrats. ’”16 He was seen by many, in contrast to the populist Carter, as an elitist. The perceived contrast between the two men was misleading, at least in terms of their relative wealth.

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