POSICIONES Y BRECHA SALARIAL POR GÉNERO EN EL GRUPO DE ESTUDIO

The first feature to note about the 1975 conference– particularly in relation to the 1974 conference– is that leaders took much more obvious and overt steps to position Ronald Reagan as the leader of the coalition and as the candidate that would lead conservatives to political power. From the vantage point of conservative leaders in the mid-1970s, a Reagan presidential candidacy was a critical step toward winning their extended struggle to gain control of the Republican Party and remake it as the party of conservatism in the United States. They therefore reinforced the point repeatedly for attendees at CPAC in a variety of ways.

A Reagan candidacy was important for two primary reasons. First, Reagan was perceived by many as having the personality, the character, and the rhetorical skills

necessary to make him an effective presidential candidate. By 1975, Reagan was the candidate preferred by a majority of the conservative movement– including a majority of its leadership and its activist base. During his opening remarks at CPAC 1975, YAF Chairman Ron Docksai told the audience:

We must say out loud early and often what we all privately know to be true, and that is that in our present predicament, operating in an

atmosphere similar to 1968, we are faced with the potential of one and only one candidate of extraordinary stature with the ability, the character, and the willingness to be president, and that man is Ronald Reagan (cheers and extended applause). Though we may each individually defer on the tactics to be deployed, all of us here, I think, share a common vision as American conservatives.2

In fact, the audience at CPAC did overwhelmingly share that vision. At the conclusion of Reagan's featured speech that weekend, the entire auditorium would break into a chant, shouting "We Want Reagan, We Want Reagan." The cheers and applause for Reagan at

CPAC were so overwhelming that it prompted National Review publisher William

Rusher to return to the stage and comment, "I think I speak for everyone here when I say that we got your message, and I suspect you have gotten ours."3

A second reason that a Reagan candidacy was so important was that Reagan was a principled conservative with a track record of effective governance. He had successfully implemented conservative policy solutions as Governor of California, and, as a result, it was believed that he could make a credible and convincing case to voters that

conservative principles worked in practice.

At CPAC 1975, Reagan's record as a successful conservative governor was put on full display. Daniel Oliver of the National Review organized a panel on welfare reform and invited the director of Reagan's welfare reform effort in California, Robert Carlson, to speak. Carlson spoke at length about the Reagan administration's battle with the federal bureaucracy, the California state legislature, the court system, and supporters of the welfare system generally. He explained how Reagan had invited in a team of citizen experts into his administration as governor to analyze the welfare system, root out inefficiencies, and invent creative ways of finding and eliminating fraud. He also depicted at length the success of Reagan's reform effort. Carlson noted:

In every month for eight straight months the welfare rolls dropped. They leveled off in December 1971, they dropped again in January '72, they went up in February and March of '72 because we lost a case which we won at the US Supreme Court level or they wouldn’t have gone up even during those months, and then they continued on downward through the rest of '72, and with the exception of just a few months, they've been going down virtually ever since. Today there are well over 300,000 fewer

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people in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children Program in

California than there were when we started our effort. Even according to the most conservative estimates, during the first two years of the welfare reform, we spent 1 billion dollars less than would have been spent without the welfare reforms, and half of that billion dollars was federal money… After the first year, 42 of California's 58 counties reduced their property taxes all at the same time. That had never happened before because of savings and welfare. The state, instead of having to have a gigantic tax increase which was being pressed so hard in the last legislature during the welfare reform battles, found itself with an 800 million dollar surplus in the treasury. And Governor Reagan battled to see that the legislature and he returned that to the taxpayer in the form of a tax rebate instead of spending it on something else. In addition to that, there was a cost of living increase for the Aid to the Blind and the Disabled … and in addition to that… the ones who … are really in need, received an immediate 20 percent increase in their benefits to bring them up to the standard of need that existed in California at that time. All of that was financed out of the savings because of the reductions in the welfare rolls.4

Reagan had been popular among movement conservatives since he had delivered his famous speech at the 1964 nominating convention for Barry Goldwater, but it was this track record for cutting welfare and rolling back government that made him the hero of the conservative movement and fueled the perception that he was the perfect candidate to run for president. James Buckley, who was tasked with the job of introducing Reagan on the day after Robert Carlson's presentation, noted:

…we are acquiring a track record, and much of that record is directly attributable to the man who I am privileged to introduce to you… I could spend a few minutes talking about him as an articulate spokesman for conservative principles, or as a personal friend many of us have grown to admire and respect, but within the context of this weekend's conference, I think it more appropriate to introduce him as a symbol of the successful fusion of conservative principle and political action. Ronald Reagan has just completed a major undertaking in his eight years as governor of our largest state (applause). During that period, he has proved himself an adroit politician, an efficient administrator, and an imaginative reformer. Those eight years stand as a monument to the ability of conservatives to do more than talk. Ronald Reagan is living proof that we conservatives can govern and govern effectively. Earlier, I compared him to a great artist, and I think the analogy is a good one. In California, he inherited a shapeless mass of liberal chaos. He quite literally reformed what he had been given through the application of political creativity, intelligence, and imagination. Just look at the record. Ronald Reagan left Sacramento

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more popular than ever. More important, he left the state with a budget surplus, a decreasing welfare population in which those in need receive more help, and a bureaucracy that hasn't grown in eight years' time in spite of the introduction of new programs. He left, in short, as a successful conservative governor who dealt with the issues confronting him. He has proven that we conservatives offer the alternative that the American people seek. He is the man who has proven conservatism works…the

Conservative Movement's Rembrandt, Ronald Reagan.5

During the speech that followed, Reagan would further describe in detail his record in California, and he would reinforce the fact that it discredited liberal arguments made in defense of the welfare state. Reagan noted:

The legislature let us present the case to them, but they insisted the reforms wouldn’t work, the needy would starve in the street, the load would be dumped on the counties, the property taxes would go up, and we're run a deficit of at least 750 million dollars that year. That was four years ago. Today, the needy have had a 43 percent increase in their welfare grants, the taxpayers have saved 2 billion dollars, the case load is 400,000 less than it was four years ago, more than 40 of our 58 counties have reduced their property taxes two years in a row, and most of them three years in a row, and the 750 million dollar deficit became an 850 million dollar surplus. (cheers and applause).6

The Importance of Mobilizing a Latent Conservative Majority

Of course, from the perspective of movement leaders, a Reagan candidacy was only part of the strategy for achieving victory. As I argued in the last chapter, a second and equally crucial component of movement strategy involved assembling and

mobilizing a vast conservative constituency at the mass level– by some accounts the exact same constituency mobilized by Richard Nixon in 1972. In his comments at CPAC 1975, M. Stanton Evans clearly articulated the coalition-building task that lay ahead:

The problem before us, although it is technically difficult, conceptually is not difficult at all. The problem is very simply stated. There is a latent conservative constituency in the country shown in every opinion survey available to us, it doesn't matter what it is: Harris, Gallup, Sindlinger, you name it. All of these polls shows that the American people are

increasingly conservative and that that conservatism consists, although it consists of many things, but it consists in major part of discontent with the mounting social costs of the liberal welfare state, the taxes, the inflation, the intrusion into personal life, the mounting difficulties that everyone is

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encountering because of the big government system that is simply not working, not solving their problems. Our job is to reach that constituency. To reach out to it in comprehensible terms and to energize it on behalf of conservative officeholders and conservative programs in the federal government.7

At a later point during the conference, conservative strategist F. Clifton White would characterize the project in much the same way. White noted:

One of the real ironies for those of us who have been fighting this particular battle for the last 25 or 30 years is we finally are getting to the point where the majority of the American people are identifying

themselves as conservatives, and we don't seem to be able to get a conservative public policy… I think what we have to worry and concern ourselves with is how we do get to these people who identify themselves as conservatives in this country, and communicate with them and take their desires and their interests and aspirations and translate them into the electoral process and therefore into public law.8

This mass conservative constituency was critical because it would provide the base of support necessary to facilitate Reagan's election. It would also serve as a foundation for the election of conservatives to Congress and the other institutions of government.

In movement discourse, the importance of the coalition-building project, the importance of a Reagan candidacy, and the importance of remaking the GOP as the party of conservatism were all inextricably linked. As a principled conservative candidate, Reagan would be able to attack liberal policies forcefully and directly. He would be able to communicate and represent conservative ideas in a way that would effectively speak to and energize the all-important latent, mass conservative constituency. As a Republican, he would send a signal to that constituency that the GOP represented its interests and its policy preferences and therefore help to transform it into the base for an ideologized Republican Party. At the same time, once energized, that conservative majority would be available to elect Reagan and to advance the conservative effort to wrest control of the party apparatus away from the GOP's moderate and liberal elite factions. Once

conservatives pulled control of the party away from moderates and liberals, the party would be positioned to attack liberalism with greater force and clarity.

In this vein, just prior to his introduction of Reagan, James Buckley made the following remarks:

For the Republican Party … it cannot plausibly attack the Democratic record unless it is prepared to attack the liberal Democratic policies that have created that record. This means that unless the Republican Party

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brings itself to stand for a coherent philosophy of political alternatives, it will continue along its current decline. Republicanism of the kind that accepts in the name of moderation half the liberal democratic loaf holds no appeal to those conservative minded Independents and Democrats who were essential to the sweeping Republican victory in the presidential election of 1972. (applause) Liberal Republicans cannot hope to resurrect Republican fortunes. The one chance for the Republican Party to become the majority party is for it to do what ought to come naturally, and that is to identify itself fully and forthrightly with the conservative alternative to the liberalism that now dictates Democratic policy. Otherwise, the Republican Party may have no future. This, then, is the problem that conservatives and Republicans face. It is also their opportunity. But the opportunity is one which is by nature different than opportunity knocking. It is the opportunity to go to work, to be missionaries, if you will. For, in the last analysis, ideas uncommunicated are ideas that will not be of use to the practical affairs of man.9

It was in this context that Buckley turned to introduce Reagan– the great communicator, or, as Buckley so eloquently put it, the Rembrandt of the conservative movement. It was Reagan who had proven conservatism could work in practice. It was he who would be able to effectively communicate and represent conservative principles in a way that would energize conservative-minded Independents and Democrats. It was he who was positioned to help the Republican Party identify itself "fully and forthrightly with the conservative alternative" and lead it away from a path of decline toward a brighter future as the party of conservatism.

The Aftermath of Watergate

When Richard Nixon was besieged by the Watergate crisis and when he ultimately resigned in August 1974, this caused a chain reaction of events that complicated the plans of movement conservatives on several different levels. First, Gerald Ford, who was not a movement conservative, advanced to the presidency. He quickly proved to be a willing advocate of deficit spending and of the Nixon policies of détente that were firmly rejected by movement conservatives. In his opening remarks at CPAC 1975, Congressman Robert Bauman helped to frame the political context that conservatives faced in the wake of Watergate and argue that conservatives should not support Ford’s moderate policies. He noted:

Today we are confronted with an administration which in a short six months has frittered away potential national support by adopting policies of amnesty for draft dodgers and deserters, the biggest budget deficit in peacetime history, relentless pushing of détente, a succession of

presidential appointments culminating in the elevation to the high office of

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vice president of the single most unacceptable nominee one might

contemplate– Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller (cheers, shouts, applause). I ask you, is this what we are to stand and fight and die for in elections to come? Not me brother! The day of compromise and appeasement within our own ranks is over. We have compromised once too often and the result has been rampant national liberalism.10

Jeffrey Bell, an aide to Reagan and a fellow at the Hoover Institute, would echo concerns about Ford's acceptance of deficit spending, noting that "President Ford gave away the game at the outset by saying… yes; I agree with you we need a huge deficit. It becomes very hard for Republicans to rhetorically and substantively support him, because they're only talking about details by that time."11

In a characteristically fiery speech, movement icon Buz Lukens, who had famously led the charge for Goldwater forces when they faced off against Rockefeller supporters at the 1963 meeting of the Young Republican National Federation (YRNF), delivered a blistering critique of the Ford Administration. In his speech, he linked the record of the Ford administration to the Nixon administration and linked both, ultimately, to liberalism:

We've had histrionics coming out of the White House now for the last ten years. I've had a piece of nothing ever since I became a Republican, and I'm tired of it (extended applause)! It's true, it's really true (speaking over applause)! … He [Ford] has not named one conservative to one position of policy in the time he's been in there, and I'm disappointed in him. I'm really disappointed in him (extended applause).12

Remarks such as these echoed throughout the conference and contributed to a tone that was hostile to the Ford-Rockefeller Administration. There were a few exceptions– notably, words of support from the Chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party, Clarke Reed– but for the most part the tone was negative.

At the same time, as a newly sworn in president, Ford was gifted with an

opportunity that Nixon in his second term did not have– that is, the option to run for the Republican nomination in 1976 as a sitting President. The seat that would have been "open" for Reagan was suddenly occupied. Given the perception that Ford was not a committed conservative and was leading the Republican Party further down the road toward liberalism, this generated serious concern. M. Stanton Evans would explain the difficulties posed by Ford's accession during his remarks:

…while I would agree with my good friend Clarke Reed that there are some specific things that Mr. Ford has done. … the thrust of this administration is not a conservative thrust. It is a continued drift in the 10 MSS 176, LTPSC, Box 113, Tape 17 11 MSS 176, LTPSC, Box 113, Tape 19 12 MSS 176, LTPSC, Box 113, Tape 26

same confused direction that the Nixon Administration was following, which was, in turn, an extension of what the Kennedy and Johnson administrations were doing, and I can't support that. You are going to have one or the other of those gentlemen [Ford or Rockefeller] as your candidate in 1976 for the Republican Party.13

Indeed, to complicate matters further, when Ford became President, he had