CPAC
1977 :
The New Republican Party
Governor Ronald Reagan (R-CA)
Conservative Political Action Conference, Washington, DC
February
6, 1977
I’m happy to be back
with you in this annual event after missing last year’s meeting. I had some
business in New Hampshire that wouldn’t wait.
Three weeks ago here
in our nation’s capital I told a group of conservative scholars that we are
currently in the midst of a re-ordering of the political realities that have
shaped our time. We know today that the principles and values that lie at the
heart of conservatism are shared by the majority.
Despite what some in
the press may say, we who are proud to call ourselves “conservative” are not a
minority of a minority party; we are part of the great majority of Americans of
both major parties and of most of the independents as well.
A Harris poll
released September 7, 1975 showed 18 percent identifying themselves as liberal
and 31 percent as conservative, with 41 percent as middle of the road; a few
months later, on January 5, 1976, by a 43-19 plurality, those polled by Harris
said they would “prefer to see the country move in a more conservative
direction than a liberal one.”
Last October 24th,
the Gallup organization released the result of a poll taken right in the midst
of the presidential campaign.
Respondents were
asked to state where they would place themselves on a scale ranging from
“right-of-center” (which was defined as “conservative”) to left-of-center
(which was defined as “liberal”).
Thirty-seven percent
viewed themselves as left-of-center or liberal
Twelve percent
placed themselves in the middle
Fifty-one percent
said they were right-of-center, that is, conservative.
What I find
interesting about this particular poll is that it offered those polled a range
of choices on a left-right continuum. This seems to me to be a more realistic
approach than dividing the world into strict left and rights. Most of us, I
guess, like to think of ourselves as avoiding both extremes, and the fact that
a majority of Americans chose one or the other position on the right end of the
spectrum is really impressive.
Those polls confirm
that most Americans are basically conservative in their outlook. But once we
have said this, we conservatives have not solved our problems, we have merely
stated them clearly. Yes, conservatism can and does mean different things to those
who call themselves conservatives.
You know, as I do,
that most commentators make a distinction between [what] they call “social”
conservatism and “economic” conservatism. The so-called social issues—law and
order, abortion, busing, quota systems—are usually associated with blue-collar,
ethnic and religious groups themselves traditionally associated with the
Democratic Party. The economic issues—inflation, deficit spending and big
government—are usually associated with Republican Party members and
independents who concentrate their attention on economic matters.
Now I am willing to
accept this view of two major kinds of conservatism—or, better still, two
different conservative constituencies. But at the same time let me say that the
old lines that once clearly divided these two kinds of conservatism are
disappearing.
In fact, the time
has come to see if it is possible to present a program of action based on
political principle that can attract those interested in the so-called “social”
issues and those interested in “economic” issues. In short, isn’t it possible
to combine the two major segments of contemporary American conservatism into
one politically effective whole?
I believe the answer
is: Yes, it is possible to create a political entity that will reflect the
views of the great, hitherto [unacknowledged], conservative majority. We went a
long way toward doing it in California. We can do it in America. This is not a
dream, a wistful hope. It is and has been a reality. I have seen the
conservative future and it works.
Let me say again
what I said to our conservative friends from the academic world: What I
envision is not simply a melding together of the two branches of American
conservatism into a temporary uneasy alliance, but the creation of a new,
lasting majority.
This will mean
compromise. But not a compromise of
basic principle. What will emerge will be something new: something open
and vital and dynamic, something the great conservative majority will recognize
as its own, because at the heart of this undertaking is principled politics.
I have always been puzzled by the inability of some political and
media types to understand exactly what is meant by adherence to political
principle. All too often in the press and the television evening news it is
treated as a call for “ideological purity.” Whatever ideology may mean—and it
seems to mean a variety of things, depending upon who is using it—it always
conjures up in my mind a picture of a rigid, irrational clinging to abstract
theory in the face of reality. We have to recognize that in this country
“ideology” is a scare word. And for good reason. Marxist-Leninism is, to give
but one example, an ideology. All the facts of the real world have to be fitted
to the Procrustean bed of Marx and Lenin. If the facts don’t happen to fit the
ideology, the facts are chopped off and discarded.
I consider this to be the complete opposite to principled
conservatism. If there is any political viewpoint in this world which is free
from slavish adherence to abstraction, it is American conservatism.
When a conservative states that the free market is the best
mechanism ever devised by the mind of man to meet material needs, he is merely
stating what a careful examination of the real world has told him is the truth.
When a conservative says that totalitarian Communism is an absolute
enemy of human freedom he is not theorizing—he is reporting the ugly reality
captured so unforgettably in the writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
When a conservative says it is bad for the government to spend more
than it takes in, he is simply showing the same common sense that tells him to
come in out of the rain.
When a conservative
says that busing does not work, he is not appealing to some theory of
education—he is merely reporting what he has seen down at the local school.
When a conservative
quotes Jefferson that government that is closest to the people is best, it is
because he knows that Jefferson risked his life, his fortune and his sacred
honor to make certain that what he and his fellow patriots learned from
experience was not crushed by an ideology of empire.
Conservatism is the antithesis of the kind of ideological
fanaticism that has brought so much horror and destruction to the world. The
common sense and common decency of ordinary men and women, working out their
own lives in their own way—this is the heart of American conservatism today.
Conservative wisdom and principles are derived from willingness to learn, not
just from what is going on now, but from what has happened before.
The principles of conservatism are sound because they are based on
what men and women have discovered through experience in not just one
generation or a dozen, but in all the combined experience of mankind. When we
conservatives say that we know something about political affairs, and that we
know can be stated as principles, we are saying that the principles we hold
dear are those that have been found, through experience, to be ultimately
beneficial for individuals, for families, for communities and for nations—found
through the often bitter testing of pain, or sacrifice and sorrow.
One thing that must
be made clear in post-Watergate is this: The American new conservative majority we represent is not based on
abstract theorizing of the kind that turns off the American people, but on
common sense, intelligence, reason, hard work, faith in God, and the guts to
say: “Yes, there are things we do strongly believe in, that we are willing to
live for, and yes, if necessary, to die for.” That is not “ideological purity.”
It is simply what built this country and kept it great.
Let us lay to rest, once and for all, the myth of a small group of
ideological purists trying to capture a majority. Replace it with the reality
of a majority trying to assert its rights against the tyranny of powerful
academics, fashionable left-revolutionaries, some economic illiterates who
happen to hold elective office and the social engineers who dominate the
dialogue and set the format in political and social affairs. If there is any
ideological fanaticism in American political life, it is to be found among the
enemies of freedom on the left or right—those who would sacrifice principle to
theory, those who worship only the god of political, social and economic
abstractions, ignoring the realities of everyday life. They are not
conservatives.
Our first job is to
get this message across to those who share most of our principles. If we allow
ourselves to be portrayed as ideological shock troops without correcting this
error we are doing ourselves and our cause a disservice. Wherever and whenever
we can, we should gently but firmly correct our political and media friends who
have been perpetuating the myth of conservatism as a narrow ideology. Whatever
the word may have meant in the past, today conservatism means principles
evolving from experience and a belief in change when necessary, but not just
for the sake of change.
Once we have
established this, the next question is: What will be the political vehicle by
which the majority can assert its rights?
I have to say I
cannot agree with some of my friends—perhaps including some of you here
tonight—who have answered that question by saying this nation needs a new
political party.
I respect that view
and I know that those who have reached it have done so after long hours of
study. But I believe that political success of the principles we believe in can
best be achieved in the Republican Party. I believe the Republican Party can hold
and should provide the political mechanism through which the goals of the
majority of Americans can be achieved. For one thing, the biggest single
grouping of conservatives is to be found in that party. It makes more sense to
build on that grouping than to break it up and start over.
Rather than a third
party, we can have a new first party made up of people who share our
principles. I have said before that if a formal change in name proves
desirable, then so be it. But tonight, for purpose of discussion, I’m going to
refer to it simply as the New Republican Party.
And let me say so
there can be no mistakes as to what I mean: The New Republican Party I envision
will not be, and cannot, be one limited to the country club-big business image
that, for reasons both fair and unfair, it is burdened with today. The New Republican
Party I am speaking about is going to have room for the man and the woman in
the factories, for the farmer, for the cop on the beat and the millions of
Americans who may never have thought of joining our party before, but whose
interests coincide with those represented by principled Republicanism. If we
are to attract more working men and women of this country, we will do so not by
simply “making room” for them, but by making certain they have a say in what
goes on in the party. The Democratic Party turned its back on the majority of
social conservatives during the 1960s. The New Republican Party of the late
’70s and ’80s must welcome them, seek them out, enlist them, not only as
rank-and-file members but as leaders and as candidates.
The time has come
for Republicans to say to black voters: “Look, we offer principles that black
Americans can, and do, support.” We believe in jobs, real jobs; we believe in
education that is really education; we believe in treating all Americans as
individuals and not as stereotypes or voting blocs—and we believe that the
long-range interest of black Americans lies in looking at what each major party
has to offer, and then deciding on the merits. The Democratic Party takes the
black vote for granted. Well, it’s time black America and the New Republican
Party move toward each other and create a situation in which no black vote can
be taken for granted.
The New Republican
Party I envision is one that will energetically seek out the best candidates
for every elective office, candidates who not only agree with, but understand,
and are willing to fight for a sound, honest economy, for the interests of American
families and neighborhoods and communities and a strong national defense. And
these candidates must be able to communicate those principles to the American
people in language they understand. Inflation isn’t a textbook problem.
Unemployment isn’t a textbook problem.
They should be
discussed in human terms.
Our candidates must be willing to communicate with every level of
society, because the principles we espouse are universal and cut across
traditional lines. In every Congressional district there should be a search
made for young men and women who share these principles and they should be
brought into positions of leadership in the local Republican Party groups. We
can find attractive, articulate candidates if we look, and when we find them,
we will begin to change the sorry state of affairs that has led to a
Democratic-controlled Congress for more than 40 years. I need not remind you
that you can have the soundest principles in the world, but if you don’t have
candidates who can communicate those principles, candidates who are articulate
as well as principled, you are going to lose election after election. I refuse
to believe that the good Lord divided this world into Republicans who defend
basic values and Democrats who win elections. We have to find tough, bright
young men and women who are sick and tired of cliches and the pomposity and the
mind-numbing economic idiocy of the liberals in Washington.
It is at this point,
however, that we come across a question that is really the essential one: What
will be the basis of this New Republican Party? To what set of values and
principles can our candidates appeal? Where can Americans who want to know
where we stand look for guidance?
Fortunately, we have
an answer to that question. That answer was provided last summer by the men and
women of the Republican Party—not just the leadership, but the ones who have
built the party on local levels all across the country.
The answer was
provided in the 1976 platform of the Republican Party.
This was not a
document handed down from on high. It was hammered out in free and open debate
among all those who care about our party and the principles it stands for.
The Republican
platform is unique. Unlike any other party platform I have ever seen, it
answers not only programmatic questions for the immediate future of the party
but also provides a clear outline of the underlying principles upon which those
programs are based.
The New Republican
Party can and should use the Republican platform of 1976 as the major source
from which a Declaration of Principles can be created and offered to the
American people.
Tonight I want to
offer to you my own version of what such a declaration might look like. I make
no claim to originality. This declaration I propose is relatively short, taken,
for most part, word for word from the Republican platform. It concerns itself
with basic principles, not with specific solutions.
We, the members of
the New Republican Party, believe that the preservation and enhancement of the
values that strengthen and protect individual freedom, family life, communities
and neighborhoods and the liberty of our beloved nation should be at the heart
of any legislative or political program presented to the American people.
Toward that end, we, therefore, commit ourselves to the following propositions
and offer them to each American believing that the New Republican Party, based
on such principles, will serve the interest of all the American people.
We believe that
liberty can be measured by how much freedom Americans have to make their own
decisions, even their own mistakes. Government must step in when one’s
liberties impinge on one’s neighbor’s. Government must protect constitutional
rights, deal with other governments, protect citizens from aggressors, assure
equal opportunity, and be compassionate in caring for those citizens who are
unable to care for themselves.
Our federal system
of local-state-national government is designed to sort out on what level these
actions should be taken. Those concerns of a national character—such as air and
water pollution that do not respect state boundaries, or the national transportation
system, or efforts to safeguard your civil liberties—must, of course, be
handled on the national level.
As a general rule,
however, we believe that government action should be taken first by the
government that resides as close to you as possible.
We also believe that
Americans, often acting through voluntary organizations, should have the
opportunity to solve many of the social problems of their communities. This
spirit of freely helping others is uniquely American and should be encouraged
in every way by government.
Families must
continue to be the foundation of our nation.
Families—not
government programs—are the best way to make sure our children are properly
nurtured, our elderly are cared for, our cultural and spiritual heritages are
perpetuated, our laws are observed and our values are preserved.
Thus it is
imperative that our government’s programs, actions, officials and social
welfare institutions never be allowed to jeopardize the family. We fear the
government may be powerful enough to destroy our families; we know that it is
not powerful enough to replace them. The New Republican Party must be committed
to working always in the interest of the American family.
Every dollar spent
by government is a dollar earned by individuals. Government must always ask:
Are your dollars being wisely spent? Can we afford it? Is it not better for the
country to leave your dollars in your pocket?
Elected officials,
their appointees, and government workers are expected to perform their public
acts with honesty, openness, diligence, and special integrity.
Government must work
for the goal of justice and the elimination of unfair practices, but no
government has yet designed a more productive economic system or one which
benefits as many people as the American market system.
The beauty of our
land is our legacy to our children. It must be protected by us so that they can
pass it on intact to their children.
The United States
must always stand for peace and liberty in the world and the rights of the
individual. We must form sturdy partnerships with our allies for the
preservation of freedom.
We must be ever willing to negotiate
differences, but equally mindful that there are American ideals that cannot be
compromised. Given that there are other nations with potentially hostile
design, we recognize that we can reach our goals only while maintaining a
superior national defense, second to none.
In his inaugural
speech President Carter said that he saw the world “dominated by a new spirit.”
He said, and I quote: “The passion for freedom is on the rise.”
Well, I don’t know
how he knows this, but if it is true, then it is the most unrequited passion in
human history. The world is being dominated by a new spirit, all right, but it
isn’t the spirit of freedom.
It isn’t very often
you see a familiar object that shocks and frightens you. But the other day I
came across a map of the world created by Freedom House, an organization
monitoring the state of freedom in the world for the past 25 years. It is an
ordinary map, with one exception: it shows the world’s nations in white for
free, shaded for partly free and black for not free.
Almost all of the
great Eurasian land mass is completely colored black, from the western border
of East Germany, through middle and eastern Europe, through the awesome spaces
of the Soviet Union, on to the Bering Strait in the north, down past the immensity
of China, still further down to Vietnam and the South China Sea—in all that
huge, sprawling, inconceivably immense area not a single political or personal
or religious freedom exists. The entire continent of Africa, from the
Mediterranean to the Cape of Good Hope, from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean,
all that vastness is almost totally unfree. In the tiny nation of Tanzania
alone, according to a report in the New York Times, there are 3,000 people in
detention for political crimes—that is more than the total being held in South
Africa! The Mideast has only one free state: Israel. If a visitor from another
planet were to approach earth, and if this planet showed free nations in light
and unfree nations in darkness, the pitifully small beacons of light would make
him wonder what was hidden in that terrifying, enormous blackness.
We know what is
hidden: Gulag. Torture. Families—and human beings—broken apart. No free press,
no freedom of religion. The ancient forms of tyranny revived and made even more
hideous and strong through what Winston Churchill once called “a perverted science.”
Men rotting for
years in solitary confinement because they have different political and
economic beliefs, solitary confinement that drives the fortunate ones insane
and makes the survivors wish for death.
Only now and then do
we in the West hear a voice from out of that darkness. Then there is
silence—the silence of human slavery. There is no more terrifying sound in
human experience, with one possible exception. Look at that map again. The very
heart of the darkness is the Soviet Union and from that heart comes a different
sound. It is the whirring sound of machinery and the whisper of the computer
technology we ourselves have sold them. It is the sound of building, building
of the strongest military machine ever devised by man. Our military strategy is
designed to hopefully prevent a war. Theirs is designed to win one. A group of
eminent scientists, scholars and intelligence experts offer a survey showing
that the Soviet Union is driving for military superiority and are derided as
hysterically
making, quote, “a
worst case,” unquote, concerning Soviet intentions and capabilities.
But is it not
precisely the duty of the national government to be prepared for the worst
case? Two Senators, after studying the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, have
reported to the Armed Forces Committee that Soviet forces in Eastern Europe
have the capability to launch, with little warning, a “potentially devastating”
attack in Central Europe from what is termed a “standing alert.”
Reading their
report, one can almost see the enormous weight of the parts of the earth that
are under tyranny shifting in an irresistible tilt toward that tiny portion of
land in freedom’s light. Even now in Western Europe we have Communists in the
government of Italy, France appeasing terrorists, and England—for centuries the
model or the sword of freedom in Western Europe—weak, dispirited, turning
inward.
A “worst case”? How
could you make a good case out of the facts as they are known? The Soviet
Union, poised on the edge of free Europe, capable of striking from a standing
start, has modern tanks in far greater numbers than the outmoded vehicles of
NATO. We have taken comfort from NATO’s superiority in the air, but now the
Soviet Union has made a dramatic swing away from its historic defensive air
posture to one capable of supporting offensive action. NATO’s southern flank is
described in the Senate report with a single word: shambles.
The report is simply
reality as it was, with different names and faces, in Europe in the late 1930s
when so many refused to believe and thought if we don’t look the threat will go
away.
We don’t want
hysteria. We don’t want distortion of Soviet power. We want truth. And above
all we want peace. And to have [recognition] that the United States has to
immediately re-examine its entire view of the world and develop a strategy of
freedom. We cannot be the second-best super-power for the simple reason that he
who is second is last.
In this deadly game,
there are no silver medals for second.
President Carter, as
a candidate, said he would cut five to seven billion dollars from the defense
budget. We must let him know that while we agree, there must be no fat in our
armed forces. Those armed forces must be capable of coping with the new reality
presented to us by the Russians, and cutting seven billion dollars out of our
defense budget is not the way to accomplish this. Some years ago, a young
President said, we will make any sacrifice, bear any burden, and we will, to
preserve our freedom.
Our relationship
with mainland China is clouded. The so-called “Gang of Four” are up one day and
down the next and we are seeing the pitfalls of making deals with charismatic
personalities and living legends. The charisma fades as the living legends die,
and those who take their place are interested not in our best wishes but in
power. The keyword for China today is turmoil. We should watch and observe and
analyze as closely and rationally as we can.
But in our
relationships with the mainland of China we should always remember that the
conditions and possibilities for and the realities of freedom exist to an
infinitely greater degree with our Chinese friends in Taiwan. We can never go
wrong if we do what is morally right, and the moral way—the honorable way—is to
keep our commitment, our solemn promise to the people of Taiwan. Our liberal
friends have made much of the lack of freedom in some Latin American countries.
Senator Edward Kennedy and his colleagues here in Washington let no opportunity
pass to let us know about horrors in Chile.
Well, I think when
the United States of America is considering a deal with a country that hasn’t
had an election in almost eight years, where the press is under the thumb of a
dictatorship, where ordinary citizens are abducted in the night by secret police,
where military domination of the country is known to be harsh on dissenters and
when these things are documented, we should reject overtures from those who
rule such a country.
But the country I’m
describing is not Chile—it is Panama.
We are negotiating
with a dictatorship that comes within the portion of that map colored black for
no freedom. No civil rights. One-man rule. No free press.
Candidate Carter
said he would never relinquish “actual control” of the Panama Canal.
President Carter is
negotiating with a dictatorship whose record on civil and human rights is as I
have just described and the negotiations concern the rights guaranteed to us by
treaty which we will give up under a threat of violence. In only a few weeks we
will mark the second anniversary of the death of freedom for the Vietnamese. An
estimated 300,000 of them are being “re-educated” in concentration camps to
forget about freedom.
There is only one
major question on the agenda of national priorities and that is the state of
our national security. I refer, of course, to the state of our armed forces—but
also to our state of mind, to the way we perceive the world. We cannot maintain
the strength we need to survive, no matter how many missiles we have, no matter
how many tanks we build, unless we are willing to reverse: The trend of
deteriorating faith in and continuing abuse of our national intelligence
agencies. Let’s stop the sniping and the propaganda and the historical
revisionism and let
the CIA and the
other intelligence agencies do their job!
Let us reverse the
trend of public indifference to problems of national security. In every
congressional district citizens should join together, enlist and educate
neighbors and make certain that congressmen know we care. The front pages of
major newspapers on the East Coast recently headlined and told in great detail
of a takeover, the takeover of a magazine published in New York—not a nation
losing its freedom. You would think, from the attention it received in the
media, that it was a matter of blazing national interest whether the magazine
lived or died. The tendency of much of the media to ignore the state of our
national security is too well documented for me to go on.
My friends, the time
has come to start acting to bring about the great conservative majority party
we know is waiting to be created.
And just to set the record straight, let me say this about our
friends who are now Republicans but who do not identify themselves as
conservatives: I want the record to show that I do not view the new revitalized
Republican Party as one based on a principle of exclusion. After all, you do
not get to be a majority party by searching for groups you won’t associate or
work with. If we truly believe in our principles, we should sit down and talk.
Talk with anyone,
anywhere, at any time if it means talking about the principles for the
Republican Party.
Conservatism is not a narrow ideology, nor is it the exclusive
property of conservative activists.
We’ve succeeded
better than we know. Little more than a decade ago more than two-thirds of
Americans believed the federal government could solve all our problems, and do
so without restricting our freedom or bankrupting the nation.
We warned of things
to come, of the danger inherent in unwarranted government involvement in things
not its proper province. What we warned against has come to pass.
And today more than two-thirds of our citizens are telling us, and
each other, that social engineering by the federal government has failed. The
Great Society is great only in power, in size and in cost. And so are the
problems it set out to solve. Freedom has been diminished and we stand on the
brink of economic ruin.
Our task now is not
to sell a philosophy, but to make the majority of Americans, who already share
that philosophy, see that modern conservatism offers them a political home.
We are not a cult, we are members of a majority. Let’s act and talk
like it.
The job is ours and
the job must be done. If not by us, who? If not now, when?
Our party must be the party of the
individual. It must not sell out the individual to cater to the group.
No greater challenge faces our society today than ensuring that each one of us
can maintain his dignity and his identity in an increasingly complex,
centralized society.
Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government
competition with business, galloping inflation, frustrated minorities and
forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the
residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite.
Our party must be
based on the kind of leadership that grows and takes its strength from the
people. Any organization is in actuality only the lengthened shadow of its
members.
A political party is
a mechanical structure created to further a cause. The cause, not the
mechanism, brings and holds the members together. And our cause must be to
rediscover, reassert and reapply America’s spiritual heritage to our national
affairs.
Then with God’s help
we shall indeed be as a city upon a hill with the eyes of all people upon us.
