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The campaign for the 1976 Republican presidential nomination is the only political race that Ronald Reagan ever lost. Ironically, that defeat to Gerald Ford "changed the conservative movement, the Republican Party, America, and eventually the world," writes Craig Shirley in Reagan's Revolution. Further, the campaign "marked the point when conservatives took over the Republican Party and changed its message and its ideology." Reagan's views on such issues as tax cuts, aggressive anti-Communism, reductions in government spending, and the use of military power to protect American interests moved from radical ideas to part of the Republican platform after 1976. Tracing Reagan's rise to national power to the concession speech he made at the convention, Shirley explains in great detail how Reagan almost single-handedly took the Republican Party from its "death throes" to its resurgence. He may have lost the nomination, but he saved the party. Based on interviews with insiders who worked on the campaign and the journalists and pundits who covered it, Reagan's Revolution offers many telling anecdotes and fascinating insights into the race's build-up and conclusion, making it the first book to offer exhaustive coverage of this vital period in Reagan's life. --Shawn Carkonen
Book Description
Today's political scene looks nothing like it did thirty years ago, and that is due mostly to Reagan's monumental reshaping of the Republican party. What few people realize, however, is that Reagan's revolution did not begin when he took office in 1980, but in his failed presidential challenge to Gerald Ford in 1975-1976. This is the remarkable story of that historic campaign-one that, as Reagan put it, turned a party of "pale pastels" into a national party of "bold colors." Featuring interviews with a myriad of politicos, journalists, insiders, and observers, Craig Shirley relays intriguing, never-before-told anecdotes about Reagan, his staff, the campaign, the media, and the national parties and shows how Reagan, instead of following the lead of the ever-weakening Republican party, brought the party to him and almost single-handedly revived it.
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