The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution

chapter 1
"THE TOWN TREMBLED":
From Election Day to Inauguration Day
No strongly centralized political organization feels altogether
happy with individuals who combine independence, a free
imagination, and a formidable strength of character with
stubborn faith and a -single--minded, unchanging view
of the public and private good.
--Isaiah Berlin on Winston Churchill
Washington, D.C., awoke on Wednesday, November 5--the day after Ronald Reagan's election--to an unimaginable scene. Reagan's victory had been anticipated, but the depth and sweep of it had not. His -ten--point margin in the popular vote translated into a 489-49 landslide in the electoral college; Reagan won forty-four states, Jimmy Carter just six. Unlike Nixon's forty-nine-state landslide in 1972, Reagan had long coattails: a twelve-seat GOP pickup--and a majority for the first time in twenty-four years--in the Senate, and a thirty-three-seat pickup in the House, enough for a working majority.1 The political landscape was littered with the carcasses of slaughtered Democratic bulls. By Thursday the magnitude of the election was starting to course through the news cycle. "The election was a shocker," Washington Post columnist David Broder wrote in a front-page article with the banner headline "A Sharp Right Turn." "The conservative victory could hardly be more complete." For establishment Washington it was as if a barbarian horde had sacked the city. "The Town Trembled," read another Post news headline.
The Post editorial page was less restrained than the stately Broder. The Post house editorial, "Tidal Wave," admitted that "[s]omething of gigantic proportions happened--must have been happening for a long while--and the capital and the political wise men were taken by surprise. . . . [A]n 'anti-Washington,' 'anti-establishment' political storm warning was missed by Washington and the establishment."2 Reagan had predicted since the early 1960s that a "prairie fire" of conservative populism would someday sweep the nation; on November 4 it appeared that Reagan had finally struck the match. The Post blamed "the used-up, unrenewed and reflexive quality of so much Democratic Party thought and dogma these days." Democratic Senator Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts summed up the election's meaning in one sentence: "Basically, the New Deal died yesterday."
The Style section of the Post may have been a better barometer than the staid news pages at capturing how truly aghast was the social sentiment of elite Washington. Columnist Henry Allen wrote: "It's like one of those old horror movies where the atom bomb rouses the dinosaurs from the ice they've slumbered in all those eons . . . and all of a sudden you can hear the cry going up in liberal strongholds: The Reagan People are coming."
John P. Roche, a former head of the liberal Americans for Democratic Action, wrote in 1984 that Reagan's election was "an 8-plus earthquake on the political Richter scale, and it sent a number of eminent statesmen--Republican and Democratic--into shock."3 It was a welcome shock in at least one important establishment neighborhood: the stock market rallied sharply the day after the election, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average soaring fifteen points to 953.16 on record volume of eighty-five million shares. The dollar rallied sharply on o

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Title of ebook: The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution
ISBN: 9780307452313
parent-ISBN: 9781400053575
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 08-2009
Released online for download: 08-25-2009
Author of eBook: Hayward, Steven F.

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The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution

Chapter One

chapter 1
"THE TOWN TREMBLED":
From Election Day to Inauguration Day
No strongly centralized political organization feels altogether
happy with individuals who combine independence, a free
imagination, and a formidable strength of character with
stubborn faith and a -single-minded, unchanging view
of the public and private good.
-Isaiah Berlin on Winston Churchill
Washington, D.C., awoke on Wednesday, November 5-the day after Ronald Reagan's election-to an unimaginable scene. Reagan's victory had been anticipated, but the depth and sweep of it had not. His -ten-point margin in the popular vote translated into a 489-49 landslide in the electoral college; Reagan won forty-four states, Jimmy Carter just six. Unlike Nixon's forty-nine-state landslide in 1972, Reagan had long coattails: a twelve-seat GOP pickup-and a majority for the first time in twenty-four years-in the Senate, and a thirty-three-seat pickup in the House, enough for a working majority.1 The political landscape was littered with the carcasses of slaughtered Democratic bulls. By Thursday the mag ... read full excerpt from: The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution ebook

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