Reagan's Revolution by Craig Shirley Read Free Book Online Page A

the day helping her father in the fields, came in for the evening. After supper, together she and her family watched Reagan’s speech. She too was moved to “get involved.”
    Literally thousands of other young men and women across the country were compelled by Reagan’s speech, and they too decided to “get involved.” They would descend on campaigns and Capitol Hill, work in the state parties and state houses, intern for conservative organizations and publications, or start their own companies and organizations. Some would become writers while others would run political campaigns. Whatever form their efforts took, these young men and women would become the soldiers and captains and generals in Reagan’s Revolution.

16

THE END OF THE BEGINNING
    “One of ours.”
    T here is a well-known phrase among conservatives that serves as a treasured pass or a secret handshake, as in any fraternity. Beginning with the 1976 Reagan campaign and ever after, when one conservative is talking to another while discussing or introducing a third, he or she is referred to as “one of ours.”
    Although the phrase was originally the title of a book about World War I— One of Ours , written in 1922 by Willa Cather, for which she won a Pulitzer Prize—Michelle Laxalt says it was the Reagan people who started to use the phrase in 1976. To be referred to as “one of ours” was better than any endorsement inside the conservative movement. And the “ours” were growing and extending their influence, as things began to move very quickly inside the conservative movement and the Republican Party by early 1977.
    The conservative movement was pouring its new ideas and energies into the empty vessel that was the Republican Party. “Above all, more than a few Republicans were beginning to wonder out loud whether their party had any long term future. ‘We’re staging a political dance macabre,’ muttered one middle-of-the-road delegate during the pre-convention maneuverings. ‘It’s the dance of death for the Republican Party.’” 1 That was true enough in August of 1976. But out of the ashes of the old Republican Party would arise a new political movement.
    Groups like Terry Dolan’s National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC) and Bob Heckman’s Fund for a Conservative Majority (FCM) sprung up and would go on to run vitally important multi-million dollar independent expenditure campaigns in House and Senate races in 1978 and 1980, as well as for Reagan in 1980. Several years earlier, Dolan had battled it out for Chairman of the College Republicans with Karl Rove and had lost. Both went on to make significant contributions to American politics.
    Reagan had signed a direct mail letter for NCPAC in 1977, and the contributions poured in. Similarly, Stan Evans founded the National Journalism Center in 1977 to train a new generation of conservative writers and editors. Heckman had worked on the 1976 Reagan campaign before starting his new organization. FCM alone spent over $750,000 in the first six primaries on radio and print ads in 1980, lending critical help to Reagan at a time when his campaign was nearly broke. At his and John Gizzi’s direction, this author produced the pro-Reagan radio spots and bought the time on the stations.
    Paul Weyrich began hosting important weekly meetings of conservatives at his offices at “Library Court,” which became the name of the meeting. Senators, Congressmen, and conservative leaders all attended to listen, learn, coordinate and plot strategy. Howard Phillips’s Conservative Caucus also was part of the vanguard of the Conservative Movement. Phillips was yet another who had traveled the ideological road from liberal Republican to conservative activist. He was a large man with a booming voice whose organization helped train candidates for office while also lobbying against liberal initiatives.
    Many of these conservative organizations were aided in their important fundraising by the