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“I didn’t leave the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party left me.”
~Ronald Reagan Ronald Reagan: Life as a Republican 1962-2004
For many years, politicians have pulled the “ole’ switcheroo.” When Teddy Roosevelt lost the Republican nomination to Taft, he created the Progressive Party, tabbed by the media as the Bull Moose Party. Then there’s Wendell Willkie who took a whooping from FDR in 1932 and joined the Republican camp in 1939 to get another crack at Roosevelt, with no success, of course. As for others, bet you didn’t know that Hillary Clinton was a Goldwater Girl in 1964 but turned left in college. Famous Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond jumped ship in 1964. And Condi Rice was a registered Democrat in 1976, voting for Carter. By 1979, she was disappointed in Carter’s soft treatment of the Soviet Union and his botching of the Iran hostage crisis. Seeing the light, she voted for Reagan in 1980, officially joining the GOP in 1984. Others pulled the “ole’ switcheroo” - Richard Shelby, Michael Bloomberg, Jim Jeffords, Arlen Specter and … Ronald Reagan. 1932 “I was a near hopeless hemophilic liberal. I bled for causes.”
Following in his father’s footsteps, the young Reagan registered as a Democrat in 1932 and cast his first vote for FDR. In his autobiography, Reagan offers an explanation. “His platform called for a 25% cut in federal spending,” Reagan recalled, “and returning to people in the states and local communities’ authority and autonomy that had been taken over by the federal government.” The conventional wisdom at the time was that many of the relief programs FDR instituted during the Depression were necessary measures during an emergency. “But I remain convinced,” Reagan writes, “that it was never his intention nor those of many of his liberal supporters – to make giveaway programs that trapped families forever on a treadmill of dependency a permanent feature of our government.” Above all, Ronald Reagan was captivated and inspired by FDR’s Fireside Chats. Thirty years later, when Reagan became Governor of California, he embarked on a campaign to communicate to the people first and foremost, à la Roosevelt, though with vastly different content. As a young man, Reagan respected the ideas of fellow Democrat Woodrow Wilson, citing this quote: “Liberty has never come from government…..The history of liberty is the history of limitation of government’s power, not the increase of it.” Thomas Jefferson, whom Reagan described as “one of the greatest of liberals” and the founder of the Democratic Party, was often quoted by the 40th President. 1 Included in Reagan’s collection of speech notes is this from Jefferson: “A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government.”
Ronald Reagan believed he was a Democrat through and through. Self-­‐described as a “near hopeless hemophilic liberal” who “bled for causes,” Reagan continued to support Democratic candidates. In 1948, he hit the campaign trail for Hubert Humphrey and Harry Truman because he “wasn’t a tax-­‐and-­‐
spend Democrat.” 1950 “…the best way to beat the Communists was through the forces of liberal democracy.”
“As a liberal Democrat,” Reagan wrote, “I was naturally opposed to Richard Nixon.” In 1950, Nixon ran for a seat in the U.S. Senate from California against Reagan's Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas, who was married to a friend of Reagan's, Melvyn Douglas. It’s widely known that Reagan campaigned against Nixon, who ultimately won after portraying Douglas as a Communist sympathizer. However, Reagan’s positions began to change in the ‘50s. General Dwight Eisenhower was considering a run for the Presidency and was encouraged to do so by many Americans. The problem was that no one knew which political party he would lead. To force the issue, in 1952 Reagan joined several other Democrats in sending a telegram to Ike urging him to run for President as a Democrat. Once Ike decided to run on the Republican ticket, Reagan campaigned and voted for him, believing he was the best man for the job and casting his first Republican vote. The door to the right began to open…. 2 Here’s where we begin to see the conversion. Between Reagan’s role as Director of the Screen Actors Guild and his work for General Electric, which began in 1954, his ideas changed. “For a long while, I believed the best way to beat the Communists was through the forces of liberal democracy, which had just defeated Hitler’s brand of totalitarianism: liberal Democrats believed it is up to the people to decide what is best for them, not – as the Communists, Nazis, and other fascists believed– the few determining what is good for the rest of us. But I was to discover that a lot of liberals just couldn’t accept the notion that Moscow had bad intentions or wanted to take over Hollywood.” Reagan believed that the Democratic Party was no longer the party of Thomas Jefferson or Woodrow Wilson, and thus shared, “By 1960, I realized the real enemy wasn’t big business, it was big government.” He took his ideas on the road. In 1959, Ronald Reagan delivered a speech entitled “Business, Ballots, and Bureaus” at a General Electric meeting at the Waldorf Hotel in New York, which many consider an early version and a clear indicator of what would become “The Speech” of 1964. If you’d like to read “Business, Ballot, and Bureaus,” click here: In this speech, Reagan voiced many of the same themes he would draw upon as President. A
copy was sent to Vice President Richard Nixon who replied, “You have done an excellent job of analyzing
our present tax situation and the attitudes that have contributed to it…. Speeches such as yours should do
much to cause solid thinking about the inherent dangers in this philosophy, with the final result being a
nationwide demand for reform."
1960 “He said I’d be more effective if I campaigned as a Democrat…”
What came next? Nixon asked him to campaign for him when he ran against Jack Kennedy. Ten years had passed since the Nixon-­‐Douglas campaign, and Reagan still harbored some bitter feelings. He discussed the proposal with Ralph Cordiner of General Electric who told Reagan, “I think you might be wrong about Nixon.” Cordiner said that he had just heard Nixon speak to a group of businessmen who had been initially hostile to him, then were won over. Trusting Cordiner and realizing that Nixon wasn’t a villain, Reagan volunteered to campaign for him against Kennedy, and he’d even change his party affiliation. However, Nixon told Reagan: “I’d be more effective if I campaigned as a Democrat,” and so he agreed not to change his party affiliation until after the election. Even Joseph Kennedy, who was involved in several Hollywood projects, contacted Reagan asking him to change his mind. “I was really no longer a Democrat by 1960,” Reagan believed. During this time, he hit the “mashed potato circuit,” speaking out against big government and targeting socialized medicine. “If we didn’t head it off,” Reagan warned, “one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.” Criticizing big government, warning against excessive taxation, and seeing liberal Democrats trying to rein in the energy of free enterprise and capitalism and imposing a “subtle kind of socialism….” Reagan commented, “It just dawned on me that every four years when an election comes along, I go out and support the people who are responsible for the things I’m criticizing.” 1962 “I’m not so sure I changed as much as the parties changed.”
3 By 1962, Reagan was on the road again for Nixon, this time, trying to get the former Vice President elected as Governor of California as he ran against Pat Brown. Speaking at a Republican fund-­‐raising event near his home in the Pacific Palisades, Reagan recognized a woman in the audience who, right in the middle of his speech, stood up and asked, “Have you re-­‐registered as a Republican yet?” “Well, no, I haven’t yet,” Reagan said, “but I intend to.” “I’m a registrar,” she said and walked down the center aisle through the audience and placed a registration form in front of the speaker. He signed it, became a Republican, and then said to the audience, “Now, where was I?” By 1965, Reagan penned his first autobiography, Where’s the Rest of Me? which many have characterized as his official attempt to justify his party transition. “Sadly, I have come to realize that a great many so-­‐called liberals aren’t liberal,” he wrote in Where’s the Rest of Me. “The classic liberal used to be the man who believed the individual was, and should be forever, the master of his destiny. That is now the conservative position.” In a strong argument against liberalism, Reagan continued, “The liberal used to believe in freedom under law. He now takes the ancient feudal position that power is everything. He believes in a stronger and stronger central government, in the philosophy that control is better than freedom.” Then Reagan chose to insert a few favorite quotes starting with Thomas Jefferson: “Government is a necessary evil; let us have as little of it as possible.” And this? Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “Strike for the jugular. Reduce taxes and spending. Keep government poor and remain free.” 1982 ``Wait right here till I go get Ma. She's never seen a Republican before.''
Once in the White House, the witty Reagan with a twinkle in his eye occasionally took a humorous jab at the opposing team. At a news conference in 1982, Sam Donaldson of ABC news asked, “In talking about the continuing recession tonight, you have blamed mistakes of the past, and you've blamed the Congress. Does any of the blame belong to you?” The President replied, “Yes, because for many years I was a Democrat.” At a White House Briefing for new Republicans in 1985, the president recalled a story published in the New York Times. “I don't normally read the New York Times for fun,” he said, “but there it was on the front page: ‘About the same number of people now identify themselves as Republicans as call themselves Democrats.’ Remember when they called us the minority party? How sweet it is!” At a Republican Party Rally in Missouri, 1988, Reagan was at his best, telling a classic story. “Now, with this great reception that you've given me, I have to say that there was once upon a time that to be a Republican in this area of the country felt a little bit like being Gary Cooper in ‘High Noon’ outnumbered in a big way.” “But I remember the story of a fellow who was running for office as a Republican. And he was in a rural area, and it wasn't known to be Republican. And he stopped by a farm to do some campaigning. And when the farmer heard he was a Republican, his jaw dropped, and he said, ‘Wait right here till I go get Ma. She's never seen a Republican before.’” 4 “So, he got her. And the candidate looked around for a podium from which to give his speech, and the only thing he could find was a pile of that stuff that Bess Truman took 35 years trying to get Harry to call fertilizer. So, he got up on the mound, and when they came back he gave his speech. And at the end of it, the farmer said, ‘That's the first time I ever heard a Republican speech.’ And the candidate said, ‘That's the first time I've ever given a Republican speech from a Democratic platform.’” 1992 Republican National Convention
It was his last speech at a Republican National Convention. In the past, Ronald Reagan had delivered addresses as a private citizen, as a governor, as a presidential candidate, as a president, and now, again, as a private citizen. “Indeed, according to the experts,” he began, “I have exceeded my life expectancy by quite a few years. Now this is a source of great annoyance to some, especially those in the Democratic Party.” Criticizing the Democratic Congress, he characterized that legislative body as a group who “wastes precious time on partisan matters of absolutely no relevance to the needs of the average American. So to all the entrenched interests along the Potomac -­‐ the gavel-­‐wielding chairmen, the bloated staffs, the taxers and takers and congressional rule makers -­‐ we have a simple slogan for November 1992: Clean house!” Some things never change, do they? The 1992 election was the 21st presidential election in his lifetime, the 16th in which he cast a ballot. For the first five, he voted for Democrats. For the last 11, he had the courage to make the necessary change toward the political party that favored our essential American freedoms. That was a time for choosing. 5