Reaganland Quotes

“For the left, employers were the exploiters. The New Right replied that the true exploiters were federal bureaucrats grasping for tax dollars, and the media elites who shoved 1960s libertinism down Middle America’s throats. New Rightists were obsessed with what were known as the “social issues”—crime, government intrusion into family life, sexual mores, the right to own a gun. Reagan’s establishmentarian presidential campaign manager John Sears dismissed them as the “emotional issues.” But the New Right reveled in emotion—particularly, the emotion of resentment.”
― Rick Perlstein, Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980

“Irving Kristol, for his part, wrote in the Wall Street Journal, like a right-wing Joseph Stalin, that the political advantage tax cuts would provide Republicans was so historically imperative that they should be blasted through whatever the effect on the budget. “The neoconservative is willing to leave those problems to be coped with by liberal interregnums. He wants to shape the future and will leave it to his opponents to tidy up afterwards”: now was no time to go wobbly.”
― Rick Perlstein, Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980

“A pro–civil rights columnist for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger noted the familiar faces from his reporting on White Citizens Council meetings back in the 1950s and ’60s. Only one thing was different: “Their enemy now is not the black man but ‘liberalism,’ in any form, as they see it.”
― Rick Perlstein, Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980

“Jimmy Carter’s pollster Pat Caddell understood how dangerous all this could prove to the Democratic coalition: blue-collar voters were vulnerable to conservative appeals because they were “no longer solely motivated by economic concerns—which have traditionally made them Democrats.” Now that they feared “change in society” more than losing their place in the middle class, they were “one of the most vulnerable groups in the Democratic coalition.”
― Rick Perlstein, Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980

“It was the epitome of Reagan’s rhetorical gifts, that capacity to cleanse any hint of doubt regarding American innocence. That was the soul of his political appeal: his liturgy of absolution.”
― Rick Perlstein, Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980

“If only newspaper columns had as much impact as TV shows that had run many weeks earlier. If only facts had as much power as stories.”
― Rick Perlstein, Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980

“Evangelical culture is built upon narratives of martyrdom.”
― Rick Perlstein, Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980

“Symbols of Middle America normalcy were tearing up and strangling America's sense of itself as decent, prosperous, and safe. The Kool-Aid that Jim Jones used to poison his followers. The Twinkies that supposedly turned Dan White into a homicidal maniac. Family farmers invading Washington, D.C. A necrophile birthday clown. The year 1979 was when the pure products of America went crazy.”
― Rick Perlstein, Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980

“A historian once called his book about the 1970s It Seemed Like Nothing Happened. Certainly it seemed so compared to the 1960s, when new revolutions seemed to burst forth every month. But in fact enormous things were happening. They just weren't always the sort of things that made for bold, clear headlines. Corporations withdrew their support for the liberal state and politicians embraced capital gains tax cuts; fundamentalist ministers inched their way into partisan politics and conservatives crept ever closer to control of the Republican Party; the Democrats fell into ideological confusion and the electorate became increasingly finicky-such things were, in a word, complicated: the sort of developments that rewired the invisible structures that order a society.”
― Rick Perlstein, Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980

“He longed, he said, for the glorious spirit of bipartisan consensus he had witnessed during the nation’s Bicentennial celebrations, and at Hubert Humphrey’s funeral. So he concluded with a challenge to his colleagues: “If you want to see the reputations of decent people sullied, stand aside and be silent. “If you want to see people of dignity, integrity, and self-respect refuse to seek public office for fear of what might be conjured or dredged up to attack them or their families, stand aside and be silent.… “If you want to see dissent crushed and expression stifled, stand aside and be silent. “If you want to see the fevered exploitation of a handful of highly emotional issues distract the nation from problems of great consequence, stand aside and be silent. “If you want to see your government deadlocked by rigid intransigence, stand aside and be silent. “If you want this nation held up to worldwide scorn and ridicule because of the outrageous statements and bizarre beliefs of its leaders, stand aside and be silent and let the Howard Phillipses, the Meldrim Thomsons, and the William Loebs speak for all of us.”
― Rick Perlstein, Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980

“The experts “thought Howard Jarvis was a goofy old gadfly who would hurt his own cause. We felt he was somebody ordinary taxpayers could identify with. So we said, ‘Let’s not diffuse this; let’s make this one guy and his struggles the entire focus.” He noted, “The other side thought that was great”: the more the public saw Jarvis, the less they would respect Prop 13. He wore ill-fitting, unfashionable suits. He slouched. His voice was abrasive. He had no neck.”
― Rick Perlstein, Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980

“(his hosts having been informed the Reagans drank only decaf, and preferred their steaks well done),”
― Rick Perlstein, Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980

“Berkeley political scientist, Human Events noted, predicted national turnout would go up 20 percent under Carter’s reforms—a bad thing, the editors said, because “the bulk of these extra votes will go to Carter’s Democratic Party… with blacks and other traditionally Democratic voter groups accounting for most of the increase.” The Heritage Foundation, meanwhile, got out one issue brief arguing that instant registration might allow the “eight million illegal aliens in the U.S.” to vote, and another arguing that it was a mistake to “take for granted that it is desirable to increase the number of people who vote.”
― Rick Perlstein, Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980

“H. L. Mencken: no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”
― Rick Perlstein, Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980

“Milk and his allies wanted their movement to signify hope. So he approached a friend, the graphic designer Gilbert Baker, who suggested a rainbow instead. “A rainbow fit us,” said the man who became famous as the “gay Betsy Ross.” “It is from nature. It connects us to all the colors—all the colors of sexuality, all the diversity in our community.”
― Rick Perlstein, Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980