obviously the secretary has the same interest in that as many of us in this room. today we're talking about what is happening in the republican party over the five decades. what my role and my career for almost 25 years has been devoted to transportation policy, many of you know i have a personal interest in the subject. 50 years ago, a group of us formed a society. several of our colleagues who are in the room this morning. i am glad they are here. and as i said, it is our 50 year anniversary. our purpose was to provide some vision, intellectual rigor and a stimulus to a reform agenda.

we shared a taste for moderation and pragmatism and a commitment to the principles of equal rights for all americans on which the republican party had been founded. or the past four or five decades in the last 20 years, things have not developed within the republican party as we would have imagined. as has been written, and i'm sure we will discuss, there were many tactical and personal reasons that explain the dominant dynamics of republicanism. i believe as well there were broad social, demographic and political trends that developed in the last half of the 20th- century that we neither anticipated in 1962.

all this makes for a story with deep resonance to me but i believe also a fundamental significance to all americans. i know it is a story this panel will explore. with that, john. >> thank you for being here. we are blessed with a wonderful panel today. we will do a similar event on june 20. i am going to introduce the panel. let me say a few things -- we're putting out a report on redistricting but a lot of that has to do with looking at the district's and what the republicans can hold. the headline is that fewer and

fewer, and to give you a little bit of background, at the beginning of the decade there were seven republicans who held a pretty democratic district. they happen to be moderates. by the end of the decade there was want. when you come to the event on june 20, we will have more statistics on democrats but the story is behind. but it is moving in the same direction. there is just a handful of those that will be able to hold them as someone from a connecticut republican or conservative or a democrat representing someone out of sorts with their particular philosophy. let me introduce the panel. we will have some introductory questions and for each of them, allowing them to say some remarks. then we will go to the audience. i will start at the end with

jeff. this is the anchor of the discussion today. he has a book out to this year, the downfall of the republican party. it would make a good christmas present or fourth of july present or any holiday memorial day, yes. jeff is a[applause] the author f this book is a historian and also the author of a very interesting book on kingman brewster, the guardian of yell. -- yale. he has taught at yale and rights -- writes in the popular press as well.

lee and he was a former publisher of the international herald tribune, as well as the former director of the gw school of media and public affairs. and i'm going to turn to steve hayward, who is my colleague at institute. i was there for many years. the american enterprise he is an expert on many issues, environmental issues included. he is also a historian and put a ronald reagan. scientist with a background in he has written several books on the presidency of ronald reagan. he has provided a skeptical -- somewhat more skeptical republicans. viewpoint of moderate finally, dan balz. author for "washington post." chief correspondent for the he is the author of the battle for america, 2008.

he is working on the title. title, but the idea is the same. he has covered campaigns for many years. also, the white house and congress. he is a veteran washington. has won many awards in various places. and he appears regularly on shows like washington week in the daily rundown. let me begin. i'm going to come down the road this way. again, as i introduce them, jeff kabaservice. let's start with geoffrey it's not fair for me to ask you to summarize your book in five sentences, but that is basically what i'm going to do. my question is, what was the impetus behind the moderate republican movement? why do you think that decline was a bad thing for america? >> i'm going to go with the monty python summarizing 100 words or less idea. [laughter] the impetus is the same for the republican party generally.

it started as an anti-slavery party. that lineage continued to last in the for the next hundred development. years of the party's by 1960, which is the moment when i opened my book, you can actually argue that the moderates held a dominant and what was known as the within the republican party. what we think of the conservative faction which we republican party. think of is the smallest in the others being the dominant party in midwest, which we associate with robert taft. and those from the larger cities of the northeast and west coast, and in the progressives was rockefeller, and those who were largely liberal on civil rights and civil liberties issues and who are mostly found in the northeast. the balance of power had been eisenhower years by that held during the dwight moderates. eisenhower had very little use for the conservatives. he said that number is negligible and the they are

stupid. other colorful marks to the effect. richard nixon, had he won the 60s, at that point, the conservatives around bill buckley were not sure whether the republican party or democratic party would make it a better vehicle for their cause. maybe even a third party could have been a realistic possibility. as it turned out, the party machinery was captured in 1964 for the nomination of barry goldwater. this did not limit them by any means. after that, there was a fight by the moderates to retake control of the party to retain some influence of the party. that continued throughout the 1960s and 1970s. in many ways, richard nixon actually prefilled many of the -- fulfilled many of the

longest held goals of the moderate movement. moderation was actually, which in the 1960s witnessed and preferences. they were not inheriting it, they were making a movement that they battled first at harvard, with young americans for freedom of the right and sts on their luck. -- on their left. eventually to make this moderation into a philosophy and operational opportunity of government. there's more that we remember. the thing that tends to dominate is the defeat. and the disappearance. and the fact that maybe they might even be forced into breeding programs to keep some of them alive. [laughter] as the onion has suggested on occasion. [laughter] but i think that we actually do a disservice to our understanding the current politics as well as political history if we don't he wanted me

>> this was a youth movement. there was young americans for freedom and this other group. why did attract young people? today we think of mutt -- moderates having a hard time. >> i should share this with a number of the young people who are here. maybe you former republicans but not young people. [laughter] he should be speaking about this because he was central in the founding and so was john price, who i see here.

i wanted to introduce my wife who i met through a society. a finger for things that i think of those early days to be really quick and brief. and i think i came from a kind of independent background was very checked to by the fact he was a group of young people wanted to say interesting things. the republican party seem to need people saying interesting things. we had the sense that as is often said the republican party had an image in our lifetime up to that point of being the party. -- "stupid" party. not that it was so, but it didn't project dynamism and

interests and ideas. joe mccarthy kind of dominated a lot of those impressions about the republican party was all about. eisenhower come in much different kind of figure didn't seem a party person and was the whole kennedy eisenhower contrast was one of energy and aj supposed. -- age, i suppose. so i think i was one element. conservatives also picked up on not an begin in begin nominating -- began nomintat ing young dynamic people who are interested in ideas instead of arab think tanks and so on they impulse. really picked up on the same so that was one element. the second one i think was can moderates, real excitement going in they be disciplined and is passionate as people with a clear ideological identity. and we said yes we can, we can be fiery moderates. the word fiery is our first

declaration? what was there to be fiery about? there were two things actually, the most important was the whole civil rights matter and i think it was absolutely at the center of the group's identity and sense of purpose. and it did seem as though conservative republicans were pulling away from the party is like an identity they made a lot of the party of lincoln amus. we used lincoln as our logo and stationary inside continuing republican tradition is to get deeply into the history and you can cite the progressive republican impulse right through the garfield example, believe it or not. teddy roosevelt of course, the if you read the new literature on warren harding he had progressive ideas, especially international policy. coolidge came up in the republican party as a moderate. he did not vote the party when

theodore roosevelt to, but he was one of the few that progressives didn't want to ask -- run against because it is a practical moderate guy. both of his successors as candidates, who for an land and wereover and landon regarded as republican progressives nonetheless came back to nominees. loki and tom julian eisenhower and nixon. so there is a tradition to move sharply to the right. that tradition was strongest on civil-rights. republican impact those rights of '64 and '65 and stronger percentages than the democrats. >> they do not seem to know that half the time. >> they do not. this is historical.

not people from big city constituents. people from small towns in the midwest. that was one issue. another impetus to be active in this group. that was one of our most pronounced decision. the democrats were encumbered by the fact they have this is southern weighing who were segregationists. it hampered the democratic party even though there were many civil rights supporters. it hampered them a bit from being as aggressive in addressing these issues are beyond. the third issue i will mention, and internationalism. post against the have nationalist tendencies within the more conservative parts of the party. that was the central reason for

having him as president. the fourth was something we debated all are, to what extent do you want to repeal and -- the new deal? that drove a lot of conservative republicans -- dewey said they will win every election. if we areersion was, conservatives, you do not want one-party replacing the other to radical change. institutions you have had for a long time but you do not steer the car from one side of the road to the opposite side. we picked up on that. we tried to find a third way in terms of domestic policy. we had any number of proposals.

inevitably, that fourth element becomes pragmatic and involved. you get people like president reagan st., let's start painting in bold, clear colors. others say, a choice, not an echo. it was hard. that remains a stumbling block to get excited about pragmatic positions. that is an outline of some of the things. >> steve, i am going to ask you, here it is it a good king there is a demise of moderate republicans? is there something good to be said about a conservative republican party? the second thing, since you are a biographer, say a bit of

reagan's relationship. >> very cleverly you put me in the middle seat. i joke i am here to defend extremism and hate and intolerance. [laughter] >> you are the best i we have. >> i am reminded of how everyone said barry goldwater was an extremist. until 20 years later when the liberals said he was an elder statesman figure. ronald reagan, the l.a. times detected him -- depicted him as saying he is going to bring back the american nazi party. people actually said this. and vice versa. republicans say that stuff. that is a normal piece of

political discourse that is not helpful. however, i am also reminded of eugene mccarthy's comment that the task of -- is to shoot the wounded when the battle is over. i have a paradoxical view of this problem. the people in the middle are the ones around whom you get a gang around, you would get budget deals. in the 1990's with clinton and gingrich. when those people disappeared and you have the interest groups, that makes it a compromise. no doubt that is true. among the five or six, one problem is that if you like the old model -- he described the

party dynamic, you have a son and the moon. one is the dominant and the moon party has to adapt if it is going to survive. i think that describes the world of the new deal or republicans with modifications to improve them, and limit them and so forth, what has happened this conservative republicans -- which is redundant now -- it is an adjunct to the ratcheting up of the government. i agree with most of those positions. we have this -- i do not think we have seen at three elections in a row. you might say we have to full moon party is. -- two full moon parties. congress has 7% approval

ratings. there is a disjunction somewhere. people hate congress but to love their congressperson. what republicans are doing, they will get clobbered by the voters. on the other hand, maybe not. voters have to decide. i wish independence would be forced to pick a side and stick with it. then you would have a majority of one side or the other and that would restore some of the old dynamic. i can say more but i will stop there. >> a something about reagan. before he governed in washington. >> one of the many lessons of reagan as he was a practical, prudent -- are would not call him a statesman. he had deep ideological views

but also understood you cannot govern as an executive without having all wings represented. i think i counted 17 senators. when he became governor, he beat george christopher in the primary. he brought in most of christopher's people including a rockefeller republican. during the 1980's, you had that ideological split. there was an interesting mutual attraction between the hard-core conservatives and the people in the media. they would get the leaks from various sides. conservatives used to up to talk about this. both of those were real. there were factions. people would not sit next to each other. i think reagan replicated what

he did in california. you cannot govern only one faction of your party. he never talked about that. it was an instinct he had. he liked some of those fights. he liked to have people disagree. i think there is a deeper prudence at work. this is an interesting problem of, are there conservative democrats and liberal republicans available? i think that as a problem you have seen in the current administration and the previous one. >> maybe you can take our story more up to the present. you have been covering washington in congress. can you tell us about how the republican party has changed since you started covering it? >> i feel like we have been

covering this story since i came to washington. only thing that has changed is the side of the moderate weighing and gets smaller and smaller. i feel as the mainstream many a person like -- there is going to be a panel at some point what ever happened to the mainstream media. and --till trying to do looking at all sides. as i was thinking about the ark of what has happened, you can go through some -- there is no moment at which you can say this tipped it. there were a series of things that happened. ron and i did a book in the mid- 1990s about a republican takeover of congress. if you think back, there is one

irony which is that newt gingrich was put into the leadership because of the help of moderate republicans. yet it was during gingrich's i think there was a decisive turn in this evolution that we continue to look at today. one was the budget deal in 1990 when gingrich bolted from the rest of the republicans and left to the white house when they announced the deal and organized forces to try to knock it down. i think that was a critical moment in which the conservative a anti-establishment part of the republican party began to flex its muscles. we then saw -- i remember doing

an interview after the election and i asked tom delay what was the feeling of those of you trying to build a different republican party. he said, it was fabulous. his view this was a moment of liberation for those who wanted to go for a harder edged, confrontational, conservative approach to the way the republicans operate. 1994 was decisive in that it brought back down to the congressional level what we had seen at the presidential level, the subsidization of the republican party. that created the coalition that was big enough to turn republicans and to a majority in congress. for a short time it was viewed as a culmination of a series of forces that have finally,

starting with goldwater through reagan, gave the republicans a possibility of becoming a dominant party. there is a reaction. the reaction was in the northeast it was difficult for candidates to go along with what the national party was advocating. you saw a further dampen you saw moderate republicans much more on the defensive. i think that the last piece of this has been in the past few years with the tea party movement. much of that is to the election of barack obama and the reaction to that. there is also a piece of that related to the presidency of george w. bush who campaigned in 2000 using house republicans

as a foil to try to suggest he was a different kind of republican. that was as close as he was willing to say a more moderate conservative as opposed to a hard-core conservative. as we know, in the latter stages of the bush presidency, a lot of the base rebelled against what he was doing and the spending he was undertaking. there was a revolt under way already within the republican base which was accelerated with the election of barack obama. it has created this gulf. one other point and then i will stop. this is not unrelated to the general homogenization of both parties. we think of moderate republicans and conservative democrats in an

era when the parties were blended. you had some of the shambles. we do not have that anymore in part because voters have sorted themselves out. if you're a republican, you vote for a republican candidate. there is much less mixing in axing among the electorate. that has encouraged the widening between the parties, particularly within congress, the wings are more dominant than the metal. >> i open it up to the rest of the panel. we have a recent book that has come out. "it is worse than you think." it is much more significant in the republican party. do you agree with that?

asymmetrical polarization? has it become much more homogenous or is there a balance? >> net income this. the republican party is more confrontational and resistant to anything the president has tried to do. you could make an argument that the same thing happened in 1993 when president clinton was elected and instead of doing some of the things he talked about as a candidate, went down another track. he took a more progressive or liberal approach to some of the things he was trying to do other republicans said we are going to fight against that. his budget plan went through without a single republican vote. it is not as though this is without precedent -- precedent

but i think the election of the tea party freshman -- there is a new and broke about the -- new book about the house republicans. it talks about the kind of conviction that is within the republican base. i think it is a much harder thing as we have seen john boehner try to work through that without great success. i think there is a harder edge about it. we do not know if you had a republican president in the democratic party on one side whether we would see that same kind of thing but at this point it is more of the republican side. >> anybody else? >> i find myself nodding in agreement. i do not want this to happen. it is often forgotten that the

inspiration for today's's conservative movement is the communist party. f. clifton white took a lot of his inspiration from battling communists. he realized this bulletin voting, the diamond formation, there were foul to take power in the larger body. over the years, the success of the syndicate, which was the operation they had experienced a lot of success with goldwater and went on to become the backbone of a lot of conservative campaigns. a real problem is that conservatives are better at winning the elections than using power.

the role of the society was a complementary role, coming up with policies. not so good at achieving power or winning elections. richard nixon knew there were both halves of the soul but you still see this problem where conservatives are great at knocking down everything they do not believe in but this leaves them in a nihilistic position when they come to office. >> i agree with most and -- most of what you just said. i think the communist thing is one part of it. anyway. republicans do not know how to govern. this is some truth to that. that goes to a disjunction over

-- they may be able to win elections. whether they can command a majority of public opinion to support some of their ideas, that is doubtful. a lot of conservatives resist confronting it. that is regin's prudence. he never did it again. had he tried it again, he would not have those popularity ratings. i wonder -- i have been thinking about some experience. i wonder if the current president hasn't been tripped up by historical contingencies. suppose he did not have the florida disaster. and he did not have 9/11. what if no child dropped behind

was the first of several things. it might have turned out differently. likewise, i give obama credit and a pass for this reason. he was handed the financial crisis six weeks before an election. obama had this crisis and then you get tarp and you get the stimulus and then you're back to what you want to do, health care. but by that. -- what would obama's presidency have been like if he had a more "normal" beginning of his administration? i do wonder if we have not gone through an unusual period of time. item not know if that is germane but that might be.

>> the thought experiment suggested -- i was at the bob dole the institute. a question was, how would nixon be remembered without watergate? [laughter] that took some real experimenting. >> or linkedin with all the civil war. civilcoln wihtoth out the war. there was something with clinton that was problematic. he was a baby boomer from the hit the side of the '60s. you had a culture war going on. one of the things obama and got right is he tried to say goodbye to all of that. there is still this cultural work going on you saw with

clinton and now you see it again with obama. it is not quite the same but that is there, too. that is a difficult problem. it may reverberate until all of us croaker. ask another to historical question, did modern republicans ever see themselves as taking over the party and changing the direction where was the more that day thought they should be a balancing wing > ? your book makes both cases. was there a path to a new southern coalition? or other coalitions that would change the party or was it always going to be an important

weighing? >> it was some of one and some of the other. a lot of people on both sides object to independents and moderate. it or bisexuals, transsexuals, and hermaphrodites. bipartisan operas -- opposition to moderation. i would say that moderation was something that stood for something. it wanted to see its positions dominate although it was not interested in taking power. it was not something that was going to stir things up at the grass roots. the positions it wanted to see was internationalism. it wanted to see decentralization. it wanted to see more of an

emphasis on government responsibilities toward the secondary sector. and it wanted to see a moderate the -- moderation of conservatism. my book makes one of its major villains nelson rockefeller. rockefeller undermined the moderates in a multitude of ways where s publicly was working toward an understanding of them. -- whereas bill buckley was working toward an understanding of them. i found myself not to temporizing, reckoning. i do think it is a conservative function to do that. i do not think you need to be engaged in the trail.

this is the moderate middle ground that some on the conservative side were working toward. we tend to forget there were a lot of productive negotiations and arrangements between them. the society bright supply side economics. there were further had on that than the conservatives at that time. i think most of the moderates hope to have a more constructive conservatism, a big tent conservatism. i do not think there were allusions it would take power back but it wanted their ideas to prevail. >> to take on that that i think is useful, i remember some of our colleagues saying these questions are complicated. they deserve to be debated within both parties, not just between the parties.

i think they wanted a lively debate, hoping that would contribute to a broader debate between the major parties. i will express a based, i suppose, i think in policy terms the moderate philosophy did discover in the republican party during the nixon years. nixon without watergate and i agree that is hard to imagine, he said he would remembered for china and watergate. one good, one that. -- bad. if watergate or not there, and i am not saying it should be, it was not just china, it was the

first reduction in arms treaty of the nuclear age with the soviet union. it was the middle eastern policy. i have a class about nixon that lists 29 initiatives that people have forgotten. beginning with the first environmental legislation, and others can say nixon was delegating or he had to do it. nonetheless he embraced it. school segregation went miles further down the road with nixon. tom wicker describes it as rowing with muffled oars.

dual school districts or single race districts after two years. human-resources spending exceeded the defense budget for the first time since before world war ii. those were things he got done. revenue sharing, those concepts were brought in. three things he did not get done are relevant today. people think of welfare reform. a guaranteed annual income, a negative income tax, which passed the house and got hung up in the senate. never came out. it had work requirements and

other elements and nixon described some of these things. in language that is sometimes obscured its boldness but that was one. a second one was economic policy. the really change the nature of international economics completely. ron paul -- at that same time nixon had price controls which the democrats did not really talk about. it did not work where well. he was willing to try it. the third thing is that nixon -- i have said this so often -- his health insurance plan went beyond obama's.

i held for comment. i went back and -- i worked on it a bit. i went back and read it. ted kennedy said that was the biggest mistake, not supporting the plan. now we're being told the individual mandate may be unconstitutional. i do not think that was wister about in the nixon years. now it is about the end of the drought and pension reform -- draft and pension reform. i think the decline of the moderate republican stems in part from the pack at the great moderate trust was interrupted and discredited by watergate. nixon could not pass on that legacy.

obama cannot cite nixon as an example. there is a whole tradition that is off-limits. i think that is another of cosa cost of watergate. >> that brings to mind the comment made by evans or he said there are only two things i do not like about nixon, and domestic policy and foreign policy. [laughter] >> that is a great example of one of my ideas, the homogenization of the party started with the democratic party first. you mentioned broccoli. he is alarmed at what happened to lyndon johnson. buckley is alarmed at this, too.

milton said it passes in the house and dies in the senate. ronald reagan i discovered oppose it and lobbied against it in ways that surprised me. the left was against it. it was not enough, right. you cannot even discussed this thing now. then you get to the mcgovern years. it turns i -- turns out mcgovern was not really a mcgovernite. you point out the direct primary has empowered extremism on both sides. if you had the old smoke-filled rooms that we want to get rid of, you deserve a bigger breasts

in the party. that is a big problem. but if you put your finger on the right thing, nixon was not -- nixon told william buckley that i learned when you ran for president, you cannot run would just the right weighing. when i ran in california, you cannot just out -- you cannot run without them. >> he called himself a pragmatic liberal in california. the worst moment in terms of moderate dominance of politics was a barry goldwater of the san francisco convention. richard nixon had just introduced goldwater. he was sitting behind him.

he said this is a man known as mr. conservative. today he becomes known as mr. republican. november we will call him mr. president. nixon says down and goldwater starts out with what is later called robbing of vigor in the wounds of and moderates who were entering. nixon did not applaud. he was very much starting to plan his comeback. he supported the ticket but he was not going to be drawn in that kind of radical conservatism. he got into and conversation.

nixon always wanted to play to a broad party base and be as inclusive as he could. sometimes his lack of spontaneity made that awkward. >> i have to transition. our soon to be nominee, there are questions about mitt romney's past position and governance of massachusetts. i want to open that up to the panel about his father, his lineage has an important moderate in his father, george romney, who was a significant candidate for president in 1968. can you tell us about romney and his relation to his own past and his lineage and what that says

about how he might govern? >> the only way to describe the relationship is as awkward. if you look at the romney who ran against teddy kennedy, they could be running against one another and it is hard to know which one would prevail. somewhere in between is the real mitt romney. i think we are going to find out more as we go through the general election. kohen through this discussion, the kind of elephant in the room is, how did this party we are talking about that has lost every shred of moderation, supposedly, end up nominating a person like mitt romney to be its presidential candidate? now, you could say he was blessed with a terribly weak

field, which is true. you could say he had more money than anybody else and sell the weapons he was able to bring to bear against whoever popped up were far greater than that person had to defend themselves. but also it is a reality that what romney decided to do was become more like the party of today in some nominal ways to get himself a nomination. we will see whether -- how costly that is in the general election. the most obvious place is on immigration where he went much farther to the right then most people believed he needed to. if you step back and try to put yourself in the shoes of the romney campaign, they believe to

rick perry was going to be a tough opponent. in many ways a much more natural nominee then mitt romney. they took that campaign in a way they had not taken anybody up to that. . they took it seriously and felt they had to knock him down. there were things they did in the first debate on social security that they felt the immigration piece was where they could make him vulnerable. then he went even farther to that through the course of the campaign. the romney who has emerged from the nomination battle is somebody who has tried to be comfortable with a tea party republican party and yet as you watch and listen to him and the general demeanor tells you that is not who he is. the struggle he is going to have

is to present himself in the most comfortable way possible that also keeps the base energized. >> i am going to open it to the audience. if you could identify yourself. >> i am originally from california. my question is, one of the things that was not mentioned was the new open primary law they passed in california last year. it was the top two people on the ballot and empowers independence. now the nominees of both parties are going to wrap to compete -- going to have to compete with independence. california sends more than 10% of the delegation to congress. how will that impact moderation in the republican party and

democratic party? >> as a fellow californian, it depends in part on how the district lines are drawn. we have this crazy process. my references the 1990's. california passed term limits. it also had special masters of for everything. they drew them the way you do it in a textbook. my observation was, they were difficult years when pete wilson had huge deficits. he reached a compromise. my perception was you have a lot of moderate democrats and moderate republicans because you had districts that were competitive as opposed to gerrymandered districts where

they are skewed either way. you have the interest groups and the extra party machinery. they dominate the nomination process. i have been gone for a while but this decade you have seen the old kind of polarization you saw in the 1980's. in this decade, i think it was having a competitive district and a few in the congressional seats. a few more moderate democrats in the valley and that disappeared. >> i think moderate republicans were behind the reforms that came to pass. david packard was a major donor. they used to dominate california politics when they have the ability to run in the primary. earl warren was vittoria's for

willing both of the primaries. >> nixon also won both primaries. >> i have great hopes that the reform -- it seems to me that might encourage people to play to the center. the redistricting element -- >> i am more skeptical as to whether it will bring about the kind of changes people anticipate. i think the point is that the republican party today is different than it was historically. mostly because it is so small and has been so unsuccessful, with the exception of arnold's fortune in your becoming governor. a benevolent -- arnold schwarzenegger in becoming

governor. until you build a more viable republican party, it will be hard to see this play out in the way the proponents anticipate. >> ron. >> a question for everybody but maybe start with jeffrey. what was the impact on conservatives on having a significant moderate weighing and the impact on liberals? whether we're talking about congress or the reagan administration. even in the reagan administration there were traces of a different factions. how does that affect the way choices were made when these issues were debated between the parties and within the parties? >> i think conservatives had to think about what was going to

appeal to people in their party and then go on to sell it to the broader public. this is a disciplined conservatives and made them realize the need to actually persuade people of their views rather rally the troops and impose it over any kind of opposition. i think ronald reagan is the exemplar. this was not the single greatest vote-getter. that was robert finch. the only man whose opinion of politics reagan respected. i think reagan saw the need after the goldwater defeat that if republicans were going to triumph, it had to be a big tent party and make the case for affirmative conservatism. >> we talk about how the rhetoric tested -- deteriorated. it was reagan who imposed this

11th commandment, thou shalt not speak ill of another republican. it tended to moderate the conversation.