With access to millions of union dollars, the liberal Big Union bosses can and do buy elections. That's why we have forced busing, government subsidy of "Gay" liberation, food stamps for students and strikers, furloughs for convicted rapists and murderers, higher taxes, and more inflation.

Source: McIntyre, Sen. Thomas J. The Fear Brokers. pp. 89-90 (1979)

Dear Friend:

Are you as sick and tired as I am of liberal politicians who: Force children to be bused; appoint judges who turn murderers and rapists loose on the public; force your children to study from school books that are anti-God, anti-American, and filled with the most vulgar curse words; give your tax money to communists, anarchists and other radical organizations; do nothing about sex, adultery and homosexuality and foul language on television?

Are you tired of feeling no power to change things? If so, why don't you join the Conservative Caucus?

Source: McIntyre, Sen. Thomas J. The Fear Brokers. p. 43 (1979) (context: "Witness the contents of the first mailing to solicit memberships and money for Meldrim Thomson's Conservative Caucus. Using words like bullets, this letter was fired off in November 1974...")

The letter was composed and mailed by Richard Viguerie's direct mail firm. From November 1974 through June 1975, "appeals such as this brought in $524,387 from 36,840 people, according to Caucus Director Howard Phillips," according to McIntyre (citing Ladd, Everett Carl Jr. The Democrats Have Their Own Two Party System. Fortune. October, 1977. pp. 212-226.

William A. Rusher, a Reagan adviser and publisher of the weekly National Review, has just finished writing "The Case for the New Majority party," due in April from Sheed & Ward, Inc. "What I'm talking about is the total replacement of the republican party," Mr. Rusher explained in an interview -- "the same way the Republicans replaced the Whigs." Whether the new party takes shape by 1976 or not, the chance that conservatives such as himself will support Mr. For is "dim," he said.

Source: Lydon, Christopher. G.O.P. Right Wing Seems to Rule Out Support for Ford for 1976 Campaign. New York Times. February 10, 1975.

At an airport news conference after the three-hour flight from Kansas City, Mo., Mr. Reagan was asked about establishment of a third party if Mr. Ford was defeated in November.

"If there is such a loss, I think the Republican Party and many of us are going to have to take a look because there is a great majority throughout this country, I think, with a philosophy that is contrary to the Demcratic philosophy and the Democratic platform."

With his wife Nancy at his side and his escort of Secret Service agents around him, the former California Governor said the Republican Party now had a membership of only 18 percent of the people willing to identify themselves with a political party.

He said that if Mr. Ford lost, "There would have to be a reassessment of where we go and how we put that great new majority together."

Source: United Press International, Reagan Hints New Party If Carter Wins Election. New York Times. August 21, 1976.

Voter ambivalence about party allegiance poses greater risks to Republicans than Democrats. A survey described last year to Republican state chairmen detected only 18 percent of the national electorate willing to commit themselves to the party, as against 42 percent who regarded themselves as Democrats and 40 percent as independents.

The Republican figure -- lower than the 22 percent recorded last week by the Gallup organization -- was not markedly larger than the 13 percent of the vote Governor Wallace obtained as an independent candidate for President in 1968. It persuaded the right wing, as Mr. Viguerie put it, "that if you take the White House away from the Republican Party, the whole thing is going to collapse like a house of cards."

William A. Rusher, the publisher of National Review, said that because Republicans had not controlled Congress "since God was a child, I am assuming they would not win the Presidency" if Republican conservatives deserted the party to join the remnants of Mr. Wallace's independent movement.

Source: Naughton, James M. Some Republicans Fearful Party Is on Its Last Legs. New York Times. May 31, 1976.

Some of what was said on either side of the Republican ideological divide was undoubtedly for effect, to try to help avert the nomination of the President or of the former California Governor.

But the far right insists that its objective is not so much to win the election next November as to hasten the demise of the Republican Party.

The party, said Richard A. Viguerie, a prime mover in the Committee for a New Majority, "is just not a viable vehicle for conservatives.

"It's like a disabled tank on a bridge," he said, "impeding the troops from crossing to the other side. You've got to take that tank and throw it in the river."

Source: Naughton, James M. Some Republicans Fearful Party Is on Its Last Legs. New York Times. May 31, 1976.

President Ford and Ronald Reagan are waging a toe-to-toe fight for the party's ultimate prize. At ringside sit such potential contenders as Vice President Rockefeller and former Treasury Secretary John B. Connally, awaiting an unlikely mutual Ford-Reagan knockout that would give them a shot at the Presidential nomination.

But Republicans of varying philosophical hues said in interviews over the last few days that the 1976 nomination might not be worth winning. Some said the party itself might be beyond repair.

Young progresssives spoke dejectedly of the 1976 campaign as their "last hurrah" as Republican activists. Conservative purists described specific contingency plans aimed at "destroying the Republican Party" as a means to create a new major party. And campaign professionals beholden to neither ideological wing said they feared the party might do no more than "stagger along as a cripple" for another day.

Source: Naughton, James M. Some Republicans Fearful Party Is on Its Last Legs. New York Times. May 31, 1976.

In August Mr. Ford said he intended to balance the budget for fiscal year 1975 (which began July 1) under $300 billion. Inflation was then "Public Enemy Number One," capable of destroying the nation just as surely as "an armed enemy." In October Mr. Ford stumped all over the nation, warning the voters about the dire consequences of sending "budget busters" to the 94th Congress. Sooon after the election, Mr. Ford began to indicate that he would try to fight inflation and recession simultaneously; but, he emphasized, this did not mean he was contemplating a "180 degree turn" away from his anti-inflation fight. Since then, of course, he has made what his press secretary, Ron Nessen, called a "179 degree turn." The "war" on inflation is over, bullet-biting-wise.

Two months ago Mr. Ford said the nation had to make "sacrifices," like paying an income tax surcharge. In January, in his Washington post interview, he said, evidently with a straight face, "We're going to have a strong, tough, forward-looking economic program. We've really finally honed it, tuned it." He tuned out the sacrifices; he honed away all concern about "budget busting." The "sacrifice" the American people were asked to endure was an immediate tax cut.

Source: Will, George F. Two Interviews. National Review. p. 95. January 31, 1975.

Perhaps the most revealing and poignant moment of the campaign came when President Ford, asked what sacrifices he would call on the American people to make, replied: "The American people will be called upon to tighten their belts a bit in meeting some of the problems that we face domestically." That would mean less spending, but Ford quickly added, "We could, I think, have a long overdue and totally justified tax decrease for the middle-income people." Then, with no sense of irony whatsoever, he repeated a call for reduced federal spending and "a tax reduction primarily for the middle-income people," adding that "the American people would be willing to make those sacrifices...in the next four years."

The idea that a call for sacrifice to meet threats to national survival might counter bread-and-butter economics never appeared in the President's briefing book and was obvously absent from his thoughts.

Carter's most obvious and most heavily publicized electoral base was his overwhelming support from black voters, North and South (which seems a permanent Democratic asset), and backing from his Southern heartland (which may be a one-time occurence). Even so, Carter would have been defeated had he not scored substantially among white industrial workers and their families. These votes provided the narrow margin of victory in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Had Ford won two of those three states, he would have been elected.

These blue-collar voters are the nation's deepest well of patriotic fervor. The antidote to Democratic bread-and-butter arguments must be a call for sacrifice at a time of international danger -- precisely the call that Ford did not make and apparently was incapable of making. [ital in orig]

Source: Novak, Robert D. Fiasco '76. National Review. p. 1398. December 24, 1976.

The results of the "Sunday Morning Massacre," which came as a total surprise to the White House, activated the anti-Communist Right behind Reagan and validated his challenge for the nomination. But more important than these ill effects was what the sacking of Schlesinger showed about Ford.

Whether or not Donald Rumsfeld was the eminence grise in pushing out Schlesinger, as has been charged and denied, it is clear that Ford deeply resented his Secretary of Defense's pugnacious advocacy of Pentagon spending against Budget Director James T. Lynn. The President was entranced by Lynn's siren song of saving $7 billion through defense cuts and gave up that notion only under pressure from Reagan. The notion of a strong push for national defense as good politics against his Democratic foe a year later never entered Ford's mind as he dispatched the annoying Mr. Schlesinger.

Source: Novak, Robert D. Fiasco '76. National Review. p. 1397. December 24, 1976.