Whistlestop by John Dickerson

Author:John Dickerson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History / United States / General
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2016-08-01T16:00:00+00:00

Reagan Goes Off Script

On July 26, Reagan and his strategists took a gamble that failed spectacularly. To balance out his conservative ticket, they picked moderate, maybe even liberal, Pennsylvania senator Richard Schweiker as Reagan’s running mate.

“We just got the best news we’ve had in months,” Dick Cheney told Ford. The president thought Cheney was playing a joke on him when he brought the news.

The move didn’t pick up any new delegates for Reagan. In fact, he lost six uncommitted delegates in the Pennsylvania delegation. His base thought he was a sellout. Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus said Reagan had just “betrayed the trust of those who look to him for leadership.” The person Reagan was trying to defeat had betrayed conservatives by picking Rockefeller. Why was Reagan copying him?

Rep. John Ashbrook of Ohio said it was “the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of.”236 Illinois congressman Henry Hyde, another staunch conservative, said it was like “a farmer selling his last cow to buy a milking machine.” Schweiker explained that he had been converted to Reagan’s philosophical outlook, which convinced exactly no one.

Immediately dubbed the Schweiker “boo-boo” in the press, there was talk of dropping him from the ticket almost as soon as it was announced.237 Schweiker had offered to withdraw. Reagan refused to accept his resignation, but his reasoning wasn’t very impressive. “There was no way in this political world that it could be done without someone thinking I was pulling a McGovern-Eagleton deal,” Reagan told reporters. Not exactly an endorsement of Schweiker to compare him to the most unsuccessful party vice presidential nominee in modern history.

Reagan said keeping Schweiker was a matter of principle. Reagan’s Florida campaign chairman, Tommy Thomas said, “I told Governor Reagan that his principles are going to cost the Republican Party the election in November.”

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