Hawk1981
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- Apr 1, 2020
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During the 1964 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan, who had recently become politically active in his support of Republicans, traveled and gave speeches in support of Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee. In the last weeks before the election Reagan delivered his "A Time for Choosing" speech as part of a pre-recorded television program Rendezvous with Destiny.
Transcending partisanship and appealing to his audience by portraying his views as common sense, he positioned himself above mere partisan arguments. Rather than rely on slogans or abstract arguments, Reagan turned to vivid story telling and anecdotes about people to relate to the people in his audience.
There are shades of the Reagan to come with an anecdote criticizing a welfare mom and exhortations for 'law and order'.
Reagan staked out the claim for populist support for the right and attacked policies of the Democratic administration as being elitist with its ever expanding administrative government. He introduces the idea in this speech that big government opposes the interests of all Americans, and does not divide the country along class lines or into the typical interest groups, "This is the issue of the election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government, or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”
Reagan concludes his speech with an emotional appeal that borrows phrasing from Churchill, Lincoln and Patrick Henry, "You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness."
An audience that was used to seeing the optimistic and gregarious Reagan from film and television was introduced to the new serious and comparatively angry politician. He had only been a Republican for two years, having identified with liberal causes for much of his life as a registered Democrat. With one speech he became the most attractive Republican in America.
Though Goldwater lost this race, Reagan found a growing swell of support that would launch his political career and elect him Governor of California two years later.
Transcending partisanship and appealing to his audience by portraying his views as common sense, he positioned himself above mere partisan arguments. Rather than rely on slogans or abstract arguments, Reagan turned to vivid story telling and anecdotes about people to relate to the people in his audience.
There are shades of the Reagan to come with an anecdote criticizing a welfare mom and exhortations for 'law and order'.
Reagan staked out the claim for populist support for the right and attacked policies of the Democratic administration as being elitist with its ever expanding administrative government. He introduces the idea in this speech that big government opposes the interests of all Americans, and does not divide the country along class lines or into the typical interest groups, "This is the issue of the election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government, or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”
Reagan concludes his speech with an emotional appeal that borrows phrasing from Churchill, Lincoln and Patrick Henry, "You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness."
An audience that was used to seeing the optimistic and gregarious Reagan from film and television was introduced to the new serious and comparatively angry politician. He had only been a Republican for two years, having identified with liberal causes for much of his life as a registered Democrat. With one speech he became the most attractive Republican in America.
Though Goldwater lost this race, Reagan found a growing swell of support that would launch his political career and elect him Governor of California two years later.