Early and Mid-1976: Reagan Candidacy Proves Many Republican Voters Oppose Negotiations with Soviet Union

Governor Ronald Reagan (R-CA) runs for the presidency on a staunchly conservative platform of absolute anti-Communism, widespread reduction of government, and strict moral virtue. Many Republicans see Reagan as a more charismatic successor to the hardline principles espoused by former presidential candidate Barry Goldwater (R-AZ); Reagan also has the virtue of not being “tainted” by any association with Watergate. Reagan condemns the Soviet Union in near-apocalpytic terms, and denounces his Republican opponent, President Ford, both for refusing to meet with Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn (see Summer 1975) and for signing the Helsinki Accords (see August 1975), which he says gives “the American seal of approval [for] the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe.” Reagan is an absolute opponent of any sort of detente with the Soviets. His campaign echoes strongly with conservative Republicans; he nearly defeats Ford in the all-important New Hampshire primary, wins 12 states in the general primary, and reveals, in the words of author J. Peter Scoblic, “the antinegotiation attitude once the exclusive province of conservatives now appealed to rank-and-file Republicans.” Reagan loses the primary battle to Ford, but the effects are long-lasting. By the time of the Republican convention, Ford abandons the use of the term “detente” altogether, and Reagan supporters succeed in having a “Morality in Foreign Policy” plank added to the Republican platform which repudiates detente, acclaims Solzhenitsyn as a hero, and calls the Helsinki Accords a secret agreement to give unprecedented power to the USSR. Scoblic calls Reagan’s plank “a shocking rebuke to a sitting US president from his own party.” Ford is furious, but is persuaded not to oppose it by his chief of staff, Dick Cheney. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 77-78]