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Here is what you and the Birchers were saying about Ronald Reagan exactly 20 years ago

Anti-Elitist Reversals

The history of that period shows that Ronald Reagan exploited this issue very capably. On February 26th, in New Hampshire where the matter had become the deciding issue in the primary, voters gave him a lopsided victory. His strong showing and the correspondingly weak showing by George Bush delighted the nation's conservatives and set a pattern for future victories that carried Mr. Reagan all the way to the White House.

But something else happened on February 26, 1980 that should have raised many more eyebrows than it did. On the very day that Ronald Reagan convincingly won the nation's first primary, he replaced his campaign manager with longtime Council on Foreign Relations member William J. Casey. Mr. Casey served as the Reagan campaign manager for the balance of the campaign, and was later rewarded with an appointment as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The selection of William J. Casey in the strategically important position of campaign manager was highly significant. He is a New York lawyer who served the Nixon Administration in several positions including Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and Chairman of the Export-Import Bank. In those two posts especially, he gained a reputation as a crusader for U.S. taxpayer-financed aid and trade with communist nations.

During this same period, while serving as an official of the State Department, Casey declared in a public speech given in Garden City, New York, that he favored U.S. policies leading to interdependence among nations and to the sacrificing of our nation's independence. (27) These attitudes are thoroughly in agreement with the long-term objectives of the Insiders, but are not at all consistent with the public positions taken by Mr. Reagan. But very few made note of the Casey appointment because very few knew anything about Mr. Casey.

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Rockefeller Ties In April 1980, Mr. Reagan told an interviewer from the Christian Science Monitor (28) that he would shun the directions of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission. But George Bush, who had recently resigned both from the Trilateral Commission and from the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, could not shake the stigma of his Insider connection.

In Florida, understanding about the Trilateral Commission led to widespread use of a political advertisement which claimed, "The same people who gave you Jimmy Carter want now to give you George Bush." (29) An identical ad appeared in Texas. The Reagan bandwagon, propelled in part by its attack on the Insiders, began to score one primary victory after another.

Eventually, Ronald Reagan convincingly won the Republican nomination. Conservatives across the nation were delighted That is, they were delighted until he shocked his supporters by selecting George Bush as his running mate. George Bush was the very epitome of the Insider Establishment type that had made so many of these people strong Reagan backers in the first place. That night, at the Republican convention, the word "betrayal" was in common usage.

Ronald Reagan had repeatedly and publicly promised that he would pick a running mate who shared his well-known conservative views. But, of all the Republicans available, he picked the man who was the darling of the Rockefellers. Nor was the Rockefeller-Bush relationship any secret.

Campaign finance information had already revealed that prior to December 31,1979, the Bush for President campaign had received individual $1,000 contributions (the highest amount allowed by law) from David Rockefeller, Edwin Rockefeller, Helen Rockefeller, Laurance Rockefeller, Mary Rockefeller, Godfrey Rockefeller, and several other Rockefeller relatives and employees.

Staunch Reagan supporters frantically tried to stop the Bush nomination. But political considerations quickly forced them to go along. One after another, they began to state that their man was still at the top of the ticket. "It was Reagan-Bush, not Bush-Reagan," they said. But all had to admit that the issue of Trilateral domination of the Carter Administration could hardly be used with a Trilateralist veteran like Bush on the ticket.

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For the critically important post of White House Chief of Staff, Mr. Reagan named James Baker III. The White House Chief of Staff determines who gets to see the President, what reading material will appear on his desk, and what his policy options might be on any given situation. But James Baker had fought against Ronald Reagan as the campaign manager for George Bush in 1980, and as a campaign staffer for Gerald Ford in 1976. He is a confirmed liberal who was an opponent of the philosophy enunciated by Mr. Reagan during the 1980 campaign. In his White House post, he leads a team of like-minded men who have virtually isolated the President from the many conservatives who supported his election bid.

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Policy Reversals As President, Mr. Reagan has been given the image of a tough anti-communist and a frugal budget-cutter. But the images do not hold up under close scrutiny. Only one year after taking office, he acquiesced in the taxpayer-funded bailout of Poland's indebtedness to large international banks. Even worse, he skirted the law which mandates that any nation in such financial difficulty must be formally declared in default before the U.S. government could assume its debts. What made this action doubly revealing was that it occurred at the very time that thousands of Polish citizens had been incarcerated in a typical communist crackdown against even a slight semblance of freedom.

During 1981 and 1982, Ronald Reagan personally signed authorizations for the U.S. Export-Import Bank to finance nuclear steam turbines for communist Rumania and power generation equipment and a steel plant for communist China. (32) Tens of millions of U.S. taxpayers' dollars are being provided for the industrialization of these Red tyrannies.

Also, Reagan Administration officials announced plans to sell arms to Red China; they told anti-communist businessmen in El Salvador that the U.S. would oppose efforts by any anti-communist Salvadorans to gain control of their country; and these same Administration officials refused to honor a pledge to supply Free Chinese on Taiwan with the fighter planes deemed necessary by the Chinese for defense.

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More Reagan Duplicity At the halfway point of the Reagan four-year Presidential term, the Director of the Congressional Budget Office forecast budget deficits in the $150 billion range for the Reagan-directed fiscal years 1982, 1984 and 1985.34 Others insisted that the deficits would be even higher. The largest deficit in the nation's history, prior to the Reagan Administration, was $66 billion during the Ford years. Budget deficits, of course, translate into inflation, high interest rates, business slowdown, higher taxes, and unemployment. If federal spending were no more than federal revenue, if we had the benefit of a balanced budget in other words, some of these problems would be far less severe

. Shortly after he took office, Mr. Reagan twisted the arms of conservative senators and congressmen to get them to raise the ceiling on the national debt. Had he insisted on no further increases, the spiralling growth of government could have been checked. But instead, he used his influence to authorize more debt. Then he did the very same thing again eight months later, and again in 1982. As a result, interest on the debt alone grew to $117 billion for fiscal 1982.

In his State of the Union address on January 26, 1982, President Reagan again appealed to conservative Americans when he stated

: Raising taxes won't balance the budget. It will encourage more government spending and less private investment. Raising taxes will slow economic growth, reduce production and destroy future jobs.... So, I will not ask you to try to balance the budget on the backs of the American taxpayers. I will seek no tax increases this year.

One result of the failure of the Reagan Administration to stand by the philosophy which brought the President to the White House is that conservatives everywhere have been blamed for the nation's woes. The congressional elections of 1982 amounted to a significant setback for the entire conservative movement. It seemed to many voters that the conservative program had been tried and found wanting. The truth is that the conservative program has yet to be tried. And the reason why it has not been tried is that the Insiders who surround Ronald Reagan are still in control.

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Will America continue on a path which amounts to fiscal suicide? Will our government continue to build and support communism everywhere, while it works simultaneously to destroy the few remaining anti-communist nations? The John Birch Society wants to put an end to Insider control of the policies of this nation. If we are to succeed, the active help of many more Americans is needed in a massive educational crusade. Whether or not you decide to help will count heavily toward whether the future for this nation will be enslavement or freedom

. The Insiders are hoping that you will do nothing. But true Americans everywhere are asking for and counting on your help. The best kind of help you can give is active support for and membership in the John Birch Society.