What are the odds that appointing him wouldn't have done more damage to Reagan than any positive contribution Bradford could make?
In the early years of Reagan the band of South haters hadn’t yet metastasized and didn’t have much of a presence in the GOP. Or in the Democrats for that matter. So without the campaign of character assassination waged by the neocon Trotsky fan club Bradford wouldn’t have had a problem.
“A letter supporting Bradford’s nomination, sent to President Reagan during the controversy, was signed by John East, Jesse Helms, John Tower, Strom Thurmond, Orrin Hatch, Jeremiah Denton, Dan Quayle and James McClure and eight other Republican senators. Gerhart Niemeyer, Russell Kirk, Jeffrey Hart, William Buckley, M. Stanton Evans, Andrew Lytle, Harry Jaffa (”Bradford’s principal intellectual antagonist”), and “dozens of others” were also named as supporters. Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, William Kristol, Michael Joyce and William Simon were among Bennett’s supporters.”