day for the American people,” said House Republican Leader John Boehner. “By signing this bill, President Obama is abandoning our founding principle that government governs best when it governs closest to the people.”
Opposition to the Act unified Libertarians, moderate Republicans, and even blue-collar Democrats in the call for reform. As a result, the Tea Party was increasing in mass and magnitude, and it was in the Tea Party that Ronald Reagan found his third act.
Speaking to a group of Tea Party activists at the Des Moines Small Business Owner’s Convention, Reagan said, “The government in Washington is spending some seven million dollars every minute I talk to you. There’s no connection between my talk and their spending, and if they stop spending, I’ll stop talking.”
At every stop, Americans were asking Reagan to throw his hat in the ring again. He often smiled, sometimes winking at the suggestion, but publicly stayed mum on the subject. Privately, though, Reagan was preparing, telling his advisors, “Get ready. I’m going to make one last jump.”
Chapter 4
Reagan stared in disbelief at the message he had just typed on his iPad. It was July 22, 2011, and he was sitting alone in his Des Moines hotel room with a finger suspended in the air, hovering over the update button. It had been over a year since Reagan had started seriously considering another Presidential run. Through all the months of uncertainty and angst, he had slept soundly. But now he found himself wide awake, with a pounding heart, consumed by the two words on the screen: “I’M RUNNING.”
He took a deep breath and tapped his finger down, updating his Facebook status for more than 300,000 supporters. There was no turning back—for the third time in his life, Ronald Reagan had become a candidate for President of the United States.
In the months preceding this moment, there had been a frantic rush of town hall meetings, roadside dinners, and VFWs as Reagan toured the country, warning people about the dangers of the liberal healthcare overhaul while promoting his own plan, Free Market Healthcare Solutions. His scathing stump speech was an enormous success and one audience member’s taped account went viral on YouTube. In his speech, Reagan called for the repeal of ObamaCare (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) and warned that its individual mandate provisions and high costs amounted to backdoor socialism:
“One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. Most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who can’t afford it.
“Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it. We had an example of this in poll after poll.
“It was proposed that we have a compulsory health insurance program for all people in the United States and of course the American people unhesitatingly rejected it.
“So, with the American people on record not wanting socialized medicine, President Obama and the Democrats rammed through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
“This bill mandated that all people be brought into a program of compulsory health insurance. Now, by supporting this bill, President Obama was subscribing to a foot-in-the-door philosophy, because he said if we can break through and get our foot in the door then we can expand our program after that.
“The socialists themselves say now that once the Affordable Care Act is passed we will be provided with a mechanism for socialized medicine capable of indefinite expansion in every direction until it includes the entire population.
“Well, we can’t say we haven’t been warned.
“It is provided as a national emergency that millions of Americans are left without care. Advocates of this bill challenge us on an emotional basis. They say, ‘What would you do, throw these people out to die with no medical attention?’ That’s ridiculous and it’s something of course that no one has advocated.
“Now what reason could these other people have for backing a bill which says we insist on compulsory health insurance for citizens regardless of whether they are worth millions of dollars, whether they have an income, or whether they have savings? I think we can be excused for believing that this was simply an excuse to bring about what they wanted the entire time—socialized medicine.”
Reagan’s speaking tour did more than galvanize Tea Party members’ support of his platform. The brazen attack on Obama managed to keep the public conversation focused on healthcare reform, an issue Reagan’s chief rival, Mitt Romney, had been desperately trying to avoid since he had previously faced off with McCain and Reagan in the 2008 campaign. While still governor of Massachusetts, Romney had pushed hard and succeeded in universalizing healthcare for his state. This time around, greater scrutiny was cast on Romney’s former plan, as newly obtained White House records illustrated how senior Obama administration officials had in turn used Romney’s plan as a model for ObamaCare.
Meanwhile, all references to a “permanent liberal realignment”—a term that had garnered much popularity only months before—had vanished from the media’s lexicon. With Reagan’s help, in 2010 the GOP gained its biggest midterm election seat swap since 1938 and, despite remaining the minority party, made solid gains in the Senate. Republicans hopeful of retaking the White House pointed to the convergence of voting in Congressional and Presidential elections during the last three cycles as a reason for hope in 2012, while Washington Examiner columnist Michael Barone wrote, “Obviously, this is not good news for Barack Obama, since the popular vote for the House in 2010 was 52 to 45% Republican. Translate those numbers into electoral votes and you have something like a 331 to 207 Republican victory.”
Over the next year, Reagan had stayed on the campaign trail, pounding on the way President Obama was handling the economy. Furious Americans were ready for Reagan’s message as the unemployment rate hovered above 9% and a gallon of gas cost over $4. Making matters worse, that August, Standard and Poor gave America its first ever downgrade in its credit rating: from AAA to AA+. There was a deep sense of anxiety about the future. Many people, including those of foreign nations, had lost faith in America.
But not Ronald Reagan. On November 13, 2011, Reagan officially kicked off his candidacy at the Liberty State Park in New Jersey. That same day, bookmakers at Intrade had listed Mitt Romney as the odds-on favorite to win the GOP nomination, with odds at 2-1. Ronald Reagan was a heavy underdog at 10-1, trailing Newt Gingrich 3-1, Michelle Bachmann 4-1, and Ron Paul 6-1. At the park, speaking in front of nearly 9,000 people, he affirmed that all hope was not lost as he articulated his soaring vision of American exceptionalism:
“America is a living, breathing presence, unimpressed by what others say is impossible, proud of its own success; generous, yes, and naïve; sometimes wrong, never mean, always impatient to provide a better life for its people in a framework of a basic fairness and freedom.
“The crisis we face is not the result of any failure of the American spirit; it is the failure of our leaders to establish rational goals and give our people something to order their lives by. If I am elected, I shall regard my election as proof that the people of the United States have decided to set a new agenda and have recognized that the human spirit thrives best when goals are set and progress can be measured in their achievements.
“Americans have had a rendezvous with destiny ever since the moment in 1630 when John Winthrop told his followers, ‘We shall be a city upon a hill’. A troubled and afflicted mankind looks to us, pleading for us to keep our rendezvous with destiny; hoping that we will uphold the principles of self-reliance, self-discipline, morality, and, above all, responsible liberty for every individual; that we will become that shining city on a hill.”
At the press conference following his announcement, the candidate deftly fielded questions from skeptical reporters. When asked by one, “Mr. Reagan, aren’t you out of the mainstream of American life? Do you think the people want an extremist for president?” he cleverly responded with a question of his own: “Well,