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Remarks of Ronald Reagan at the GOP Fund-Raising Dinners over closed circuit television [Speeches by Others]
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7346086
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Remarks of Ronald Reagan at the GOP Fund-Raising Dinners over closed circuit television [Speeches by Others]
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White House Press Releases (Ford Administration)
Press Releases
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1976-10-07
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1976
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Digitized from Box 32 of the White House Press Releases at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
OCTOBER 7, 1976
(Beverly Hills, California)
REMARKS OF RONALD REAGAN
FORMER GOVERNOR OF THE
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
AT THE
GOP FUND-RAISING DINNERS
OVER CLOSED CIRCUIT TELEVISION
Bob, ladies and gentlemen:
In an election year 40 years ago an American of
unquestioned patriotism, one-time Presidential candidate
Al Smith, Mr. Democrat himself, went before a nationwide
radio audience. Sadly, he told his fellow Americans that
after a lifetime in the Democratic Party he could no longer
follow the leadership of that party as it took this Nation
down a path that led to socialism and the loss of freedom.
His final words were, "I am going to take a walk."
Four years ago, the Democratic leadership took
that party down a path that millions of patriotic Democrats
couldn't follow and now the same leadership is charting
the same course. Rank and file Democrats will take a walk
once again. They will walk to our party, if you and I will
make them see what the Republican Party offers is what they
themselves want for America.
If I may paraphrase the first President, George
Washington, "We have raised the standards around which the
brave and the honest can rally." For the first time in
my memory, our party has a platform fashioned at the grass-
roots level by party members, which makes clear what the
Republican Party represents.
Our opponents have a platform replete with
promises fashioned by the party leadership and tailored
to the specifications of their Presidential candidate.
Indeed, Jimmy Carter was the principal architect.
On the cover of the Democratic platform, it
proclaims, "This platform is a contract with the people."
But those who become a partner in that contract are pledged
to more and bigger Government, more spending and more
inflation. In page after page it calls for the Federal
solutions to all the problems besetting us -- federalization
of welfare, compulsory socializedmedicine and Federal
regulation of the economy -- and that last probably spells
out better than anything the fundamental difference between
our parties and our two candidates.
MORE
- 2 -
They endorsed the Humphrey-Hawkins bill, which
would give the Federal Government the power to set production
and employment goals, allocate resources and labor, control
marketing.
Their platform pledges to give Washington
the full power to engage in national economic planning,
deciding where we will work, what kind of work we will do,
what we will be paid, what we will produce and what the
price of the products will bring.
A man named Mussolini did that some years ago
and they called it fascism. Their platform proposes over
60 new or expanded Federal spending programs and the
expansion or creation of some 22 Washington agencies,
offices and bureaus.
And then it implies there will be no added
cost to Government. And if that is true, then Jimmy
has made some kind of special deal with the tooth fairy.
(Laughter)
Our platform calls for less Government spending
and less inflation and a return of authority to levels of
Government closer to the people in such fields as welfare
and education, freedom in the marketplace for the worker,
the farmer, the shopkeeper and particularly the energy
industry to reduce our independence on foreign oil.
In the Democratic Convention, where their platform
was born, we heard speaker after speaker last July deplore
the unsolved problems of human misery with no acknowledgement
of their 40-year record of failure to deal with those
problems. They denounced inflation and unemployment as
if someone else were to blame.
Our platform contains an answer to their
hypocrisy. It says the platform above all rejects deficit
spending by the Federal Government which erodes the
purchasing power of the dollar. And then it goes on to
explain that the number one destroyer of jobs is inflation
and the number one cause of inflation is Government's
expansion of the money supply and credit created out of
thin air to pay for deficit spending.
Inflation is the direct responsibility of years
of Democratic control of a spendthrift Congress. There
hasn't even been a day in the last two decades where they
could not have curbed the spending, ended inflation and
in so doing reduced unemployment if they wanted to, or
if they knew how, but this would have gone counter to their
doctrinary liberalism which Jimmy Carter pleads publicly
on television for all to see about the inequities and
loopholes of the tax structure.
I wish he would answer one question: Which
Republican Congress created the legislation that created
that tax structure?
MORE
- 3 -
There has only been one Republican Congress in
the last 40 years, and that was 22 years ago. The
position of our two parties on the urgent problem of
defending freedom in an increasingly hostile world is
also spelled out in the platforms. Again, compare, for
the difference is there for all to see. The
Democratic platform speaks of an adequate defense and
then asks for a $5 to $7 billion cut in the defense
budget. That is a little like the young fellow who called
his girl on the phone one night. He said, "Honey, I
love you so much. I would climb the highest mountain,
I would swim the deepest ocean to be at your side. I
will be over Wednesday night if it doesn't rain."
(Laughter)
The Republican platform states unequivocally
our belief in military superiority as the best way to
keep the peace, and it is specific in its promises to
develop new weapons systems to achieve that superiority.
It does more. It counters the dangerous wording of
the Democratic platform, which would tempt aggressors,
as North Korea was tempted by injudicious language a
quarter of a century ago. We paid with the lives of
33,000 young Americans.
Our platform renews our allegiance to our
allies and states that American troops will never again
be committed to the purpose of our own defense or that of
our allies unless we intend to achieve our stated
purpose. In other words, no young Americans will be
asked to fight and die for their country unless it be
for a cause their country intends to win.
On November 2 Americans will go to the polls.
Before November 2, you and I must bring to their
attention the real choice that we have: Increased
spending; increased inflation, with all that it means;
increased control of our daily lives by a Government
that has grown beyond the concept of the governed;
or we can have the right to choose, to control our own
destiny, our own lives; to raise our children as we
think best; to have Government once again the servant,
not the master.
We can do this by returning to Washington
Gerald Ford and Bob Dole.
Thank you very much.
END