Bestselling author and Reagan historian, Craig Shirley, talked with Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Wednesday regarding his latest book of his Reagan anthology, “Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years, 1976-1980.”
The book examines Ronald Reagan’s rise after losing his 1976 presidential bid to achieve an overwhelming victory just four years later in 1980.
More on “Reagan Rising” via Amazon.com:
In 1976, when Ronald Reagan lost his second bid for the GOP presidential nomination (the first was in 1968), most observers believed his political career was over. Yet one year later, at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, Reagan sounded like a new man. He introduced conservatives to a “New Republican Party”—one that looked beyond the traditional country club and corporate boardroom base to embrace “the man and woman in the factories . . . the farmer . . . the cop on the beat. Our party,” Reagan said, “must be the party of the individual. It must not sell out the individual to cater to the group.”
Reagan’s movement quickly spread, championed by emerging conservative leaders and influential think tanks. Meanwhile, for the first time in modern history, Reagan also began drawing young people to American conservatism.
Today, Shirley also spoke of messaging and how Reagan mastered the various technologies of his time, from radio to movies, to television, to get his message across to the people. Said Shirley regarding messaging today, “If Reagan was alive today I believe he’d be doing exactly what Donald Trump is doing, which is talking over the heads of the Washington establishment going directly to the American people via Facebook and via Twitter and other forms of communication.”
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