In 1961, At the Dawn of His Conservative Career, Ronald Reagan Predicts “a large conservative vote is just waiting for someone to claim it”

This is the earliest letter we have seen reach the market expressing solidarity with the conservative movement and predicting its rise

Originally a New Deal Democrat, Reagan campaigned for several Democratic candidates, including President Harry S. Truman. He served on the board of a union, the Screen Actors Guild, and then later became its president. However, as the 1950s progressed, his views became increasingly conservative. His second wife, Nancy Davis Reagan, had grown up in a conservative household, and GE’s executives, who were then employing him, supported conservative principles of limited government, free markets, and anti-communism. By 1961, Reagan had changed from a Cold War liberal to a Republican when he famously remarked, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me.” By July 1963, Reagan was already delivering talks promoting Conservatism, and had even selected a title for them: “A Time for Choosing”. He focused on the importance of a strong defense against Communism, and the need to create peace in the world through American strength. He said that a government could not control the economy without coercing people. He also talked about the high tax burden of Americans and the increasing national debt.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, conservatives felt that the Republican Party had largely cast itself as a watered down version of the Democratic Party, and saw Conservatism as increasingly looked upon as un-intellectual in academia. A conservative revival was spawned in this era as William F. Buckley’s newly founded National Review became an outlet to promote conservative principles. Then a staunch, old-fashioned conservative Senator from Arizona named Barry M. Goldwater began to shake the political establishment. A bespectacled, articulate figure, Goldwater was a fierce anti-communist and a critic of labor unions and the welfare state.

Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) led the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War, serving as premier from 1958 to 1964. Though he largely pursued a policy of peaceful coexistence with the West, he instigated the Cuban Missile Crisis by placing nuclear weapons 90 miles from Florida. At home, he initiated a process of “de-Stalinization” that made Soviet society less repressive. Yet Khrushchev could be authoritarian in his own right, crushing a revolt in Hungary and approving the construction of the Berlin Wall. Known for his colorful speeches, he once took off and brandished his shoe at the United Nations.

Autograph letter signed, October, 19, 1961 to Donald Bates.  “Dear Don, Just a word between trips to say I agree completely this was a ‘moral victory’ in the true sense of the word.  The margin of your defeat was even less than one should expect anytime an entrenched machine is challenged. You have to face the fact that a machine has a built in automatic vote to start with.

“Actually you have confirmed my theory that a large conservative is just waiting for someone to claim it. Start moving now and without becoming a ‘witch hunter’ don’t ignore the rising tide of anti-communism in the country.  Americans are hungry for someone to tell Mr. Khrushchev off.

“Attached is the latest version of my ‘old families’ song.”

Little did Reagan know in 1961 that 25 years later, as President, he would do just that, tell off a Soviet leader.  In 1987, his exhortation at the Brandenburg Gate to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall was the culmination of this work, the natural progression from this very letter.