The Fulcrum: how Reagan was the pivotal point in conservatism
In December 1982, unemployment hit 10.8%, the worst since the Depression, sixteen months after Reagan took office. The tax cut came first. The pain came after.
Geoff's Musical Musings
I need to schedule an intervention, the temptation to buy a new guitar is overwhelming...
recap
Posts from the week of October 17 thorugh October 24, 2026
The Fulcrum: how Reagan was the pivotal point in conservatism
Eleven days separated Reagan's most contested states' rights speech from the religious right's biggest rally of the campaign. That wasn't a coincidence historians agree on, but it wasn't nothing either.
The Fulcrum: how Reagan was the pivotal point in conservatism
Reagan didn't build the coalition that elected him. Four other machines finished construction first, and he was simply the candidate all of them could live with.
Geoff's Musical Musings
So many of the "iconic" guitarists from the 1960's especially from Britain basically stole their whole shtick from the delta blues artists. Eric Clapton is a top offender
The Fulcrum: how Reagan was the pivotal point in conservatism
He lost the nomination by a clean count, then stole the room anyway with an unscripted five-minute speech.
Geoff's Musical Musings
Episode 2 of my way of coping with all the onanism on the coming blue wave (that I fear will be less wave, and more of a wading pool - we shall see in 17 days). Enjoy the guitar hero you likely didn't know about.
recap
Posts from the week of October 10 - 17, 2026
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As we head into the elections, I am trying to lose myself in music. Fortunately, both Youtube and Béla Fleck came to my rescue...
Reagan's own education adviser said the quiet part out loud: college access needed limiting before it produced "an educated proletariat."
The NRA helped write California's gun control law in 1967. Forty-nine years later, it took them over a day to comment on a licensed gun owner's death.
A Republican governor and a Democratic Assembly Speaker teamed up to raise the sales tax, the top bracket, and sin taxes all at once. Big government built this one together.
Settling in on the long series on Ronald Reagan, this week we close out his early, formative period. This is the week where we start with the "A Time for Choosing" in support of Barry Goldwater. This was a political awakening (going woke eh?) and that really flipped
The mail said groundswell. The room of businessmen who'd already funded one broadcast said something more like a plan. Book One closes with Reagan's actual declaration of candidacy.
Thirty years of radio timing, union politics, and rehearsed economics, compressed into thirty minutes. The numbers inside it don't all add up quite as cleanly.
Goldwater's own advisers didn't want Reagan on the air. One rich Californian wrote a personal check and put him there anyway. Episode IV
The posts from the week of September 26 through October 3. We are going to do a deep and LONG series on the sainted one of the right, Ronnie Reagan.
$125,000 a year, in 1954, to host a TV show. The agency that arranged it owed its whole television business to a waiver he signed himself.
Before the conservative, before the Republican, there was a man whose father got his job from Roosevelt's own patronage machine. That part never really left him.
A lifeguard chair, a dead wire, a line about losing your legs that became his memoir's title. The making of Ronald Reagan starts long before anyone was watching.
