WTH: 60 Years Since “A Time for Choosing” and the Future of Reaganism. Peter Schweizer Explains
What the Hell Is Going On
AEI Podcasts
4.4 • 633 Ratings
🗓️ 24 October 2024
⏱️ 62 minutes
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Summary
On October 27, 1964, Ronald Reagan launched his political career with his “Time for Choosing” speech, a moment so famous it simply became known as “The Speech.” Ushering in a new era of conservatism, future President Reagan argued that Americans were at a pivotal moment and had a choice to make: Did they want a massive welfare state or lower taxes, government, and greater capitalist innovation? To stand up to the enemies of freedom and American ideals or let Communism spread across the world? To let the government be run by elites or run by the people? On the sixtieth anniversary of this speech, one thing is clear: Reagan’s principles are timeless, and as relevant now as they were sixty years ago.
Peter Schweizer is an investigative journalist and author of five New York Times bestselling books. Peter is also the founder and president of the Government Accountability Institute, host of The Drill Down podcast, and was previously a consultant to the Office of Presidential Speechwriting in the White House for President George W. Bush. He is the author of Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism (Knopf 2003).
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast is brought to you by the American Enterprise Institute. |
| 0:03.0 | If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and share. Thanks for listening. Here's our show. What the hell's going on? What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on? I don't know what the hell he's talking about. You don't have to know what the hell is on it. What hell's the matter with these guys? We don't know what's going on. What hell's going on? |
| 0:01.1 | Who in God's name |
| 0:21.7 | knows what it's all about. Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka. And I'm Mark Dyson. Welcome to our podcast. What |
| 0:33.6 | the hell is going on? Mark, what the hell this week? Well, what the hell is going on? We're |
| 0:39.0 | literally, as we release this, days away from a historic election, but we are going back in a time |
| 0:45.9 | capsule 60 years, because before a historic election 60 years ago in 1964, Ronald Reagan gave |
| 0:53.2 | a speech, which became known as a time for choosing. |
| 0:56.5 | And Reagan biographers is so influential that they just called it the speech. |
| 1:01.3 | It's the speech that launched Ronald Reagan's political career. |
| 1:04.6 | It's the speech that launched the modern conservative movement. |
| 1:07.6 | It's the speech that cast him into the political stratosphere and put him on the |
| 1:12.3 | path to win the White House 16 years later. He gave it in support of Barry Goldwater, who lost. |
| 1:17.3 | But some have said, some historians have said that Goldwater actually won. He just won 16 years later |
| 1:22.7 | when Ronald Reagan won the presidency. And so this is the speech that did that. And what we're going to do here |
| 1:28.3 | is we've got Peter Schweitzer, who is an eminent historian of Ronald Reagan, has written two |
| 1:32.9 | great books on the Reagan presidency. And he's going to talk to us about the speech. And we're |
| 1:37.8 | also going to talk about where Reaganism is today. Is this something that's in the past? Is this |
| 1:42.7 | the future of the Republican Party? Can we bring |
| 1:44.6 | it back? You and I are both Reaganites. What do you think, Danny? Look, I have argued with you |
| 1:50.3 | frequently on this podcast that I don't think that there's a great Ronald Reagan riding in on |
| 1:57.0 | his horse as a knight in shining armor. But what I liked about this conversation is that |
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