1976 all over again

H/T race 42008, from Peggy Noonan:

When we think of Reagan, we think so immediately of his presidency that we tend to forget what came before. What came before 1980 was 1976–and Reagan’s insurgent presidential bid against the incumbent Republican President Jerry Ford. Ford was riding pretty high, he was the good man who followed Nixon after the disgrace of Watergate; but Ford was a moderate liberal Republican, and Reagan thought he was part of the problem, so he declared against him.
He ran hard. And by March 1976 he had lost five straight primaries in a row. He was in deep trouble–eleven of twelve former chairmen of the Republican National Committee called on him to get out of the race, the Republican Conference of Mayors told him to get out, on March 18 the Los Angeles Times told him to quit. The Reagan campaign was $2 to $3 million in debt, and they were forced to give up their campaign plane for a small leased jet, painted yellow, that they called “The Flying Banana.” On March 23, they were in Wisconsin, where Reagan was to address a bunch of duck hunters. Before the speech, Reagan and his aides gathered in his room at a dreary hotel to debate getting out of the race. The next day there would be another primary, in North Carolina, and they knew they’d lose. Most of the people in the room said, “It’s over, we have no money, no support, we lost five so far and tomorrow we lose six.”

John Sears, the head of the campaign, told the governor, “You know, one of your supporters down in Texas says he’ll lend us a hundred thousand dollars if you’ll rebroadcast that speech where you give Ford and Kissinger hell on defense.” The talk went back and forth. Marty Anderson, the wonderful longtime Reagan aide who told me this story, said he sat there thinking, ‘This is crazy, another hundred grand in debt….’

The talk went back and forth and then Reagan spoke. He said “Okay, we’ll do it. Get the hundred thousand, we’ll run the national defense speech.” He said, “I am taking this all the way to the convention at Kansas City, and I don’t care if I lose every damn primary along the way.” And poor Marty thought to himself, ‘Oh Lord, there are twenty-one….’

The next night at a speech, Marty was standing in the back and Frank Reynolds of ABC News came up all excited with a piece of paper in his hand that said 55-45. Marty thought, ‘Oh, we’re losing by ten.’ And Reynolds said, “You’re winning by ten!” Reagan was told, but he wouldn’t react or celebrate until he was back on the plane and the pilot got the latest results. Then, with half the vote in and a solid lead, he finally acknowledged victory in North Carolina with a plastic glass of champagne and a bowl of ice cream.

Ronald Reagan, twenty-four hours before, had been no-money-no-support-gonna-lose-dead–but he made the decision he would not quit, and at the end he came within a whisker of taking the nomination from Ford…..