Brock Reforms

In the 1980 the Republican Party embraced an ideologically conservative agenda led by Bill Brock in the RNC and later Ronald Reagan in the White House. The transformation of the Republican party from the pragmatic, center ground party of Eisenhower had it origins in Barry Goldwater's failed attempt at the president in 1964 and Nixon's Southern Strategy and appeal to the silent majority- but it was Brock and the Reagan Revolution which saw the party become the party that would set the conservative agenda in the Contract with America in 1994. It has become a party of conservative ideology- more unified and. more disciplined

In the summer of 1978, Bill Brock, was elected chair of the Republican National Committee and he published the first issue of a periodical called Common Sense: A Republican Journal of Thought and Opinion. Brock’s RNC leadership coincided with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the emergence of the Republican Party as the ascendant conservative party. Although Democrats continued to control the House of Representatives for the remainder of the decade, the GOP made inroads in areas formerly dominated by Democrats such as Macomb County, Michigan, home of the original “Reagan Democrats.” Then, in 1983, and for the first time in twenty-eight years, Republicans took over the Senate. In 1994 Newt Gingrich launched the Contract with America and out lined a programme for the new right.