Word: schweikered
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...week long Reagan and his bombshell choice for Vice President, Pennsylvania's liberal Senator Richard Schweiker, worked valiantly to make "something happen." Convinced that Ford had been moving toward a narrow, but near certain first-ballot victory, Reagan and Campaign Manager John Sears (see box) had resorted to a desperate gamble. The Schweiker selection, they had hoped, would throw the race into confusion, check the Ford buildup, and give Reagan a chance to break through in the only area where enough wavering Ford supporters and uncommitted delegates seemed ripe for plucking: the large Northeast delegations of New York...
Before any sallies into the Northeast could be helpful, Reagan had to nail down his own strength in the South. In a visit to Jackson, Miss., he and Schweiker reassured 13 restless Alabama delegates, who stayed with the ticket. But the two were much less successful in trying to convince the vital Mississippi delegation that Schweiker had shed his liberal horns and that no basic ideological split remained between the two running mates...
...double-edged drive was difficult for Reagan and his putative running mate. Having told Southerners that Schweiker was not nearly as liberal as his voting record suggests, they argued in the North that Reagan's very selection of Schweiker showed that the Californian was not as doctrinaire and rigid a conservative as he has been portrayed. With this rationalization, Reagan managed to open a few more small cracks in Ford's strongest bastions. But he was still far short of cracking those bastions wide enough to give him more than a long-shot chance in Kansas City...
...YORK. Strongly influenced by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, the state had been expected to deliver all but a score or so of its votes to Ford. After the Reagan-Schweiker visit, Reagan gained only two new votes, neither attributable to his selection of Schweiker. TIME'S count showed 127 Ford votes in the delegation, 20 for Reagan and seven uncommitted...
...Rollie is just there to mingle at cocktail parties. Whatever the internal dynamic, though, every one of their major sources is with the Ford camp: Alexander Haig, Donald Rumsfeld, Melvin Laird. They've buried Reagan more times this year than they resurrected Muskie in '72, and while claiming the Schweiker gambit was Reagan's only hope to stave off Invincible Jerry, they say it won't make any difference...