ABSTRACT
Chapter 7 examines the return of the service party approach amid the effort, led by a newly appointed out-party RNC Chair, Bill Brock, to rebuild the party following Ford’s defeat in the 1976 presidential election. Modeling his party-building on Bliss’s, Brock organized his efforts around a revival of the national service-based party apparatus. And like Bliss, Brock paid little attention to questions of policy reform. But, unlike Bliss, this did not mean Brock entirely ignored policy issues. On the contrary, Brock openly embraced the influence a resurgent New Right was exerting within the party in the mid-1970s. In doing so, he essentially allowed the Conservative Right to pick up where it left off before Nixon as the preeminent voice within Republican policy debates. Brock’s service party-building efforts were critical to the Republicans’ rapid organizational recovery after the 1976 election, and the party’s unexpectedly strong showing in the 1978 midterm elections. But they also played a central role in the Right’s seamless return to power within the party, which helped set the stage for Reagan’s election as an avowed Conservative in 1980.
