Two months later, the last return has been filed and counted, the election is certified. Ronald Reagan won second largest popular vote margin of all time—only Richard Nixon ran better, against George McGovern—and racked up 525 electoral votes to Walter Mondale’s 13. Mondale took Minnesota by fewer than four thousand votes, of two million cast. … In state legislatures, it now develops, the GOP did much better than in Congress, gaining 307 seats, scoring particularly well in North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Connecticut (where they took both houses). . . . “Dramatic increases in conservative/GOP strength occurred in every region of the United States,” says the American Legislative Exchange Council, “moving some political analysts to suggest that indications of a philosophical realignment in the states are in evidence.” . . . On Democratic side, real pros continue to be gloomy. Former Democratic National Chairman Robert S. Strauss, who put Humpty-Dumpty together again after McGovern debacle, says special interests have captured the party. Strauss adds: “Do you think labor is going to turn the party loose? Jesse Jackson? The others? Forget it.”
You guessed it, Richard Viguerie is not happy about major White House shifts. Donald Regan, he says, was “not on any conservative short list for chief of staff.” And Paul Weyrich adds: “The old order needed to change. But that doesn’t mean [it has changed] for the better.” … It could mean that the leaks may be plugged up, though. Washington Post quotes a former Treasury aide who says of Regan: He believes that once a decision is made, “if you’re going to be for that team, you’re going to support that decision, or you get the hell off the team.” . . . White House conservatives not sorry to see Richard Darman following his old boss James Baker to Treasury (Darman has been named Deputy Treasury Secretary). . . . U.S. News hints that former Treasury aide Ann Dore McLaughlin, now at Interior, could land White House job. . . . Departure of Faith Whittlesey from WH to Bern, as ambassador, another blow to hard-line conservatives. She will replace the very effective and popular John Davis Lodge, due to retire at 81 years of age.
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