ansel... I’m unfamiliar with her feelings about Reagan.
She wrote of his run for the Republican candidacy for the 1976 election in The Ayn Rand Letter (”The Last Survey, Part 1” Nov-Dec 1975):
I urge you, as emphatically as I can, not to support the candidacy of Ronald Reagan. I urge you not to work for or advocate his nomination, and not to vote for him. My reasons are as follows: Mr. Reagan is not a champion of capitalism, but a conservative in the worse sense of the word—i.e., an advocate of a mixed economy with government controls slanted in favor of business rather than labor... This description applies in various degrees to most Republican politicians, but most of them preserve some respect for the rights of the individual. Mr. Reagan does not: he opposes the right to abortion.
Not every wrong idea is an indication of a fundamental philosophical evil in a person’s convictions; the anti-abortion stand is such an indication. There is no room for an error of knowledge in this issue and no venal excuse: the anti-abortion stand is horrifying because it is non-venal—because no one has anything to gain from it and, therefore, its motive is pure ill toward mankind.