" For the left, employers were the exploiters. The New Right replied that the true exploiters were federal bureaucrats grasping for tax dollars, and the media elites who shoved 1960s libertinism down Middle America’s throats. New Rightists were obsessed with what were known as the “social issues”—crime, government intrusion into family life, sexual mores, the right to own a gun. Reagan’s establishmentarian presidential campaign manager John Sears dismissed them as the “emotional issues.” But the New Right reveled in emotion—particularly, the emotion of resentment. "

― Rick Perlstein , Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980