> We'll leave Nixon to one side for the moment. I just want to point
> out that as far as a political marker was concerned, he was a poster
> boy for the far right during DDE's years because he was Roy Cohn's
> sidekick, the attack dog's attack dog. He was chosen by DDE as a sop
> to the right. He was later disparaged by the Goldwaterites precisely
> because he's taken that job and thus discredited himself in their
> eyes. And those Goldwaterites -- people forget this -- were the
> majority of the Republican party. That's how they got Goldwater
> nominated. Nixon got himself nominated the next time around by winning
> them back. As well as by tricky maneuvers in the South.
This isn't quite right. Nixon was picked as a sop to the right in 1953. At that point, conservatism was in total disarray. There was no National Review yet, no John Birch Society, no Barry Goldwater, they couldn't decide basic issues like if they were pro- or anti-Cold War. All they had was McCarthyism and in 1953, Nixon was popular among those who liked McCarthy. But by the end of DDE's term, things were different. Now there was a budding conservative movement. The JBS was flourishing, the National Review and Buckley were the recognized mouthpieces, and Barry Goldwater had since 1958 become the political spokesman of the movement. But the movement was *not* the majority of the party in 1960. The party was run by Modern Republicans root and branch. The cons had to wage an insurgency to take it over in 1964. And when they did, Nixon was not seen as their friend. He had made the infamous "Treaty of Fifth Avenue" with Rockefeller in 1960, ceding the liberals the party platform. Then in 1962, Nixon ran an acrimonious campaign in the Cal. gub primaries against a real conservative - a Bircher named Joe Shell - where Nixon called the conservatives crazies. He tried to redeem himself in 1964 by campaigning loyally for Goldwater, and then carefully cultivated his ties to the Right. But movement conservatives never saw Nixon as one of their own. At best they saw him as a useful ally who they needed to keep their eye on.
>
>> Reagan couldn't get the nomination in 1976 - but by 1980, he was
>> dominant in the party. He was clearly a rising force in 1976, but
>> Ford still beat him (and had beat him in the primaries).
>
> You're leaving out that Reagon not only could have gotten the
> nomination in the 1968, he was the odds-on favorite. He had an
> Obama-like launch, a brilliant speech at the convention, which was
> then later televised, and was nationally very well received.
>
> (Which if anyone listening wants to watch is available at various
> links here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Time_for_Choosing)
>
> Back then, a 30 minute TV slot was much more of a big deal than it is
> now. He had serious people grooming him for the top job. The plan was
> to win the California governor's job to give him gravitas, and then
> move on in middle of his first term to be President.
> He was hugely popular within the party -- very much the fresh new
> Obama-like face -- and popular outside it for the same reasons. Nixon
> was a two-time loser -- including losing the California race that
> Reagan had won; Nixon was anything but fresh; and Nixon had told the
> country he was retiring from politics after the California loss: "You
> won't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more." Nobody would have
> counted on him being nominated.
>
> And Reagan was gulled with everyone else. Nixon won the nomination by
> making a brilliant inside baseball play, kind of similar to Obama's
> working of the caucuses: he worked the Deep South. The Deep South
> hadn't voted Republican in a generation, so all those people were
> newbies and they had no established allegiances. But according to
> Republican party rules, states that voted Republican in the last
> election had much greater weight in nominating the next candidate. In
> the Goldwater election, these were virtually the only states who had
> voted Republican so these people no one every paid attention to were
> suddenly the decisive bloc. Nixon grasped this immediately, and
> criss-crossed the region for four years charming every last one of
> them until they solidly in his pocket. When the convention opened,
> Reagan was stunned to find himself completely boxed out. He was a
> neophyte who was completely played by a master insider.
>
> But without that trick, the odds are Reagan would have won the 1968
> nomination. And, I believe, the election.
"A Time for Choosing" was from 1964, for Goldwater. In 1968, Reagan barely campaigned. He did have strong support from the party conservatives, who post-1964 now had a lot of pull, but he wasn't exactly the odds-on favorite. It was generally seen as a tripolar race - Romney/Rockefeller (one of the two), or Reagan, or Nixon. The odds-on favorite was Romney until he flamed out due to a gaffe. I think the media narrative at the time was that obviously the GOP would/should nominate a modern liberal like Romney or Rockefeller. The conservatives glommed onto Nixon because he could stop Rockefeller. Reagan never had much of a shot, not because the conservatives didn't like him - they did - but because absolutely nobody thought he could win.
> I think we might be getting hung up on the difference between what
> views are held by the "majority" of the party and what views rule the
> party. They are often not the same. If single payer ever becomes the
> official platform of the Democrats, it won't be because the majority
> of the party have changed their mind.
This is a good parallel. The majority of the Democrats, to the extent they think about this sort of thing, think the Massachusetts plan is a great plan and don't see the point in fighting over details. (Even if they don't object to single payer.) That's what the majority of the Republicans were like in 1960.
SA