MARCHING TO TAMPA

Notes of Concern…

                               …Jackson Blair

MARCHING TO TAMPA

The Party holding The White House is considered to have an advantage and therefore their convention comes second. The assumption is that people need more time to view the alternative candidates since they have seen the sitting president, up close and personal, for three plus years.

So the GOP field continues to slug it out through the primaries and caucuses. The pundits rarely mention that Obama and Hillary Clinton were still slugging it out in June three years ago. For some reason, they are happier pretending that this bloodletting on the GOP side is somewhat unique! It is only March folks. This could go on many more months and mirror exactly what the Democrats experienced last time.

I understand that the Conservatives in The Republican Party look at this election as a chance to get real “change.” They believe Obama’s promise of “change” was a gimmick.

The Democrats look at this election as a chance to provide the President with four more years to bring about the change he promised. They argue that four years just wasn’t enough time.

The Liberals and Moderates in the GOP look at this election as an opportunity to take back The White House, and maybe even the Senate, but recognizing the fact that Democrats register a lot more people than Republicans and that for the GOP to win they have to attract Independents, it is tough to field a truly conservative ticket and expect a victory in November. So they hope for a moderate nominee.

Times change.

People change.

But in 1964 the same positions were taken by elements of both parties. Lyndon Johnson was sitting in what people still thought of as “John F. Kennedy’s chair” at The White House.

The GOP saw the election as a chance to attract some Democrats and Independents to vote Republican and to win The White House.

So the Moderate Wing of the GOP suggested as potential “winners” Governor George Romney of Michigan, Governor John Rhoads of Ohio, Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York, and Governor William Scranton of Pennsylvania. All of these men were accomplished, attractive and successful.

The Conservative Wing of the GOP was having none of it.

They wanted Senator Barry Goldwater, author of The Conscience of a Conservative, as the standard bearer of the party. The convention was held in the summer of 1964 in San Francisco. I was at the convention. The fighting was fierce and mean. Everyone had taken very hard positions. The Conservatives had control of the convention apparatus and ultimately were successful in nominating Senator Goldwater.

Enough of the history.

Let us look at the results.

With the nation’s leading conservative at the top of the ticket, a fine, intelligent, accomplished man, the GOP hardly carried a state. Lyndon Johnson won the biggest victory of anyone to date. Not only did Goldwater go down, but the rush away from Goldwater was such that GOP candidates for offices all across the land lost their races. Most of them had never met Barry Goldwater. Many of them were liberal or moderate but it did not matter. People were happier with the “devil we know” and unwilling to take a big risk with the “devil we might not want to know.”

Once again the GOP has the opportunity to pick a candidate who is not divisive; one who will attract disgruntled Democrats and sufficient independents to actually win the presidential election.

There is an equal opportunity to insist on a pure conservative  nominee.

In such an instance, 1964 could be repeated in 2012.

And what would have been accomplished? An unpopular sitting president would be re-elected in large part because there really was nowhere for those people who wanted an alternative to go. True liberal and moderate Democrats, and many Independents, just are not ready to elect a true Conservative. This should come as no surprise to true Conservatives as not only would they never vote for a Liberal, the dig in against Moderates, too.

This country does well when it is governed from the middle.

I have many friends who consider themselves real Conservatives. They are seriously committed to the idea that only a real Conservative can lead the country out of the mess we seem to be in financially and internationally. I respect the depth of their feeling and the breadth of their willingness to work and contribute.

But down inside me is a little voice saying “1964, 1964, 1964.”

In my mind another voice is saying “those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”