The 48-Year-Old Secret that Proves the Establishment is Powerless to Stop Trump
(Conservative Tribune) – The Washington establishment is worried.
On the Republican side, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has crashed and burned out of the race for the presidential nomination, and his one-time protege, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio after Saturday’s primaries appears destined for the same fate.
On the Democrat side, the two candidates are a 74-year-old self-proclaimed socialist with no executive experience and a 68-year-old former secretary of state with a possible federal indictment hanging over her head.
As a result, the rumors about late entries into the presidential race, never far below the surface in this crazy primary season, have risen once more. Will Vice President Joe Biden step in and save the Democrats? Will former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney do the same for the Republican establishment?
Will Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg launch a third-party bid and mess things up for everyone?
The answer to all those questions, if history is any guide, is a resounding no.
I have no crystal ball, and my Magic 8 Ball keeps telling me to ask again later, so I can’t predict whether any of these three — or others who have been floated recently, like House Speaker Paul Ryan — will make a late entry into the presidential race. But if we look at the only two times in modern history that something like this has happened, we see that they don’t have much chance of stirring things up if they do.
In 1964, Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater defeated New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in primary after primary by focusing on the “Sun Belt” states in the South and West of the country. Party elites and pundits, however, theorized that he won the nomination not because of his conservatism, but because Rockefeller had been divorced and re-married, which was a much bigger deal in 1964 than it is today.
Thus, the Republican establishment started clamoring for a “new candidate” — someone less conservative than Goldwater but more acceptable to the electorate than Rockefeller.
Enter Pennsylvania Gov. Bill Scranton.
In a last-minute appeal to liberal and moderate Republicans, Scranton entered the race on June 12. Three days later, Rockefeller officially withdrew and endorsed Scranton.
But Scranton was never able to gain much traction. He even bought a 30-minute slot on CBS in early July (pre-empting a program featuring, ironically, Ronald Reagan). It was to no avail.
During the Republican National Convention a week later — during which, incidentally, Sen. Margaret Smith of Maine became the first woman ever to be nominated for president by a major party — Goldwater won handily, just as he would have had Scranton never entered the race.
Four years later, the Republicans went on to prove that they hadn’t learned their lesson when former Vice President Richard Nixon, who had lost his bid for the presidency in 1960 to Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy, crushed all challengers in virtually every primary.
Worse for Nixon, in 1962 he ran for governor of California and lost to incumbent Democrat Pat Brown. After that election, Nixon gave his so-called “last press conference” and was assumed to have retired from politics.
Republicans, therefore, were concerned about Nixon’s ability to win in the general election in 1968, and threw their weight behind Gov. Ronald Reagan of California, who entered the race during the primary season, only a few months prior to the convention.
Reagan went on to lose every state primary against Nixon except California, where he was the only candidate on the ballot, and Nixon handily defeated all challengers during the convention to win the GOP nomination. He went on, of course, to win the presidency, proving wrong those with doubts about his ability to win the general election in the first place.
So, those with hope that Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton can be stopped by the entry now, or even later in the year, by another primary candidate are probably deluding themselves. It hasn’t worked in the past, and it probably won’t work today.
Of course, both of these elections were before the twin advents of social media and the 24-hour news cycle, so I suppose anything is possible. Certainly, the media would be all over the entry of a Romney or a Biden into the race, both of whom they would prefer to Trump or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Yet the most likely conclusion is that, if stopping Trump or Clinton is the goal, the establishment is going to have to work with the candidates they already have. For the Democrats, that’s Sen. Bernie Sanders. Good luck with that.
On the Republican side, there are three choices — Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Rubio, and Cruz. Kasich and Rubio would most likely be the establishment pics, but both are likely to lose to Trump in their own home state primaries, effectively ending their campaigns.
In practical terms, therefore, Ted Cruz is the only viable alternative to Donald Trump, and if anything, the establishment hates the Texas senator even more than the billionaire businessman from New York.
It’s a bad year to be a Republican elite.
http://conservativetribune.com/upper-cut-50-establishment/
No comments:
Post a Comment