The Republicans’ 1972

[xchrom]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/01/the-republicans-1972.html

After its disastrous convention in Chicago in the summer of 1968, which combined the worst old-style backroom dealing with bloody riots in the streets, the Democratic Party set up a commission to find a fairer, more equitable way of choosing delegates to the 1972 convention. The Reform Commission, as it was called, was stocked with and staffed by many of the party’s future leaders, and it met on November 18, 1969, to vote on a new set of rules. After intense debate, the Commission voted, thirteen to seven, to impose a quota system on the selection of delegates, so that blacks, women, and young people would be picked “in reasonable relationship to the group’s presence in the population of the states.” The Commission’s chairman was Senator George McGovern, of South Dakota.

McGovern went on to seek the Party’s nomination in 1972 as an insurgent candidate, with passionate grassroots support behind him. He defeated all the establishment choices—Senators Hubert Humphrey, of Minnesota, Edmund Muskie, of Maine, “Scoop” Jackson, of Washington—with the most diverse set of convention delegates in American history. In the general election, President Nixon crushed McGovern by the widest popular-vote margin in American history.

Theodore White, author of the “Making of the President” series, described the Democrats’ adoption of quotas as a decisive moment in the 1972 campaign: “It touched the roots of American culture, and the campaign of 1972 was to become one of those events in American history which can be described as cultural watersheds as well as political happenings. For many liberals, the experience was to be heartbreaking. The beautiful Liberal Idea of the previous half-century had grown old and hardened into a Liberal Theology which terrified millions of its old clients.”

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/01/the-republicans-1972.html#ixzz1l2T7NBPb

[MarianJack]

1. The way back to a sane republican party MUST...

...involve a move to the center.

Without that, the only way they se the inside of the White House again is from the reception line waiting to shake the President's hand at a state dinner.

In some ways, a gingrich or a little ricky nomination may be better for them in the long run that a bain romney nomination. It would give them a chance to purge the teabaggers before 2016.

This is the reason that WE may be better off politically hoping for bain romney to be the nominee. The rethugs have this knack of thinking that whenever one of theirs loses, it's because they weren't far ENOUGH to the right. Dipsticks.

PEACE!

[izquierdista]

2. Is that knack of thinking limited to Republicans?

There seem to be plenty of less-than-Progressive Democrats that would fit into your category of "dipstick".

[MarianJack]

4. I was referring to that catagory of rethugs...

...that are now the teabaggers, were the mcsame/palin(comparison) rally attendees in 2008, the john birchers, etc.,

I see a big difference between those more conservative Democrats and the nut job far rightist rush loving rethugs.

PEACE!

[bemildred]

3. +1.

Interesting speculation, but I am not convinced, most especially because it relies on the mythical idea of the "center". I see a country divided along many different fault lines and getting more divided as time goes on, an issue that Obama seems to care about, but he has little company in that, most political types continue to flog divisiveness.

However, this is history we need to know, esp. how the parties are operated and controlled and what levers we have to use to control them.