One of the generalizations we’ve heard during the campaign for the GOP presidential nomination is the Republicans’ penchant for choosing the “heir apparent” ? the candidate who’s paid his dues in previous elections.
Gloria Borger faithfully executes her duties as a parrot of the national media’s conventional wisdom in the latest U.S. News:
All GOP candidates are struggling because their voters are
(uncharacteristically) still figuring out what they want. Now that the
Republican Party has finally broken free from its proclivity to simply
nominate the next fellow in line for the job, what comes next remains a
mystery….
Those who sing this tune forget that George W. Bush would not have been considered “the next fellow in line” in 1999. Bush won the nomination in 2000 after a tough early battle with McCain.
Ronald Reagan could have been considered the “next fellow in line” in 1980, but he won the GOP nomination that year only after overcoming embarrassing losses in early primaries. (Remember Bush 41 and his “Big Mo” after his early 1980 victories?)
Reagan earned the status of “next fellow in line” in 1980 only because he nearly bumped a sitting president from the Republican ticket in 1976. That campaign surely deviated from Borger’s notion of Republican nomination history.
