Regular readers of this forum might remember a brief note recently about the media’s interest in a false storyline involving Republican presidential nominations.
This week’s TIME magazine cover story picks up the theme, as Michael Duffy leads off his piece with this gem:
Republicans normally pour the same amount of uncertainty into picking a
presidential nominee that Buckingham Palace puts into its Changing of
the Guard. That is, as little as possible. Republicans prefer to find a
brand-name, big-state governor, surround him with the same
right-thinking brains on taxes, foreign policy and the New Testament,
back him with all the cash he will need to corner TV time in New
Hampshire and then run the nominee through a quick gauntlet of
primaries before anyone else has a chance at the prize. The whole thing
makes for more of a ritual than a race, but there’s no doubting that
the formula works. In the past seven presidential elections, G.O.P.
nominees have lost only twice.
The last statement is correct. How does Duffy’s characterization of the GOP’s typical candidate stack up with the actual record? Not so well.
In those past seven presidential elections, only the 2000 race involved a Republican candidate who could have been labeled a “brand-name, big-state governor.” Ronald Reagan had been out of the California governor’s mansion for six years by 1980, and it’s a big stretch to suggest that his advisers reflected the “same right-thinking brains” that had advised previous GOP presidential candidates.
Still, for the sake of argument, let’s give Mr. Duffy the benefit of the doubt: Two of the past seven presidential elections exhibited some of the characteristics he suggests in his article. How can that record conceivably be put forward as the “normal” pattern for the GOP?
