1) Alf Landon - 1936
It was the middle of the Great Depression and things were really shitty, unemployment was 17% but things had gotten better the last couple of years. Landon campaigned on a platform that Democrats had spent too much money, made the Depression worst, and was moving the country towards dictatorship. If that sounds familiar it's exactly Romney's campaign stance. A poll of rich Americans showed Landon winning in a landslide. Unfortunately for Republicans, poor people got to vote too.
2) Bob Dole - 1996
Got the nomination because he was Next In Line even though he was an unlikeable person. Had to fight for it against a radical Catholic extremist (Pat Buchanan) so by the time he got nominated he was considered too liberal for Republicans and too conservative for everybody else. The 2012 contest is looking like a clone of this election except Dole was so old he looked like a reanimated corpse while Romney looks like a poorly maintained robot.
2.5) Mitt Romney - 2012
Probable location.
3) Wendell Wilkie - 1940
Republicans hated the FLOTUS too |
4) Barry Goldwater - 1964
Goldwater was so radical there is really no one in modern politics to compare him to. He wanted to privatize Social Security, nuke Moscow (just because it's there) and Vietnam, and opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. He embraced the insanity, actually saying out loud, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."
I'm sorry, I was wrong. By today's standards Barry Goldwater would be a mainstream Republican.
5) Thomas Dewey - 1948
Dewey was supposed to be a sure winner. Incumbent Harry Truman was immensely unpopular while a third party campaign by Strom Thurmond (running for the segregationist States Rights Party) would steal votes from Truman without touching Republican states while another Democrat in the race (Henry Wallace) would take liberal votes. Everyone told Dewey all he had to do was say nothing but pablum and empty platitudes, which he did.
Dewey ran the most content free campaign in history. His statement that "our rivers are full of fish" is reminiscent of Mitt Romney "the trees are the right height" platform. Truman won easily.
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