Erickson: "The Goldwater Talking Point"

Erick Erickson, de RedState.com, rescata recortes de prensa de hace 30 años para comparar los argumentos de la prensa liberal de entonces y de ahora sobre las primarias republicanas y la elección general.

Newsweek, enero de 1979:

[I]t remains a measure of the stresses between Carter and the Democratic left that his people anticipate more trouble with his renomination than his re-election. Their winter-book bet for the Republican nomination is Ronald Reagan, and they consider him beatable, so long as Carter monopolizes the center – “just 80 per cent of the people,” says Jordan – and isolates Reagan on the outer right.

Christian Science Monitor, marzo de 1980:

“Reagan is the opponent of choice for Carter,” says I. A. Lewis, director of the Los Angeles Times Poll, a point on which most analysts agree. “But Reagan can reach across and cause mischief in the Democratic constituency,” Mr. Lewis says. “Reagan appeals to blue collar, working-class voters. He can win Democratic votes.”

“Carter could beat Reagan more easily than he could Bush or Baker,” Mr. Lewis says. “A moderate Republican would appeal to moderate Democrats, while upper-income Republicans might defect from Reagan to the Democrats. Ford is of course, the strogest in the polls against Carter. But if he became a candidate, he could sink the same way Kennedy did after he declared.”

Elections analyst Richard Scammon, who thinks a candidate must command the political center to win the presidency, gives neither Reagan nor Ford much chance.

Newsweek, marzo de 1980:

The talk of another Ford candidacy — only three months after he formally removed himself from a string of primaries — betrayed an air of alarm on the part of many middle-road Republicans. Faced with Bush’s unexpected slide in New Hampshire and Howard Baker’s chronically weak campaign, GOP centrists — Ford among them — saw in Reagan’s resurgence the potential for another Goldwater debacle. Ford, by contrast, was an ideologically safe, fondly remembered party loyalist who very nearly beat Jimmy Carter in 1976. Gallup polls last month showed Ford leading Reagan — and trailing Carter by a narrower margin than any other GOP contender in general-election trial heats. “Jerry Ford,” argues one former aide, “is the only politician around who neutralizes Carter’s positives” — solid character and Presidential stature — “and accentuates his negatives” — primarily an inflation rate 10 points higher than when Ford left office. Thus, even though the odds are long, the hour late and the scenario strewn with ifs, Ford remains the panic-button choice of many in his party and the Republican most feared by Carter strategists.

Conferencia de prensa del Congresista republicano moderado John Anderson, recogida por Associated Press en marzo de 1980:

“I cannot believe that the Republican Party will condemn itself to the kind of lopsided electoral contest that took place in 1964,” Anderson told a regional meeting of business people in Stamford.

It was one of his strongest statements against Reagan. He referred to the 1964 presidential election when the Republican candidate — Sen. Barry Goldwater, like Reagan, a conservative — was swamped in a landslide victory by Lyndon B. Johnson. “I am afraid that the nomination of Mr. Reagan will only ensure the re-election of Mr. Carter and further ensure the continuing economic disaster that we have suffered now for three years,” the Illinois congressman said.

“I cannot believe that with the mounting problems America faces,” he said, “the voters in November will have a choice only between the economic policies of Ronald Reagan and those of Jimmy Carter.”

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