tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3543355.post115716835826369222..comments2023-11-15T17:55:18.051-05:00Comments on MarkDaniels.Blogspot.com: Another Unanswerable What If?: Would JFK Have Won in 1964Mark Danielshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205344762960756655noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3543355.post-73697852843006592302013-05-09T07:38:10.968-04:002013-05-09T07:38:10.968-04:00Uh, I think you're slightly confused about who...Uh, I think you're slightly confused about who exploded the deficit. Hint: it was Reagan.S.B.https://www.blogger.com/profile/16197814856521355438noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3543355.post-1157206247609540782006-09-02T10:10:00.000-04:002006-09-02T10:10:00.000-04:00Charlie:I agree with much of what you say here exc...Charlie:<BR/>I agree with much of what you say here except to say if by "Republican machine" you mean the party organization. The GOP organization people--folks like Thruston Morton, Ray Bliss, and so forth--saw Goldwater as pure election day poison. But the party organization wasn't particularly strong. And so Goldwater's insurgency proved to be a steamroller. <BR/><BR/>No candidate that the establishment tried to get behind could stop him from taking the GOP nomination. <BR/><BR/>Nelson Rockefeller was wounded from his unseemly marital break-up and quick re-marriage. (Remember that until Reagan, we had never had a divorced President.) <BR/><BR/>Henry Cabot Lodge (the son of the famed friend of Theodore Roosevelt and ardent opponent of the League of Nations) won the New Hampshire primary. He was a sentimental favorite there, both because he was from neighboring Massachusetts and because he had many friends in the state from his organization of the movement to draft Eisenhower for president in '52. But his campaign never gained traction. <BR/><BR/>And Bill Scranton, the Pennsylvania governor, maybe the most viable of GOP establishment figures to vie for the nomination that year, entered the race only after it became clear that Rockefeller couldn't win. By then, it was too late to stand up to the momentum Goldwater had developed.<BR/><BR/>Goldwater out-organized everybody else and the moderates he excoriated in his nominating acceptance speech never got their acts together. <BR/><BR/>But his immoderate rhetoric and campaign put off the party regulars and the rest of the country. That likely would have happened whoever his 1964 Democratic opponent might have been.<BR/><BR/>Thanks for your reading the blog, Charlie, and for your kind comments.<BR/><BR/>MarkMark Danielshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18205344762960756655noreply@blogger.com