The outrage isn't so much about political dirty tricks, but establishment GOP machine working against the will of the people. McDaniel was the clear winner of Republicans who voted in the primary.
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Originally Posted by Old-T
You are absolutely right. Some of the folks on here need to go read some of the politicking of Andrew Jackson and others from the Golden Era of dirty politics.
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You don't have to go that far back, especially in Mississippi which has a long history of establishment GOP working against the will of the people.
In 1976, Ronald Reagan was making a revolutionary challenge to Gerald Ford, America’s only unelected president. Ford had come to the presidency courtesy of the 25th Amendment because of the resignations of Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon. He truly was an “accidental president.”
As he’d never been nominated, Ford had no more claim on the leadership of the GOP than did Bozo the Clown. (Which is what the national press often called Ford because of his star-crossed presidency and frequent personal pratfalls and jumbled syntax.)
The state party Chairman was Clarke Reed, the “Mr. Republican” of the South. Reed proclaimed himself to be a conservative but supported Nixon over Reagan in 1968, though in 1976 had promised Reagan that he would deliver all 30 of Mississippi’s delegate votes to Reagan at the convention in Kansas City.
Reed stipulated even further that Reagan could count on him if the race was competitive. How competitive?
The 1976 convention in Kansas City was the first time (and the last time) since 1952 that delegates had gathered without first knowing who their nominee would be.
But Reed was also attracted to the baubles of power and access and Ford, even an unintended president, still had 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Air Force One and invitations to state dinners to tempt weak-willed and easily susceptible party delegates and so called leaders. The trouble for Reagan was that Reed was a sunshine conservative, never there for the really tough fights, and Reagan only had his ideas and principles to offer.
In August in Kansas City, at a time when Reagan needed those 30 Mississippi delegates for a procedural vote that all knew was a test balloting for the nomination, Reed bailed on Reagan at the 11th hour, betraying him, giving his 30 votes to Ford. And as a direct result, it was Ford and not Reagan who won the nomination.
Reed was not a bad man, just a very weak one. To his misfortune, Clarke’s legacy in American politics will not be his hard work in building the GOP in the South, but his betrayal of Reagan for what was the modern equivalent of 30 pieces of silver.
As a point of historical fact, it is necessary given the current controversy to point out that Reed’s young aide in 1976 was Haley Barbour; though he was by accounts a nominal Reagan supporter, he chose John Connolly over Reagan in 1980.
