Steve Kornacki: Last Time the GOP Lost Control of the Nomination, They Got Goldwater
Everything about Newt Gingrich screams “general election disaster.” He is burdened with far too much personal and ethical baggage, is far too prone to needlessly inflammatory and polarizing antics, and turns off far too many voters with his arrogance and unconcealed contempt for his opponents....
...Candidates widely seen as unelectable by their party’s elites have emerged during past primary seasons as threats to win the nomination, and the elites have generally managed to stop them. The question is whether they’re still capable of doing it in 2012 — or if the tricks they’ve mastered in the past few decades simply don’t work anymore.
After all, there was a period when both parties’ elites lost control over their presidential nominating processes.
This was how the GOP ended up nominating Barry Goldwater in 1964. At the time, the party was still dominated by a moderate Northeast sensibility, but movement conservatives were steadily growing in force at the grassroots level. While the establishment wing dawdled and failed to produce a consensus primary season candidate, conservatives rallied around Goldwater and wired low-visibility caucuses and state conventions for him, gobbling up delegates with virtually no one noticing. Combined with several statement-making primary victories over Nelson Rockefeller (the establishment wing’s scandal-plagued stand-in) made Goldwater unstoppable at the convention. GOP elites were left to watch in horror as Goldwater, whose far-right views and vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act made him unacceptable in vast swaths of the country, lost by nearly 23 points to Lyndon Johnson....