Are Republicans Doomed to Repeat 1964?
Former Speaker Newt Gingrich outlines how the GOP can avoid a repeat of its divisive demise, which 16 years - if not longer - to recover. And why such slow ballot counting in California?
Political historians almost always look at prior election years and experiences for parallels to explain the present. For the not-as-disappointing-as-I-thought 2022 elections, I’ve looked to parallels with 1978 and 1998. Neither midterms are perfect, but either could portend what 2024 might look like.
Newt Gingrich has a better one - 1964. In that historic year, just two years after the horrific assassination of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson sailed to a massive landslide with over 60 percent of the vote. Goldwater carried a smattering of southern states (Goldwater voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act). Only 140 Republicans were elected to the House. Just 32 in the US Senate.
But ultimately, it wasn’t a total disaster. A Democrat-turned-Republican actor, Ronald Reagan, launched his budding political career with one of the most powerful campaign speeches of all time: “A Time for Choosing.” The GOP returned to win dozens of seats in 1966, a Congress that saw the election of George H. W. Bush.
One interesting tidbit. Then-Senator Barry Goldwater endorsed President Gerald Ford over Reagan in the 1976 GOP presidential primary partly over the latter’s opposition to the Panama Canal Treaty.
Speaker Gingrich outlines more in this post, which addresses whether the Trump wing and anti-Trump wings of the GOP will remain so divided that a repeat of 1964 may happen.
A 2024 election in which the GOP is deeply divided and angry with itself would be an historic disaster similar to 1964.
Republicans must learn the lessons of the 2022 elections and think through a path to victory in 2024.
Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s recruitment of women, minority, and veteran candidates – and prolific fundraising ($485 million) – enabled House Republicans to gain seats for a second straight election despite losses in other parts of the GOP.
Similarly, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel’s focus on opening offices in minority districts paid off. Latino and Asian voters moved significantly more to the GOP.
Nonetheless, 2022 involved a lot of shocking defeats and disappointments. And 2024 promises to be potentially even more dangerous to Republican hopes.
I am worried about the potential for 2024 to become 1964, when Republican Barry Goldwater was annihilated by Lyndon B. Johnson. I lived through 1964, and I saw how badly a bitterly split party can devour itself.
The Republican presidential defeat in 1964 was so divisive it pulled down GOP congressional candidates, governors, and state legislators. It took years to recover (in the U.S. House, we did not fully recover until the 1994 Contract with America campaign).
I remember the disaster vividly, because in 1964 I took a year off college to manage a campaign for Congress in North Georgia. I was deeply involved in the campaign process that year, and it unfolded in a fascinating but horrifying way. It was a lot like watching a car crash that you couldn’t stop.
President Johnson had succeeded President John F. Kennedy after the latter was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963. It is likely Johnson would have been re–elected because the American people did not want a third president in fewer than two years.
However, in a normal election year – if faced with a united Republican Party – Johnson would probably have won a relatively narrow victory. The GOP would not have been particularly shattered. However, when the bitterly divisive Republican nomination process was over Republicans were so split that Goldwater only received 38.5 percent of the vote and carried only six states.
In the Goldwater collapse, Republicans lost 36 seats in the House and were down to only 140 members. In the Senate, Republicans lost two seats and were down to 32 seats. Republicans would not win a majority in the Senate again until 1980.
Goldwater lost so badly because the personal bitterness between the conservative movement and the traditional Republican Party grew intense and uncontrollable. When Gov. Nelson Rockefeller spoke at the GOP National Convention in San Francisco, he was booed. The moderate wing of the GOP openly ridiculed and attacked Goldwater. The tenor of the campaign was captured by Ambassador Bill Middendorf in a book entitled “Glorious Disaster: Barry Goldwater’s Presidential Campaign and the Origins of the Conservative Movement.”
And in case you were wondering why the ballot “counting” in California is going so slowly:
Jennifer Van Laar, for RedState.com:
As regular readers know, I have an illogical love for my home state of California, and despite the loud and persistent calls from many conservatives to abandon it, I steadfastly refuse. Still, I am not under any delusions about the efficacy of our government or the sensibility of our laws – and they tend to get more stupid as the years go by.
Right now, the country’s waiting for California to finish counting ballots from an election held over a week ago, and House races called just last night determined GOP control. Why is it taking so long? What’s with this ballot harvesting thing? Does it mean just going door-to-door and asking for ballots from unsuspecting, low-information voters? And what does it mean to “cure” a ballot?
Believe it or not, California’s election process wasn’t always so lengthy or chaotic. How did we get here? In 2016 a trio of bills were passed that, together, significantly changed how California’s election process works:
required mail ballots to be sent to all voters in a participating county
required elections officials to forward ballots they receive from voters in other counties to the appropriate county
eliminated precinct-based polling places in favor of county-wide “vote centers” and 10 days of early in-person voting
AB 1921, legalized ballot harvesting statewide
Allows any person a voter designates to return their ballot for them
Ballot harvester can hold a ballot for up to 72 hours before delivering it to elections officials
No training or accreditation required; no registry of ballot harvesters or chain of custody
Harvester is supposed to sign their name on the ballot, but ballot will be counted even if the harvester’s signature is missing
AB 1461, Motor Voter Act – automatically registers people to vote when they interact with the DMV unless they opt out
Then, in 2020 vote-by-mail ballots were sent to all registered voters due to the COVID pandemic. Since nothing in government is ever temporary, that practice was made permanent – with a few additional provisions – when AB 37 was passed by the Democrat supermajority and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021.
Critics of California’s extremely permissive election laws say the system is designed for rampant fraud and that, in fact, that is happening. Apologists for the system say it’s secure because there is signature matching and ballot tracking, and because there are criminal penalties for forging signatures, for paying harvesters per ballot collected, and for paying voters to turn over their ballots. We’ll go through those factors.
But first …
California election officials haven’t been able to count all the ballots yet, because under AB 37 they have to accept ballots postmarked by Election Day for seven days after Election Day. So, there’s no way to know exactly how many ballots are outstanding until mail ballots received on Tuesday, November 15 (for this election) are tallied. AB 37 requires counties to:
Mail a ballot to every registered voter for every election
Allow any voter — not simply voters with disabilities or military/overseas voters — to cast a ballot using a remote accessible vote by mail system (print-at-home ballots)
Accept mailed ballots postmarked by Election Day up to seven days after Election Day (instead of the previous three days)
Implement a ballot tracking system accessible by all voters, including those with disabilities
Counties are also permitted to begin counting vote by mail ballots 29 days before Election Day instead of 15 days before, but the counts are not allowed to be viewed or released before 8 PM on Election Day. It should be easy to determine if the counts were accessed prior to that time by reviewing activity logs, but that depends on who’s watching the activity logs.
Thanks to SB 450, in every county there are numerous ballot drop boxes in which ballots can be deposited. Most of the time they’re located near government buildings like libraries or a City Hall. In addition, voters can drop them at any vote center in the county. And then we have the least secure method for returning a vote-by-mail ballot, which is the actual mail. California even allows a “bona fide private mail delivery company” to deliver ballots to the elections official. But, there are so many holes in the “postmarked by Election Day” provision in AB 37 and received within seven days that it’s rendered meaningless.