Deadlocked Conventions Always Nominate Losers – Dick Morris TV: History Video!

Dick Morris ^ | 3/10/2012 | Dick Morris

[Signalman]

Dear Friend,

In this History video commentary, I discuss how every candidate that survived the nomination fight in the four deadlocked conventions since 1960 ultimately lost the presidential election. Tune in!

[Signalman]

Very interesting video.

[mylife]

Has Dicky the toe sucker been right about anything ever?

[Carriage Hill]

He may be right on this one. If so, it’d almost be a first since his “overall prediction record” is pretty dismal, IIRC.

[toddausauras]

You mean like Bob Dole and John McInsane?

[max americana]

I still vividly remember him on CNN stating right after Odumbo got elected that the Republicans will never win the 2010 elections because “the hispanics will vote in droves and make sure Democrats win every time”.

Boy..

[Mountain Mary]

I am sick of this fat oppotunist rughead telling us what’s going to happen..and if he is a reliable authority.

He’s in the tank for Romney so everything will be skewed in his favor.

[mylife]

Yeah, he may have a point on this one but he’s generally full of **** and the elections a long ways off.

[biggredd1]

dick “the toe” morris is an idiot! I could have beaten McGovern and goldwater. {too bad about goldwater, he was ahead of his time]. Anyone that comes out of the 2012 convention will beat the communist fraud usurper soetoro hussein. What will the toesucker say then...”well its still one out of five”!

[mylife]

What Dicky forgets is that it isnt about anybody but Romney.
Its about anybody but Obama.

[JediJones]

That might be because a deadlocked convention indicates that we had candidates who were not particularly strong, or that at least half the voters were dissatisfied with any one of them. In which case, forcing the primary to end early by cutting deals with other candidates doesn't change the underlying reality that the remaining candidate is still a particularly unpopular one.

One reason Mitt is incredibly weak is because such a large chunk of his popular vote comes from Mormons voting on ethnicity. That is a niche preference that not only cannot broaden and get him additional votes in the general election (because almost all Mormons are Republicans) but will actually be a turnoff to some voters. For example, Mormons are 7% of the Nevada population but were 26% of the votes in the 2008 primary and 95% voted for Mitt.

The SuperPACs alone are changing this election from just recent years. I wouldn't go back to the '70s and expect any of the same rules about elections to apply. We can have a SuperPAC attacking Obama all year before our candidate is known.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_02/lds_power_in_nevada035152.php

A new poll conducted by UNLV for local Las Vegas media explains why. Although they represent only 7% of Nevada’s population, LDS members are expected to make up one-fourth of caucus-goers, with 86% saying they will vote for their co-religionist. That’s almost exactly what happened in 2008, when 26% of caucus-goers were Mormons, and 95% voted for Mitt. With that sort of hard-core base, it’s no surprise Romney leads the current poll

[conservativejoy]

There would be no need for a fight at the convention had the political establishment, along with the MSM not been so intent on promoting Mitt Romney, when a majority of the country was clearly not behind him.

I think we should send a strong signal to the RNC that we will stay home in droves if this continues and they nominate Romney. They think they can force us to accept their candidate, but that is not how a lot of us see it.

I hope Palin and Newt team up and slug it out at convention!

[JediJones]

The first step to punishing the RNC for their attempt at Romneykrieg is to at least force a floor fight at their convention. If they’re intent on having him be the nominee, we’ll be intent on making it as tough as possible for them.

[x]

In this History video commentary, I discuss how every candidate that survived the nomination fight in the four deadlocked conventions since 1960 ultimately lost the presidential election.

He's talking about contested conventions. There were no deadlocked conventions in those years.

No convention has gone past a first ballot since 1952 for the Democrats, 1948 for the Republicans. 1924, 1912, 1860 for the Democrats, 1880, 1920 for the Republicans -- those were deadlocked conventions.

[Dr. Sivana]

I actually saw Dick Morris push this line in person last night at a fund-raiser for the exceptional and talented Chicago 42nd Ward candidate William Kelly.

I don't think he persuaded any of us Santorum supporters.

Here are SOME of Morris' problems:

A. Morris is a numbers guy. He MUST know that four is too small a sample from which to make a generalization. Three of his four examples came from unrepeated historical events:

1. 1964: Assassination of the president before '64, as if Goldwater or Rockefeller on the first ballot would have made a crumb of difference in the outcome.)

2. 1968: Key candidate Bobby Kennedy being assassinated before the convention put everything in chaos. Besides that, it was a very close race with results obscured by George Wallace's third party bid.

3. 1976: The '76 contest came on the heels of Watergate, and Ford's pardon of Nixon did not help. In any event, that election was so close (<1%) that it is silly to blame the fact that Reagan came very close.

B. Regarding the fourth, the reason the Dems lost in ''72 WASN'T because there was a tightly contested race, but because they nominated the wrong guy. If McGovern were coronated in February, he still would have been slaughtered.

C. Even if we grant Mr. Morris' premise, he is making the classical statistician's error of confusing indicators with causes. (This happens with baseball stats all of the time). If the Establishment steamrollered everybody with rule changes and disqualified all of the non-Romney delegates and nominated Romney through voice acclamation, it would do nothing about the underlying problem that more than half of the party feels gypped. The problem is that the Establishment is pushing a candidate who is only palatable o one third of the party.

D. We have plenty of examples of a good clean win before the convention with disastrous results in the General: McCain, Dole, George the Elder ('92). So it is not, you have a clean shot, you win. Far from it.

E. Ford had enough delegates going into the '76 convention. The Reagan people had enough to slow down the convention and make a lot of noise (the first use I know of for those vuvululas). But remember, Reagan preannounced Richard Schweicker as his VP choice to try to move some of the technically uncommitted but Ford backing delegates in NY and PA. The gambit did not payoff, and everyone knew it before the convention. Black Elk also claims that '68 would have been a real fight had Ford, who was running the convention, not gaveled people out of order, before some state slates would change from Nixon to Reagan (Things were a lot more fluid back then).

F. Morris' last example is from 1976. No Internet or Cable News. Numerous rule changes since. The Iowa Caucus was just starting, and was exploited by Jimmy Carter. No Super Tuesday. Reagan had only won ONE primary (NC) before his magnificent slaughter in Texas on April 1. Nonetheless, he had an outright plurality of primary votes. More than Ford. FEC financing and matching was new and pretty much mandatory, (Connolly went without in 1980, and had ONE delegate to show for it). Applying historical examples from 1976 would be akin to saying that no NFL QB who threw more than 40 times in a game had ever won the game. THAT was true at the time. Or, "Dome teams don't win Super Bowls." ... THAT was true at the time.

No. Dick Morris is an intelligent and charismatic speaker who can provide insightful analysis, and too intelligent to not anticipate some of these objections. Here, I can only conclude he is simply cheer-leading and spinning on behalf of his preferred candidate, though more subtly than Ann Coulter, who doesn't know enough not to insult the people she claims to want to persuade.

[conservativejoy]

Anyone know how many Freepers are actually delegates or personally know delegates? There has to be a way to organize the resistance against Romney at the Convention.

[Vigilanteman]

Well said. At this point, I'd take Crazy Uncle Ron Paul over ObaMao. Clinically insane beats hates America with a purple passion anytime.

[NonValueAdded]

Duh! The fact that it is deadlocked means there are nothing but losers from which to pick.