ping
I remember him as closer to Rockefeller than Goldwater. Of course, there was really nobody close to Goldwater, alas, as Nixon proved! So we had to wait for Reagan....
Cue the newspaper article of Georgie Romney warning against the Radical Ronald Reagan!
Yes, a bit. He was kind of one of those “also rans” at the last minute, as I understand it, more from the Ripon Society wing of the part (RINO). But here is the question: If he was born in MEXICO, how did that still make him (George Romney) eligible to hold office as President of the United States, were he successful. What was he, born on the premises of a US Embassy or Consulate there? I still scratch my head over that one.
My father was a Goldwater / Reagan republican also. As a conservative economist, he was big on economic issues. I know he was invited to the first Nixon inauguration. And I vaguely recall him not liking Romney — but I don’t recall the brainwashing issue.
It was on the Lou Gordon show that George used the brainwashed term.
He was against the war before the GOP was and blew it.
No.......I remember Goldwater because IIRC, he wanted to use all our might in Vietnam and that didn’t go over well.
George Romney served in Nixon's cabinet as Secretary of HUD. I met him once when he came to Chicago to dedicate a park near my house.
I was alive during George Romney’s quest for the White House. At first, he supported the Vietnam War but began to question the mission there. In 1965, George went to Vietnam and came back feeling like he had been brainwashed by the military officials there. Thus, he turned against the war in Vietnam.
Don’t forget his mom ran for the Senate too
I was a kid but I remember. He was a candiate in the Republican primary in 1968 while he was governor of Michigan. He went to Vietnam on a fact finding trip. When he got home he told the press that he was “brainwashed” in Vietnam. The press tore him apart and he dropped out of the race. Nixon went on Laugh In and said “sock it to me.” The rest is history.
We need more vanities! FR is running smoothly again!
I was there - and I was supporting Goldwater. George Romney was a neatly groomed person, patrician in manners, and by all standards, a personally very modest man, who still projected the charismatic charm of a highly competent individual. But even by the standards of the time, he was something of a moderate, and like his son Mitt, well able to converse comfortably with Democrats of good will and practical considerations for compromise.
People like to associate the idea that he knocked himself out of the running with the “brainwashing” remark, but probably, LBJ and Kennedy were both much more afraid of George Romney than they were of Barry Goldwater. The Kennedy assassination effectively removed any chance that a Republican would be elected in 1964, and the elder Romney could see the handwriting on the wall.
Geo. referred to the Vietnam War as “reprehensible”; then he got one of those great VIP tours with, hmm, must have been Westmoreland, and said something like, hey, maybe I was a little hasty, it’s really the right thing we’re doing; when called on his flipflop, he said the generals had “brainwashed” him during the visit. One of the generals allegedly stated that, in his case, “a light rinse would do”.
Romney was one of a pretty large field that year, if memory serves; the challenge that opened the floodgates though was then-Democrat Eugene “Clean Gene” McCarthy, who beat LBJ in one of the early primaries, and this led Johnson to make his “will not actively seek, nor will I accept” statement at the end of one his always-scripted press conferences. The text of his press conference statements was always prepared, distributed in advance, and until that day, he never deviated from the prepared text.
With LBJ out, the Demwits were scrambling like mad. After McCarthy beat LBJ, RFK announced, or maybe just stated that he was considering entering the race. Ed Muskie, piles of other Demwits announced, and most dropped out pretty quickly. The Republican field was crowded as well, and Nixon seemed like the way to go to reunite the party base; he was an anti-Communist in the 1950s and early 1960s, had served as VP, was well known, and wasn’t Nelson Rockefeller. He was a Quaker, and campaigned that he had “a secret plan” to end the war.
Humphrey had become LBJ’s running mate in 1964 due to a racial controversy at the convention (I’m too lazy to find the topic, but I posted here some years ago) and Johnson needed to unite the wings of his party. Humphrey wound up getting the nomination, and it was his candidacy and loss more than anything else that started the Demagogic Party down its current anti-American, anti-Constitutional shining path.
I have a vague memory of it, I was just a kid. We had neighbors that were for him until he made the “brainwashed” coment.
I met George Romney years later when Mitt was running against Ted Kennedy. I can only describe hin as a real gentleman.
I voted for Goldwater!!!!
The only thing I remember about the ‘68 Presidential campaign is “Spiro What?”
We lived in Michigan from 1971-1991, after George Romney was governor and after he ran for President.And after he was maybe ronal Reagan’s Head of Hud. and it is George Romney we blame for the beginning housing debacle in Detroit, where houses were practically given away to those who couldn’t afford to keep them up. It was the beginning of the end for Detroit’s big city housing demise. People would be squatting, many homeless in homes designed for single families.
Homes were then boarded up and then used as crack houses and neighbors pleaded with mayors to condemn the houses and move the crack dealers out of the neighborhoods.
Most states didn't have primaries. I guess caucuses and party committees chose the delegates. Even some of the primary states voted for "favorite sons" -- their Governors or Senators -- rather than the main candidates.
On the Democratic side, Bobby Kennedy and Gene McCarthy did have monumental primary fights -- Indiana, Nebraskia, Oregon, California -- but the nominee was Hubert Humphrey, who avoided the primaries.
So the country saw a lot less of George Romney in 1968 than we have of Mitt in 2012 or 2008 -- all the more so, since the "brainwashing" comment that doomed his campaign was made in August 1967, before he even announced his candidacy. Romney was on the ballot in New Hampshire, but Nixon trounced him so he withdrew.
Romney wasn't a professional politician. He was awkward and didn't get how to play the game. He was rough, rather than slick or polished. That gave him a reputation for decency and integrity, but maybe it could just as easily have made him look like an unreliable loose cannon.
We lived in Michigan from 1971-1991, after George Romney was governor and after he ran for President.And after he was maybe ronal Reagan’s Head of Hud. and it is George Romney we blame for the beginning housing debacle in Detroit, where houses were practically given away to those who couldn’t afford to keep them up. It was the beginning of the end for Detroit’s big city housing demise. People would be squatting, many homeless in homes designed for single families.
Homes were then boarded up and then used as crack houses and neighbors pleaded with mayors to condemn the houses and move the crack dealers out of the neighborhoods.