Whoops, you’re right. I’m feeling a bit ill today, so that accounts for my copy and paste errors. Horace Greeley was probably the single oddest nominee of the bunch. He had been a Conscience Whig Congressman 25 years earlier having served for just three months, tried on a few other occasions for office. He tried to run as a Republican for Congress just two years earlier in 1870. His behavior had been quite erratic in that period (personally, I think he may have been ill) jumping from one extreme to another. His candidacy was an epic disaster and he only won 6 states (3 by unimpressive narrow margins, TN & KY and MD). The Democrats essentially annointed what were simply anti-Grant Republicans in rubber-stamping the Liberal Republican Party rump. As it was, Greeley and his wife didn’t survive the stress of the campaign (she herself was something else, a possibly even more deranged version of Jane Pierce, helped in no small part by her husband, all very sad). Horace himself went over the edge and died just a few weeks after he lost the election. The Dem/Lib R’s probably would’ve done better nominating someone like Charles Francis Adams (who placed 2nd) and kept B. Gratz Brown of MO as the VP nominee.
As for our current cast of characters, I’m just waiting to see how it all pans out. I haven’t jumped on the Trump bandwagon, nor am I criticizing him as of yet. If he wants to take on the mantle of doing the lifting our party refuses to do in aggressively demanding the Emperor show his documents (and not just the birth records, either — I want to see everything he’s kept hidden, which is considerable — keep in mind Kerry never let us see his military records, which was also very telling), let him do it. Trump may be a modern-day counterpart to Wendell Willkie.
As for Bachmann, I don’t take her candidacy seriously. She needs more seasoning from an executive experience standpoint. Too many rookie errors. She’s a fine lady, though, but she’s not ready, and the House is no place to run for President from (ditto for Pence, Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter). The only person I could support in the House right now for President is Col. West, and that only because he has the military leadership and that “it” factor that you see in very rare instances in people, and especially all too rare in our elected officials. He’d quite probably be the most intelligent individual to hold the office of President of anyone in the past century, if not longer.
“Trump may be a modern-day counterpart to Wendell Willkie.”
That’s apt. In Wilkie’s case with the war and GOP still healing from the bitch slap of the 1930’s I think his nomination was acceptable. And he gets points for going to hostile areas and campaigning.
Trump though.....another American Idol like Obama.