Let the balloting go on and on and on for the leadership posts
in the GOP on February 2. Five ballots at least, perhaps a dozen:
let the haranguing and back-stair deals climb and climb. Why?
Because a secret ballot and the release of all pledges by the
second ballot ensures that the best man will win out on the basis
of his vision, his temper, his nerve.
Look at the example of the surprisingly spirited 1888 Republican
National Convention at Chicago, long before the so-called state
primary contests -- which are truly national media gabfests voted
upon by a fraction of the party in Iowa, New Hampshire, South
Carolina and other small states -- had made the delegates
irrelevant. The 1888 delegates arrived in need of a candidate to go
up against the strangely protectionist and obstuse incumbent Grover
Cleveland, who had beaten the railroad machine candidate of James
G. Blaine in 1884 after the infamous "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion"
quote late in the contest.
The Party needed a fresh face and a clean sweep of the
railroaders who bought and overbought Congress and the executive
departments. Senator John Sherman of Ohio, iconoclastic brother of
the infamous and endlessly quotable W.T. Sherman, was the clear
leader for the nomination as the delegates arrived in mid June in
torrid, capitalist Chicago. His closest rivals were Postmaster W.Q.
Gresham of Indiana, a Union Army war hero at Shiloh, Vicksburg,
Atlanta, and Chanuncey Depew of New York, the railroad potentate
famous for his quip, "I get my exercise by acting as pallbearer to
my friends who exercise." Needed for majority was 416, but in the
first and second and third ballots the most Sherman could win were
244. Meantime, Gresham peaked at 123 and Depew at 99. The first
day's voting ended with loud meetings over beef and beer along
Michigan Avenue. Sometime overnight, in smoke-filled dens where
elder gentlemen contemplate eternity and cash, the magnificently
secure Depew withdrew.
Little noticed on the first day, but much ballyhooed on the
second, were the booms for the cavalry hero Senator Russell A.
Alger of Michigan and the unassuming Hoosier former Senator
Benjamin Harrison of Indiana. On the fourth and fifth ballots on
Saturday June 23, Alger and Harrison climbed in the count to 142
and 213 respectively, while Sherman was stuck at 224 and Gresham
was sinking. The trend was in place. On the third day the delegates
broke for the grandson of a president and son of a congressman.
Harrison went over the top with 544 and defeated Cleveland in
November.
Just this tempestuous a scenario would deliver a revolutionary
awakening for the GOP leadership. Let the earmarked bulls battle
between machine candidate Blunt and non-threatening non-machine
candidate Boehner on the first ballot. Let one of them drop out.
The released delegates will break for Shadegg -- or perhaps the
possibility of a new name nominated from the floor, such as the
kingmaker behind Shadegg, Mike Pence of Indiana, a quiet Hoosier
like Harrison, once upon a time.
topics:
NATO
