![]() ![]() On the Republican side, the echoes of 19 are everywhere as the GOP wrestles for its identity in 2016 and as the e stablishment and grassroots tussle for supremacy. ![]() The elements of passion, authenticity, and ideas wind through all of t hese moments. The capitulation Ronald Reagan saw in Gerald Ford is the same one Republican candidates identified in their GOP leaders in 2016. Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan had a dramatic fight during the 1976 campaign that might have looked like just a battle over delegates in a c hess match for power, but at the heart of that campaign was an ideological battle about what was possible in government and what it meant to be a conservative. If Edward Kennedy and Howard Dean had managed their campaigns better, perhaps their ideas would have prevailed. When the McGovern campaign c rumpled over his choice of Thomas Eagleton as his running mate, it may very well have doomed the liberal experiment for a gene ration, as historian Bruce Miroff suggests. ![]() But campaigns are also a reflection of the country that elevates or destroys those personalities. ![]()
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