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You're listening to Fox News Radio. I'm Ben Dominick. In the coming weeks, we will experience the first caucus and the first primary in the Republican contest for the presidential nomination. They are, of course, in Iowa and New Hampshire, respectively.
People may be operating under the assumption that these are traditions that have long been held within the process of selecting a presidential nominee. In fact, they are very young in terms of that process. It was really only out of the 1968 experience in which you had Eugene McCarthy challenge then President LBJ in a race in which LBJ, having not even filed, was a write-in candidate, resulting in his narrow win in New Hampshire.
that resulted in the formalization of New Hampshire as the first primary in the country.
And in the Iowa caucus sense, you had the 1972 and 1976 elections, respectively, for the Democrats and Republicans when those traditions took hold. In other words, they really aren't that old in terms of the traditional sense of politics. Yet people have the sense that they come from a before time, a long ago path, in part, I think, because of the old fashioned traditions involved in the fact that I think the states themselves like to play up that aspect of their importance.
This is, though, something that could be changing. The Democratic Party has decided in the wake of the last election that they're not interested in having any kind of competitive Iowa or New Hampshire presence. Instead, they are essentially starting their contest in South Carolina in all but the formal sense. It's also something that I think could be followed quickly on by the Republicans.
The parties tend to emulate each other when it comes to scheduling primaries and caucuses for a number of different reasons, but also because it tends to attract the most media attention. But one of the things that I think we have to keep in mind as well is that these are two states that are particularly not representative anymore of the American electorate, nor of the Republican electorate in the wake of the rise of Donald Trump.
who has made the Republican electorate more working class, obviously more Hispanic, more varied in a lot of different ways that don't necessarily find themselves reflected in the populations of Iowa or New Hampshire. Now, maybe nothing changes.
Maybe, you know, if even if New Hampshire decides that they'll support someone like Governor Nikki Haley for the nomination, you know, former President Trump, never known for being someone who is vindictive or petty, might allow them to continue to have their role in forming the choice over the next Republican nominee.
I think that that's something that is an interesting perspective, perhaps at odds with everything that we know about the man and his approach to Republican politics, but it's an interesting one nonetheless. But I wanted to take you back a little bit because from my perspective of these States, you know, as much as you can pay attention to Iowa and it's,
role in perhaps selecting interesting candidates who tended to be more socially conservative and more populist than the nominees in either 2008, 2012, 2016 or the like. You know, I think that you find something even more interesting when it comes to the weird role that the state of New Hampshire plays
an incredibly small state, uh, that really, you know, doesn't necessarily reflect anything about American politics in terms of demographics has had in selecting politicians who, uh, are able to run for the presidential nomination successfully. And also, uh, you know, have really dictated a lot of different events historically, uh, that, uh, uh,
really give it an outsized role in our politics. And so I wanted to run through just a couple of examples of that from, you know, perhaps, you know, a little bit at the edges of the memory of some of our listeners. First, let's go back to the election of 1980. Obviously, this is one that people remember for, you know, Ronald Reagan's triumph over Jimmy Carter. But well before that, he didn't necessarily have the automatic track to even being the nominee of his own party.
Reagan had run what was considered to be a pretty lackadaisical campaign. He wasn't paying attention to what was going on in Iowa to the same degree as other candidates. He thought he would win pretty much automatically. But then, in a crowded field with seven candidates, you had George H.W. Bush emerge to win with a small plurality of votes.
in a way that gave the whole conversation a shifted feel. George H.W. Bush started talking about having the big mo, the momentum that would carry him through to the nomination.
And in a race where you had a lot of big Republican figures, including the former vice presidential nominee, Bob Dole, as well as major wealthy funded figures such as Pete DuPont, you had the possibility that this was going to be a race that could go on for much longer than a lot of people had expected. You know, assuming that Ronald Reagan would, after his performance in 1976, be the automatic choice of the Republican Party.
H.W. Bush really wanted to send a message in New Hampshire, a message that he was going to be the guy to be the future of the party. He had to deal with a lot of different rumors, including even ones raised by then 60 Minutes correspondent Dan Rather, that he was a stalking horse for a potential return by Gerald Ford. But he basically sent the message that he thought that Ronald Reagan was someone who was a lightweight, someone who was not cut out for prime time, someone who had grown
run away with the assessment of early polling based on his name ID and the like, but wasn't a serious politician. Here's what he had to say in 1980. On that Reagan thing, I can't prove it to you. He's strong in the polls. I will say nothing to tear him down, but there's some erosion. It's almost, I think it could be the Teddy Kennedy syndrome. Way out three to one before you join battle, and then whip, down you go. Now, for some events that he has no control over, but also because he's
The myth is gone. You're in there with your sleeves rolled up. And I think it's going to erode that Reagan strength. So one of the things that came out of this, of course, was an initiative, you know, approach from the George H.W. Bush side of things that basically said, look, if we're going to continue this big move, we're going to keep this momentum going. We need to try to put Reagan down in New Hampshire because, you know, a back to back win like that, you know, could be a major boon to the campaign.
And you had, of course, these dueling different figures within Republican politics, the different consultants on either side trying to figure out a way to either eventuate this dynamic on the part of the Bush people.
or to disrupt it on the part of the Reagan people. So you ended up with a situation where Reagan and his folks decided that the way to approach things was to push for a debate. Now, Reagan at the time was considered someone who was not a very good debater, someone who could
you know, not necessarily perform up to the status of a lot of other people who could contend, you know, particularly people who, you know, had more experience debating like George H.W. Bush, but also others who were, you know, in the race as alternatives to Reagan, such as Howard Baker, Phil Crane, John Anderson, and the former Texas governor, John Connolly. And so because of that, you ended up in a situation where
The they wanted to sort of play into the Bush campaign's idea of the way the race would play, especially considering that Reagan's age at the time he was 69 years old and Bush's he was 51 was something that the Bush campaign hoped would highlight their own Canada as being more youthful and vigorous than the guy that they viewed as basically an elevated Hollywood actor.
So they decide to challenge the other side to a debate. You have this outreach that goes into the idea and the Bush campaign decides that this would be something that would be
you know, be, you know, in their interest, a challenge that would really play to their benefit. And in part, because they viewed Reagan as being someone who, you know, really just played to the crowd. He was famous, for instance, when he was going around
In New Hampshire and in Iowa and in a lot of these early races of sort of giving a short stump speech and then kind of responding to different questions and answers from the crowd and then repeating his answers at the next event based on the reaction that he had gotten before, you know, kind of playing the hits along the way. That might remind you of a certain current candidate for public office. So you ended up in a situation where this this debate was going to take place.
And it was supposed to be a debate between the two of them, between Reagan and Bush. But once they announced this debate, the other Republican candidates start to complain about it, particularly Bob Dole, who protested to the FEC yesterday.
That this would be essentially an illegal campaign contribution by the Nashua Telegraph to the to the different candidates by closing out others who were still in the race. And the FEC went along with that. The approach, of course, from.
The from the Reagan side of things was to suggest that instead the Bush and Reagan campaigns split the cost of the debate. In other words, eliminating the idea that this was in any way a campaign donation and the Bush campaign refused.
This was a mistake, a monumental mistake, a $3,500 mistake that turned out to matter a lot more because when Ronald Reagan and when the other candidates showed up at the Nashua Telegraph debate, which was to be sponsored by them, and the editorial staff basically revolted to this, said that this was not what had been agreed upon beforehand, this is what happened.
Is this on? Yes.
That moment from Reagan was something that still echoed in George H.W. Bush's mind.
just eight years later when, as vice president for Ronald Reagan, he was running for the nomination and was locked in a very competitive race, this time, once again, with his old foe, Bob Dole. And Mr. Dole? Well, I hadn't known we'd gotten around to issues yet. I was hoping that would come up before the campaign ended. Whether they're single issues, all I hear is talk about momentum. I don't know that momentum's an issue, but I hear talk about Little Mo and Big Mo.
and I don't know who's who. But whatever the issues are, I think it's time we address them. Certainly abortion, certainly gun control, certainly energy and inflation. That's a responsibility we have and it's not too late for the people in this state to find out what we know about the issues. It would be refreshing if somebody asked me about an issue instead of a poll. It also, in my case, would be very helpful.
You're not supposed to laugh, but we can't forbid it. Let's consider the context of the moment. So the vice president of the United States, someone who had really played all of his cards right in trying to present himself as being the heir to Ronald Reagan, the incredibly popular Republican president,
has run into a real gauntlet. In Iowa, Bob Dole, the longtime senator, has beaten him, and not by a little bit.
And not only that, he's also been beaten by televangelist Pat Robertson. Yes, that Pat Robertson. So the vice president comes in third and it sets up a situation where New Hampshire is now kind of a make or break for him. Do or die. If if he really goes down in back to back situations in these two states right off the bat.
What is he going to be looking at in terms of the schedule? And keep in mind, the schedule is a little different that way, you know, at the moment. And in terms of the way the map plays out, you know, he would have had to go through some more difficult situations before getting to friendlier states.
This creates a situation for him where he has to lean on his alliance with then-Governor Sununu. Yes, we have a Governor Sununu there as well today that tells you a little bit about the insularity of New Hampshire politics. And I want to quote at this point a little bit from Richard Ben Kramer's book on the 1988 election, What It Takes, The Way to the White House, which if you haven't read it, you really ought to, particularly because of the lessons in it about the
One Joe Biden, who obviously had his own exit ignominiously in that race. This is from chapter 108.
Tuesday morning after the Iowa caucus, Bush was already in New Hampshire, no use lingering at the sight of a massacre. Bush left Iowa before the vote began. He and the white men were walled away in the newest, most futilely fancy motel in New Hampshire, the Clarion, near Nashua, a box of white cement rising eight stories tall in the middle of a deserted, snow-covered bog a half mile distant from the nearest road, miles away from anything else.
It was the hotel embodiment of the oversized and isolated Bush campaign. More perfect as symbol still because inside amid the pink marble and old Englishy prints, there was red alert. Bush was up before first light to tell the truth. He hadn't slept much. He was out at a factory gate, shaking hands in the numbing cold, cold to make the plane pain creep from the feet up from the hands in from the back of the neck who cared.
Bush was newly, nervously aware. He could lose. That was pain. He could lose New Hampshire, then Minnesota, then South Dakota. He could lose every state until South Carolina, or Super Tuesday, and that would be the end. The South would crumble, and he would lose everything. The white men were a bustle in the hotel hallway. They looked bad, ill-rested, unshaven, no ties. There was, on the hall of power, a bad smell of stress and failure."
I knew it, Atwater was claiming. I can feel the wind. I told him it was 100%. He was going to lose. And I said it was 50-50. He was going to run third. What did it matter what Lee knew? They didn't just run third. Dole beat them 2-1. Bush did not win a single county in Iowa.
Dieter looked like an actuary whose years of patient calculation had just revealed the median death age was his age. Overnight polls in New Hampshire showed Dole cutting Bush's lead to eight or nine points before the news from Iowa. God only knew what the swing would be after that humiliation. The problem was voters couldn't see any political difference between Bush and Dole, and Dole was trouncing them with his man-of-the-people work boots.
Half the Bush vote came from people who just thought Bush was going to win. Well, Iowa would take care of that. Dole looked plenty big league now. Somehow they had to show these voters that Bush and Dole were not the same. They'd make different leaders. We got to show they're different guys. But that meant showing who George Bush was, and they hadn't been able to pull that off for two years. How could they start now? More of the Ben Domenech podcast right after this.
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George Bush came back to the hotel and called a meeting. He didn't want to hear more talk about losing. He didn't want to hear about Iowa, what happened, or who did it. That was over. It was gone. There's no sense looking back. It's nobody's fault. We either go on and win in New Hampshire, or I go back to Kennebunk and go fishing. But Governor Sununu was with Bush. He said they didn't need a plan, not a new one. They were going to win. That's how Sununu was. First thing he wanted to show you, he was in control. Second thing, he was smarter than you.
Of course, it was Sununu's organization they were doubting, what Sununu called the best organization in the history of New Hampshire. And it was Sununu's plan. For the last year in New Hampshire, George Bush had gone where Sununu took him, what Sununu called his see-me, touch-me, feel-me campaign.
The governor was proudest of last New Year's Eve in Concord, where people come out with their children in tow to stroll Main Street before they go get loaded at their parties. Sununu's boys took over a clothing store and set George and Barbara Bush in there with borrowed furniture and an instant living room. They had 3,000 people lined up in the cold, waiting for hot chocolate and a handshake with a veep. Sununu was sure that would not be forgot.
Okay. The street. When? Now. Today. Every day. The Bible called for Bush to leave for Washington. Lunch with Reagan. Then a day in New Orleans at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. Scrap it. Scrap the Bible. They had to have their lunch with Reagan. Maybe get TV in there. Reagan's approval stood at 80% with New Hampshire Republicans. This wasn't Iowa. They loved the Gipper. So, okay, lunch. Get him down there. Picture with Reagan. Then back to see me. Touch me. And ask George Bush. Yes. Ask Bush.
This was the problem. No more motorcade BS.
Just stop. The service isn't going to like it. Well, have the service. So that was the new plan. After seven years of careful building, after $20 million spent, after all the briefings, coaching, debate books, the cautious positioning, luxuriant staffing, the hundreds of speeches, the thousands of events, hundreds of thousands of miles after seven years of detail, he came down to one state where Bush would hit the streets and do everything at once. So he did. He went out and hit the high school in Hopkinton. In
an insurance office in Keene, and in the middle, he stopped at a mall, then a grocery store, where he saw people across the street behind a rope, and he ran to shake their hands. Kramer goes on, George Bush was having a snowball fight with the press in a parking lot outside the Clarion. He spotted a guy trying to unstick his car. He ran over and offered to help. Bush ran the other way to shake another voter's hand and pat his dog. Everywhere Bush ran, the service ran, and Sununu popped behind him.
The press tried to run along, but the service kept them away, and there really wasn't anything to ask. Bush had the air of a kid trapped inside on a rainy day. In the final few hours of this heated race, the vice president says he is confident, despite the fact that he and Senator Dole are apparently running neck and neck down the stretch. Just a few weeks ago, you were really way ahead, and now it seems that the gap is narrowed. Things are tighter. What happened?
1980 revisited. Remember when I came blowing into here and the polls shot down for Ronald Reagan? Turned it right around here and beat me. That's what's going to happen tomorrow. I'm going to win New Hampshire when I lost Iowa. And late this afternoon, Bush in a last-minute tactic had former Senator Barry Goldwater come to New Hampshire and Channel 9 and cut an endorsement ad. In the ad, Bush said Dole will raise taxes and call for an oil import fee. Is that a
something you would have done if you were way ahead or was it out of desperation? Absolutely. Goldwater is one of the most respected names in New Hampshire. We'd wanted to have him all along. Senator Dole planned no campaign activities this evening. Instead, he retired to his hotel room here in Merrimack to try and get an early night's sleep. But we caught up with the senator and asked him about tomorrow. Tomorrow is a very important day for all of us, a very important day for the people in New Hampshire and around the country.
and we're just going to have a little quiet time and reflect on what we've done and hope it's the right thing. Dole seemed unhappy with last-minute tactics by Bush. Well, it's totally inaccurate, and I think the Vice President of the United States shouldn't do things like that. So the battle has been fought, and now these two Republican frontrunners await the votes, both claiming they will win. In Merrimack, Jack Heath, News 9. Just a few days later, George Bush won New Hampshire by nine points.
Dole spent the night trying to be gracious. He hit his marks. He made his statement. He thanked his volunteers and supporters. He vowed to go on. He smiled ruefully and told the cameras he'd made up a lot of ground in a week. He never expected things to be easy. At the end of the night, the very end, he was on live remote with NBC. And who was next to Tom Brokaw beaming like the co-host of the big election special but George Bush? But Dole didn't know that. He had no monitor. No one had warned him. He was sandbagged.
And this is what happened.
This was his time and now it was over.
He'd lost it, lost the feeling and the hope. It was always going to be tough in the South if he'd won in New Hampshire. Bush had been making friends in the South for, well, 10 years, probably more. People would say to Dole, well, we like you, Bob, but this is George's time. When was Bob Dole's time? This was his time, and they took it away. He'd lost before. He wasn't going to whine. But this time was different. This time, he couldn't sleep at all. Couldn't stop his head. Things that could have been different, all the things he'd done,
Probably wrong, half the things anyway. But the worst part wasn't things he'd done. It was pictures of Bush. That's what he couldn't stop. Pictures of Bush in his head. Throwing snowballs, driving trucks, forklifts, unwrapping his Big Mac. Dole never wanted to see that in his head. He never wanted to say, even in his head. It would not leave him alone. Five in the morning, had to come down to the lobby, but he couldn't get away from it. For the first time in his career...
First time in 30 years anyway. Bob Dole said to himself, "Maybe I could have done that if I was whole." It wasn't the first time that Bob Dole had lost in New Hampshire.
And it wouldn't be the last, as it turned out. In 1996, when he ran successfully for the Republican nomination, he lost to Pat Buchanan. Then riding on his performance from 1992 that challenged H.W. Bush, unsuccessfully, but with an argument that seemed to prevail within the general election under the auspices of Ross Perot.
And he ended up losing by, you know, a significant amount by the measure of New Hampshire, namely a little more than 2,000 votes. Decent burials. But listen, my friends, we have won a tremendous victory here tonight, but we no longer have the element of surprise. We had it in Alaska and Louisiana, but we no longer got the element of surprise. All the forces of the old order are going to rally against us. The establishment is coming together. You can hear them right now.
The fax machines and the phones are buzzing in Washington, D.C. We've got to get together. Somebody's got to get out and take on this guy. We've got to have one guy take him on, but I'll tell you what. We don't have time. We need the troops. We need the troops, but I'm telling you this. You need the troops? You need the troops, but I'm telling the folks out in the country. They're going to come after this campaign with everything they've got. Do not wait for orders from headquarters. Mount up, everybody, and ride to the sound of the guns. Thank you.
Buchanan's ambitious words aside, this is one of those things that illustrates to me an old fashioned approach to the American democratic Republic, which is probably going to be going away in the coming years and decades.
The idea that we would have a state that is so small, so non-representative of national priorities, that has such a unique political population and one that is so attuned to the way that they meet people, the way that they interact with them, that they view selecting a presidential nominee as some kind of sacred duty is something that I think is very much going the way of the Dodo.
We'll see what comes in the years ahead and whether we see an adjustment on response to the Democratic side from the Republican side. The Democrats, you know, obviously have decided that they would rather have a makeup that, you know, pushes states like Michigan earlier in the process.
But I think for Republicans, they have to really consider whether their current schedule is representative of the kind of candidates, the kind of nominees that they want to have, the kind of electorates that they want those nominees to be able to appeal to. And unfortunately for Iowa and New Hampshire, it may very well be that there is a legacy that is worth about half a century, but may be reconsidered.
Yeah, they're after primary, first in the nation, right? Right. Vote first or die. Let them see a good picture, they don't need to take it. I'm Ben Domenech. You've been listening to Fox News Radio. We'll be back with more next week to dive back into the fray. Listen ad-free with a Fox News podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. And Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon Music app.
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