Caucus Update: "The Space Pen" edition
Dec. 8th, 2011 05:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedsitter23I was in Steve King territory when I read a local newspaper article that was the germination of this post took place.
One of the biggest endorsements of this election was the New Hampshire Union-Leader's support of Newt Gingrich.
Endorsements can be headlines, but it is hard to think of more than a handful of endorsements that have gotten more media coverage than the of the Union Leader (To mind comes, Chris Christie's endorsement of Romney- clearly #1, but also endorsements by John Thune, Tim Pawlenty, and former Iowa Gov. Robert Ray (all Romney) Sam Brownback, and Bobby Jindal (both Perry) are the biggest)
The Union Leader endorsement has been made a big deal, but it's not a editorial group, but one person who made the choice.
More importantly, the Union Leader has a terrible track record when it comes to picking the eventual President. In fact, in contested primaries, the Union Leader has been right twice in 60 years (Nixon in 68 and Reagan in 80).
Even more interesting, the list of endorsed candidates is amazingly random. It's not just Reagan in 76 and Robert Taft in 52, but a record that includes Pete Du Pont, Pat Buchanan twice, and Steve Forbes in 2000.
It's the candidates that I have never heard of that are the most interesting. The Conservative contender to Nixon in 1972 John Ashbrook, for one.
The Democrat candidates the Conservative paper has put in a good word for are interesting too. The 1972 campaign of Sam Yorty (who pulled about 80,000 votes nationwide, good enough for 10th) and JFK's 1960 competition, Paul C Fisher ( a man best known for creating a pen that could write in space and underwater.
The opinion piece I read does not appear to be online, but the writer (the local publisher) says he spoke to the Union Leader's publisher, and was told the Gingrich pick was a 'best of a bad bunch' decision - something you will have to take my second hand word for,.
As a side note, for those interested in the obscurer locations of Presidential campaign history, spend some time reading about the Canuck Letter- a piece printed by the Union Leader in 1972 that essentially halted the campaign of Edmund Muskie and eventually led to the McGovern nomination that year.
One of the biggest endorsements of this election was the New Hampshire Union-Leader's support of Newt Gingrich.
Endorsements can be headlines, but it is hard to think of more than a handful of endorsements that have gotten more media coverage than the of the Union Leader (To mind comes, Chris Christie's endorsement of Romney- clearly #1, but also endorsements by John Thune, Tim Pawlenty, and former Iowa Gov. Robert Ray (all Romney) Sam Brownback, and Bobby Jindal (both Perry) are the biggest)
The Union Leader endorsement has been made a big deal, but it's not a editorial group, but one person who made the choice.
More importantly, the Union Leader has a terrible track record when it comes to picking the eventual President. In fact, in contested primaries, the Union Leader has been right twice in 60 years (Nixon in 68 and Reagan in 80).
Even more interesting, the list of endorsed candidates is amazingly random. It's not just Reagan in 76 and Robert Taft in 52, but a record that includes Pete Du Pont, Pat Buchanan twice, and Steve Forbes in 2000.
It's the candidates that I have never heard of that are the most interesting. The Conservative contender to Nixon in 1972 John Ashbrook, for one.
The Democrat candidates the Conservative paper has put in a good word for are interesting too. The 1972 campaign of Sam Yorty (who pulled about 80,000 votes nationwide, good enough for 10th) and JFK's 1960 competition, Paul C Fisher ( a man best known for creating a pen that could write in space and underwater.
The opinion piece I read does not appear to be online, but the writer (the local publisher) says he spoke to the Union Leader's publisher, and was told the Gingrich pick was a 'best of a bad bunch' decision - something you will have to take my second hand word for,.
As a side note, for those interested in the obscurer locations of Presidential campaign history, spend some time reading about the Canuck Letter- a piece printed by the Union Leader in 1972 that essentially halted the campaign of Edmund Muskie and eventually led to the McGovern nomination that year.
