Seventy Years of GOP Insurgents Versus the Establishment, in Order

Cue the coroner. The Republican Party is tearing itself apart, some commentator announces, in the grave tone of a man reading a death certificate. The party has never been so divided. The old guard is horrified. The new faction is rowdy. The long march of the grassroots against the donor class has reached a new low. And you, the reader, are supposed to feel either dread or delight, depending on which team you root for.

Here is a calmer way to look at it. Put the dates in a row. Do it for seventy years. What you find is not a party in its death throes. It is a family that has been having the same argument over the same dinner table since the 1950s, with a new cousin storming out every generation and, more often than the pundits admit, the cousin eventually carrying the day. The fights are real. Some of them cost us elections. Some of them built the modern party. The point of a timeline is to show you which was which.

For each entry below, I will give the date, what the insurgents were after, what they won, and what the establishment warned about that turned out to be correct. Both columns matter. A fair history gives each side credit.

July 1952: Taft against Eisenhower in Chicago

The Republican convention met in Chicago in July 1952. Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, the son of a former president and known as "Mr. Republican," had the loyalty of the Midwestern conservatives who had spent twenty years in opposition to the New Deal. General Dwight Eisenhower, the commander of the Allied forces in Europe, had the backing of the party's eastern wing, including Governor Thomas Dewey of New York, who had been the nominee in 1944 and 1948.

The fight turned on a question of rules. Delegations from several Southern states were contested, and the Eisenhower forces pushed a "fair play" rule that decided which delegates would be seated. They won that vote, and Eisenhower took the nomination on the first ballot. In November he won the presidency, ending twenty years of Democratic control of the White House.

What the insurgents won. Taft's wing kept a large voice in Congress. Taft became Senate Majority Leader in 1953 and died that July. Their arguments about limited government and wariness of entangling alliances stayed in the party's bloodstream. You can read the full story of the man in Mr. Republican Robert Taft lost the nomination three times, yet won the party.

What the establishment warned correctly. That the party had not won a presidential election since 1928, and that Taft, who had already lost the nomination twice, would struggle to build a national majority. Eisenhower's win proved the point.

July 1964: Goldwater against Rockefeller in San Francisco

Fast-forward twelve years. Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona had published The Conscience of a Conservative in 1960, a short book that gave conservatives a platform to stand on. Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York represented the eastern, moderate wing of the party. They fought through the primaries, and Goldwater won the nomination at the Cow Palace in San Francisco in July 1964. Rockefeller was booed during his speech at the convention, and Goldwater's acceptance speech, with its line that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, was heard by critics as an alarm bell.

In the general election, Goldwater lost to Lyndon Johnson in a landslide and carried only six states: his home state of Arizona and five in the Deep South. Part of the reason was his vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which he cast on constitutional objections to two of its titles and which was heard very differently by the voters it affected.

What the insurgents won. The loss was the beginning of something. About a week before the election, a former actor named Ronald Reagan gave a televised speech for Goldwater called "A Time for Choosing," and it launched his political career. He was elected governor of California in 1966 and president in 1980. That is sixteen years from the Goldwater nomination to the Reagan election, which should give heart to anyone who thinks a loss is final. The long version is in The 1964 Goldwater Campaign Lost 44 States and Won the Future.

What the establishment warned correctly. That Goldwater would lose badly, and that his loss would hurt Republican candidates for Congress and state office, which it did. A nominee who cannot reach beyond his base hands the other side a big majority.

August 1976: Reagan challenges a sitting president

Gerald Ford had become president in August 1974 after Richard Nixon resigned, and in 1976 he faced a challenge from Reagan, who had left the California governorship in January 1975. Reagan's complaints centered on foreign policy: he attacked the policy of détente with the Soviet Union and the negotiations over the Panama Canal, and he questioned whether the Ford administration had the nerve to stand up for American interests. Reagan lost the first several primaries, then won North Carolina in March 1976 and kept the race going until the convention in Kansas City that August. Ford won, narrowly, and Reagan gave a gracious speech to the delegates afterward.

What the insurgents won. The party platform took on a tone of its own on foreign policy, and Reagan became the obvious front-runner for 1980. Challenging a sitting president is expensive, but it made him the heir.

What the establishment warned correctly. That a contested primary against an incumbent takes money and time from the fall campaign. Ford lost the general election narrowly to Jimmy Carter in November 1976. Nobody can prove the primary fight cost him the race, but it is the argument for unity, and it is not a foolish one.

February 1992: Buchanan against a sitting Bush

George H. W. Bush won the 1988 election partly on a famous pledge: "Read my lips: no new taxes." In 1990, he agreed to a budget deal that included tax increases, and many conservatives felt betrayed. In the 1992 cycle, the commentator Patrick Buchanan, who had worked in the Nixon and Reagan White Houses, challenged him in the primaries. In the New Hampshire primary on February 18, 1992, Bush won, but Buchanan took more than a third of the vote, a shock to the White House. Buchanan campaigned against the 1990 budget deal, against free-trade agreements and for an "America First" vision of immigration and foreign policy.

Bush won the nomination, and Buchanan's speech at the convention in Houston that August, which described a "culture war," became a topic of debate on its own. In November, Bush lost to Bill Clinton, with Ross Perot's independent candidacy taking nearly one voter in five. Buchanan ran again in 1996 and won the New Hampshire primary that year, though he did not win the nomination.

What the insurgents won. Buchanan put trade, immigration and national sovereignty on the table in a way the party's leadership had not wanted to discuss. Those subjects have never left. To see how the budget deal that sparked the revolt unfolded, read Read My Lips and How the 1990 Budget Deal Led to the 1992 Defeat.

What the establishment warned correctly. That a bruised incumbent is a weak candidate. Bush's pledge-breaking and a slow economy hurt him, but a prolonged fight over his direction hurt him too.

September and November 1994: the Contract with America

This is the insurgency that won both the argument and the election. On September 27, 1994, more than 300 Republican candidates for the House gathered on the steps of the Capitol and signed the Contract with America, a list of ten bills they promised to bring to a vote in the first 100 days if they won a majority. Their organizer was Newt Gingrich, a Georgia congressman who had spent years building a conservative movement inside the House and who was seen by the old guard as a disruptor.

On November 8, 1994, Republicans won the House for the first time in forty years. The contract's items included a balanced-budget amendment, a line-item veto, legal reform, welfare reform and term limits for members of Congress. Not all of it passed. The balanced-budget amendment passed the House and failed in the Senate, and term limits did not clear the chamber. But the party delivered floor votes on all of it, and welfare reform eventually became law in 1996.

What the insurgents won. A House majority, a new agenda, and a record of keeping a promise to hold a vote. The full account of the election is in The 1994 Contract With America and the End of Forty Years of House Rule.

What the establishment warned correctly. That a showdown over a budget could backfire. When the new majority and President Clinton failed to agree on spending bills, parts of the government shut down twice, in November 1995 and again from late December 1995 into January 1996. Clinton won reelection in 1996. The shutdown fight is covered in The 1995 and 1996 Government Shutdowns in Dated Steps and the Lessons Learned, and the lesson is a real one: leverage that is not backed by public opinion can run out.

2009 and 2010: the Tea Party

The next wave began with a television rant. On February 19, 2009, a CNBC commentator named Rick Santelli, reporting from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, criticized a plan to help homeowners with mortgages, and the clip spread. Rallies followed, including tax-day protests on April 15, 2009. Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, which President Barack Obama signed on March 23, 2010, and local groups across the country organized against it and against federal spending and debt.

In the primaries of 2010, insurgent candidates beat or pushed aside establishment favorites in several places. Marco Rubio's challenge in Florida pushed Governor Charlie Crist out of the Republican primary, and Crist left to run as an independent. In Utah, Senator Bob Bennett was denied renomination at the state convention in May, and Mike Lee went on to win the seat. In Alaska, Senator Lisa Murkowski lost her primary to Joe Miller and then won the general election as a write-in candidate. In the November 2010 midterms, Republicans gained 63 seats in the House and took back the majority.

What the insurgents won. The House, a new focus on spending and debt, and, in 2011, spending caps in the Budget Control Act. The details are in The Tea Party Wave of 2010 Explained from Santelli to the Statehouses.

What the establishment warned correctly. That candidate quality matters. In Delaware, Christine O'Donnell won the Republican Senate primary over Congressman Mike Castle, a moderate who had been favored to win the general, and then lost in November. In Nevada, Sharron Angle won the primary and lost to Harry Reid. Those were seats the party had a real chance to pick up, and the Senate majority stayed out of reach. A fair history keeps both lists.

What the seventy years show

Line the six entries up and a few patterns jump out.

1. Insurgents win arguments more often than nominations. Taft's wing lost the nomination in 1952 and still shaped the party. Goldwater lost an election and won a movement. Reagan lost in 1976 and won in 1980. Buchanan lost twice and moved the conversation. Only the Contract and the Tea Party combined the argument with a legislative victory.
2. The establishment is usually right about the candidate and often wrong about the direction. The warnings about electability in 1964, 1976, 1992 and 2010 had force. The assumption that the base would simply fall in line behind a moderate was repeatedly mistaken, and the best years for the party came when it learned something from the insurgents.
3. The best results come from a deal between the two. Reagan in 1980 had the insurgent's message and the discipline to build a coalition that included the establishment, which is the argument of The Three-Legged Stool Still Holds Up the Republican Party.
4. The fights reflect real disagreements, not just ambition. Trade, spending, foreign entanglements and immigration were serious questions in each generation. Treat the people on each side as having reasons.

The most recent chapter, the 2016 nomination and the coalition that followed, belongs to the same line of history, and it is covered in The Trump Coalition in Historical Context, from Country Club to Cracker Barrel. I do not claim it ends the pattern. If the past is any guide, a new insurgency will arrive in the next generation, wearing a new name and carrying an old complaint.

The bottom line

• Primary fights are as old as the party. Seventy years of them did not kill it. The party's strength is that its arguments are out in the open.
• Insurgents tend to win the argument first and the election later. Establishment figures tend to be right about who can win. A smart voter listens to both.
• Study the dates. When a pundit says "this has never happened," pull up 1952, 1964, 1976, 1992 and 2010 and ask him what he meant.
• In your own primaries, ask two questions of every candidate: what is the message, and can this person win in November? Winning the argument and losing the seat is a poor trade.
• Keep your friends. The person you argue with in the primary is the person you will need in the fall.