ABSTRACT
The quest for the American Presidency within the Republican party in 2012 began with Mitt Romney as only one of a multitude of suitors. Romney’s candidacy, moreover, was met with anything but enthusiasm among Republican activists. Eschewing much of the far right rhetoric that appealed to the more conservative wing of the party, he simply seemed “not conservative enough” and, as a consequence, his candidacy, rather than being embraced, was met by a long series of fiery challengers that yielded names like Santorum, Gingrich, Paul, Perry, Bachman and Cain. Yet each in turn, while winning a statewide primary here or there, fell by the wayside until Romney clinched the nomination. This, of course, is not how it has to be. In 1964 the Republicans nominated the conservative Barry Goldwater to run against Lyndon Johnson and in 1972 the Democrats swung to the far left with the nomination of George McGovern as its Presidential candidate against Richard Nixon. The fact that both Goldwater and McGovern suffered, by American standards, defeats of historic proportions (61% of the vote vs. 38.5% and 60.7% vs. 37.5%, respectively) seemed not to bother the supporters of Romney’s intra-party challengers. It was almost as if the Republican party, against its wishes and after having tried all the alternatives, was being dragged, kicking and screaming, in 2012 to the ideological center of the American electorate. And while Romney lost the election, he did so by a far smaller margin than did either Goldwater or McGovern (51.1% vs. 47.2% so that while Johnson won 486 electoral votes and Nixon won 520, Obama won but 332).
