When you realize you voted for the wrong candidate

At the Republican National Convention in 1976, Ronald Reagan challenged Gerald Ford, the incumbent President, for the nomination. That was relatively unheard of for someone within the party to challenge a sitting president. However, times being what they were, with Ford assuming the presidency after Richard Nixon’s resignation, Reagan went for it.

It was not to be, though. Reagan received 1,070 to Ford’s 1,187. Reagan conceded, but agreed to appear onstage with Ford as a sign of Party unity. After President Ford’s acceptance speech, Reagan joined him and the two men clasped hands. Ford asked Reagan to say a few words, and without notes, Reagan delivered a brief, but inspiring speech that brought an ovation louder than Ford received. It also left many of the delegates thinking and saying to each other, “we just voted for the wrong man”.

That’s kind of like what we saw last night after the Iowa caucus. Rubio went first, which garnered him prime air time, and exuberantly took the stage, thrilled with his third place finish, and delivered a fifteen minute “off the cuff” speech that the pundits are still talking about today. It was Reaganesque! The result is that Rubio has been in the news more today and trending more on Twitter, than either Ted Cruz or Donald Trump, who finished first and second, respectively. They’re not very happy about it either. Both of them took shots today at the media focus on Rubio, and attributed it to that old faithful argument that he is the “establishment” favorite. A truer statement would be that Rubio outperformed everyone’s expectations, and we are seeing the “Marcomentum”, as they say on Twitter.

Trump gave a lackluster four-minute speech last night, with his most notable comment being he liked Iowa so much he might just buy a farm there. Cruz hugged his way across the stage, and gave a disjointed thirty-minute plus oration, or as one source called it, a “marathon speech that monopolized an infomercial –length block of time”, that Fox News finally broke away from to air remarks from Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Maybe some of the Iowa caucus voters can relate to those delegates in 1976?