Ronald Reagan, in 1976 in Iowa, was the conservative insurgent who tried to unseat President Gerald R. Ford, who led a party billing itself as the “moderate alternative” to the Democrats.
DETROIT — Facing big hurdles here in Mitt Romney’s native state, Rick Santorum seized on the novel tactic of attacking his rival for agreeing with him.
Mr. Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, accused Mr. Romney of turning his back on Detroit by opposing federal bailouts for the auto industry — the same bailouts that Mr. Santorum also opposed. His attacks may have helped him with working-class voters in the Michigan primary; he narrowly lost the popular vote on Tuesday but will probably split the delegate count.
Mr. Santorum’s attack was a brazen example of an increasingly common phenomenon: concocting wedge issues even from policy positions that largely match.
Mr. Santorum’s explanation — that he consistently opposed all bailouts while Mr. Romney supported relief for Wall Street — did not persuade some neutral Republican observers.
“That is a particularly contrived point of attack,” said Ken Khachigian, a political strategist who worked on the presidential campaigns of Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bob Dole.
At the same time, Mr. Khachigian expressed sympathy for campaign handlers who find it harder than those in his generation to sketch distinctions among intraparty rivals.
“You have to create those little differences every single day,” Mr. Khachigian said. “It’s a tough environment.”
This is the presidential primary campaign that political polarization has wrought. In recent decades, the Democratic Party has purged its conservatives and the Republican Party its liberals, leaving each almost politically homogenous.
As a result, the first Republican presidential primary in the Tea Party era lacks the straightforward ideological cleavages of earlier contests.
In 1976, when Reagan, the conservative insurgent, unsuccessfully challenged President Gerald R. Ford for the Republican nomination, the party platform was billed as a “moderate alternative” to the Democratic version, supporting “continuance of the public dialogue” on abortion and increased federal spending on the arts. Even four years ago, one major Republican candidate, Rudolph W. Giuliani, backed abortion rights.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/us/politics/gop-candidates-scramble-to-create-wedge-issues.html
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