Romneys vs Rockefellers
Today, few remember that the shoo-in candidate to be the Republican nominee in 1968 was a man named George Romney, Mitt Romney's father. A rarer minority recall that George was thrown under the bus, on the road to the convention, by a Rockefeller. The background of what happened to George Romney and why he was derailed on his way to becoming the Republican candidate in 1968 is worthy of revisiting. A Gallup Poll after the November 1966 elections showed Romney as favored among Republicans over former Vice President Richard Nixon for the Republican nomination, 39 percent to 31 percent; a Harris Poll showed Romney beating President Johnson among all voters by 54 percent to 46 percent. California's Nixon considered Michigan's George Romney his chief opponent. Romney was pressed for his opinion on the Vietnam War, which hawk Richard Nixon supported. Finally, on August 31, 1967, in a taped interview with talk show host Lou Gordon of WKBD-TV in Detroit, Romney stated: "When I...