Northeastern Republicans (the portion of the party that would eventually be called the Rockefeller Republicans) outmaneuvered hardline conservatives, making Eisenhower the nominee rather than Taft. This was a "stab in the back" moment for radical conservatives because they viewed the election as their big chance to finally dismantle the "tyrannical" and "socialist" New Deal. Taft would have fought to do that, but Ike accepted the basic ND framework, so young conservative zealots like Bill Buckley and Brent Bozell saw The Grand Prize yanked out of reach by supposed allies.
They spent the years afterward organizing a radical conservative core, and developing lines of argument and rationalization, like "liberal press bias" (which amounted to any bias, liberal or not, that wasn't theirs, or just failure to cheerlead their point of view).
Eight years after Ike and the northeastern Republicans pulled The Prize out of reach, it happened again when Kennedy beat Nixon. Thus began their obsession and mythologizing about the Chicago cemetery and its supposed voters. Nobody still around really knows what Mayor Daley did, or even whether he did anything, to tip the close Illinois election count in Kennedy's favor. However, since Daley's reputation was such that "did" was the way to bet, conservatives leaned hard into that and waved it around as a bloody shirt. It never mattered to them that even if Illinois had gone to Nixon, Kennedy still would have won. They had their opportunity to scream about how the election was "stolen" from them, and they've never, ever, given it up.
Redux in '64, when Goldwater lost. The was because of "liberal press bias", and "those damn northeastern Republicans turning outright traitor" to vote for Johnson.
By '68 the conservatives were primed and eager to use divide and conquer tactics to win, using the Southern Strategy, Law & Order, and Drug War tactics to bring out the bigotries and hates of their base. In the '70s, a new generation such as Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, Terry Dolan, Jack Abramoff, and Gingrich himself cut their teeth and were ready to take this as a mere jumping off point and go much further.
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