The Four Faces of the Republican Party: The Fight for the 2016 Presidential Nomination, by Henry Olsen and Dante J. Scala (Palgrave Macmillan, 160 pp., $67.50)
Back in 1980, Republican John Connally was a favorite to win the GOP presidential nomination. The former governor of Texas, a Democrat who had switched parties to serve under President Nixon, Connally raised an enormous sum of money at the outset of the campaign. The press lavished him with publicity. Conventional wisdom assumed that Connally would beat Ronald Reagan easily. But conventional wisdom was wrong: Connally ended up with a single delegate. His career was over.
Political analysts Henry Olsen and Dante J. Scala say Connally’s fate shouldn’t have been a surprise: All of his money and fame couldn’t win him …
