So What If Trump Runs in 2024 and Loses Again?

Remember Nancy Kassebaum? She represented Kansas in the U.S. Senate from 1978 until 1997, and although she was a Republican, she often crossed over and voted with our side.

Nancy came by her lack of party loyalty honestly. Her father, Alf Landon, was the Governor of Kansas from 1933 to 1937, and headed the GOP ticket against FDR in 1936.

Roosevelt carried 46 of 48 states in that election and captured 60% of the popular vote. Even Landon’s own state of Kansas went for FDR, and the 8-point difference wasn’t even close.

Landon’s defeat was primarily a function of how most Americans felt about FDR’s response to the Great Depression, along with the fact that Landon himself made almost no public appearances during the campaign. His no-show behavior occurred because after nominating Landon for the top spot on the 1936 ticket, the GOP convention then passed a party platform which rejected every program of the New Deal.

If you think that MAGA represents the first time an extreme element of the GOP has pushed the party into an alt-right reaction against mainstream politics, you don’t know much about the history of the GOP. The Social Security Act was passed in 1935 and the last GOP-sponsored legal challenge against this legislation ended in — ready? — 1949!