Why did George Romney lose in 1968?
From his obit:Mr. Romney was among the luminaries of the national Republican Party after his 1966 election to a third consecutive term as governor of Michigan with a 570,000-vote plurality. But he abandoned his bid for the party’s presidential nomination two weeks before the 1968 New Hampshire primary. That was after a three-month campaign that was dogged by his nationally televised comment attributing his initial support for the Vietnam War to his being “brainwashed” by the U.S. military during a tour of the Southeast Asian country. He would later call U.S. participation in the war “the most tragic foreign policy mistake in the nation’s history.” In a 1989 interview with the Associated Press, Mr. Romney insisted his comments about having been brainwashed had nothing to do with his withdrawal from the presidential race. “It was because Nelson Rockefeller became a candidate, and there was no way I could get the nomination fighting both Rockefeller and Richard Nixon,” he said.
