SAN FRANCISCO
In this, the 36th contest for the Republican Party's presidential nomination, one historic trend is clear. Antigovernment zealots are losing control of the GOP because of the common determination of George W. Bush and John McCain. Both candidates are inclusive, committed to winning, and not easily bullied by the mullahs of the religious right.
This year, roles are reversed in the party's oldest and angriest feud over regional rivalries and class warfare. Since 1912, self-made men from small towns beyond the Alleghenies, calling themselves ''true conservatives,'' have reviled high-born patriarchs of ''the Eastern Establishment.''
In this city's Cow Palace in 1964, Barry Goldwater of Arizona won the nomination, defeating Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller of New York and William Warren Scranton of Pennsylvania, avenging the right. (Goldwater was born into a department store fortune himself, but in this argument, geography trumps trust funds.)
In 2000, the radical right has a new hero. Like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, he's from a small town, but it's a rich New Jersey suburb. Malcolm Steven Forbes Jr. inherited a publishing fortune but is finding it harder to inherit the Goldwater-Reagan mantle.
Forbes has been endorsed by Lyn Nofziger, Bruce Herschenson, Paul Weyrich, and Richard Viguerie, all active during the rise of the right in the 1970s. ''The difference between George W. Bush and Steve Forbes is the difference between an Elvis impersonator and the real Elvis,'' Viguerie said.
George Bush, the former president, once used a Texas epithet to describe Viguerie: ''All hat and no cattle.'' This has been more evident since the no-compromise right decided to scorn elective politics. Its heroes are exemplars of preemptive term limits.
Half of the Republican field has never been elected to public office. Forbes, Gary Bauer, and Alan Keyes are serenely innocent of record or resume. Their kamikaze flight plan has few historical precedents. Goldwater served on the Phoenix City Council before going to the US Senate. Reagan was twice elected governor of California.
In 1912, when the more liberal Theodore Roosevelt of New York quarreled with William Howard Taft and abandoned the GOP, Taft's fellow conservatives sought revenge. In 1948, Taft's son, Robert, lost the nomination to Thomas E. Dewey. In 1952, a Taft delegate, Everett Dirksen of Pekin, Ill., pointed at Dewey, saying, ''We followed you before, Tom, and you took us down the path to defeat.'' But Dewey's candidate, Dwight Eisenhower, won.
From the Cow Palace in 1964 to the high school stage of Nashua, N.H., in 1980, the wait was long. But Gerry Carmen, who called George Bush ''a bluestocking Republican,'' trapped Bush into a debate with Reagan. A Manchester tire merchant, Carmen mobilized the self-made men of the Merrimack Valley to aid Reagan's triumph.
Resentment bubbled and boiled into the Reagan era. In 1984, Elliot Lee Richardson, twice elected to statewide office and the only man in history to hold four Cabinet posts, ran for the Republican nomination for US senator from Massachusetts. He lost by almost 25 points to Ray Shamie, a self-made millionaire who had never held public office.
Both men died last year, and Senator John F. Kerry, who defeated Shamie by 10 points, called Shamie ''a thoroughly decent and honest person.'' He was, but so was Richardson, who died one day before 2000, a year that may vindicate public service as an honored tradition in the Republican Party.
Ronald Reagan, in many speeches, said, ''Government is the problem.'' George W. Bush's standard speech says ''Government should do a few things and do them well.'' That is a major difference.
Reagan can take credit for the prosperity of the 1980s and 1990s, which has washed away the anger that fueled right-wing resentment. Why fret about old money when new money, even self-made trust funds, can be made?
Martin F. Nolan's column appears regularly in the Globe.
