Sam Tanenhaus, Columnist

GOP Outsiders: The New Season

Conservatives love Trump for attacking conservative policies.

September 6, 2015 at 3:00 PM UTC

Sam Tanenhaus, the author of “The Death of Conservatism” and “Whittaker Chambers,” is working on a biography of William F. Buckley Jr. He was editor of the New York Times Book Review from 2004 to 2013.

Upstarts, novices and billionaires.
Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

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The once shapeless Republican nomination contest has its plot line as it heads into a new fall season. The theme is political experience: the less, the better, to judge from the enthusiasm (and poll numbers) generated by Donald Trump, Ben Carson and now Carly Fiorina. Not one of the three has previously held elected office, and only one, Fiorina, has even been a candidate.

Upstarts and novices are hardly new in American politics. The Barack Obama years have given us the ophthalmologist Rand Paul, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010 -- his first try for office -- and is now running for president; Herman Cain, the pizza executive who briefly led the Republican field in 2012; and David Brat, the college professor who upset Eric Cantor, then the House majority leader, in the Virginia Republican primary in 2014. All were unknowns but gained momentum as tribunes of the Tea Party movement, with its rallies and fiercely anti-government message.