Whittington seemed to be doing all the talking, and the nurse just listened.
It seemed the nurse was only listening while Whittington spoke
It's not so hard, however, to imagine the GOP following the pattern set by the Democrats after 1972: pulling themselves together momentarily to field a winning centrist candidate four years later--and then thwarting his ability to govern (as the Democrats in Congress did Jimmy Carter's)--thereby producing an era of domination by the opposition for the next two decades.