He was willing to give up and have Daugherty file his re-election papers for the Senate, but Florence Harding grabbed the phone from his hand and said, "Warren Harding, what are you doing? Give up? Not until the convention is over. Think of your friends in Ohio!"[77] On learning that Daugherty had left the phone line, the future First Lady retorted, "Well, you tell Harry Daugherty for me that we're in this fight until Hell freezes over."[75]
After he recovered from the shock of the poor results, Harding traveled to Boston, where he delivered a speech that, according to Dean, "would resonate throughout the 1920 campaign and history".[75] There, he stated that "America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy;[c] not revolution, but restoration;..."[78] Dean notes, "Harding, more than the other aspirants, was reading the nation's pulse correctly."[75]

Convention
Further information: 1920 Republican National Convention
The 1920 Republican National Convention opened at the Chicago Coliseum on June 8, 1920, assembling delegates who were bitterly divided, most recently over the results of a Senate investigation into campaign spending, which had just been released. 