AHC: A Republican Presidential Candidate that can win 30% or more of the black vote

George W Bush is assassinated.
Colin Powell is nominated as Vice-President by Dick Cheney, who dies shortly afterwards of a heart attack.
Colin Powell declines to stand again, and the Republicans nominate Mike Huckabee.
The Democrats nominate Joe Lieberman after a bitter and devisive primary, and the campaign is fought mainly on social issues.

With a black-republican ex-president, a wave of sympathy for Bushes death, an economically populist republican, and a campaign fought mainly on social issues, Huckabee scrapes 31% of the black vote.
 
I agree with suggestions that if Clintons win ugly over Obama in primary (the theft of it by backroom deal is definitely useful here) and GOP nominees are cuddly likable types like McCain-Huckabee (in other words, no pandering visits to all-white small towns with the speaker gushing about "real Americans"),


throw in a high-profile African-American endorsement or two or three,


and over 30% has decent odds of occuring.
 
Something convinces Richard Nixon in 1960 that his Southern Strategy wasn't going to pan out, maybe George Smathers is placed on the Democratic ticket rather than LBJ and early polling suggests that will lead the South to go heavily Democrat even with a liberal Catholic on the ticket.
Believing the best he can hope for is a divided Democratic Party, he knows just the trick: he'll force Civil Rights out as a major issue.
It's not implausible: Eisenhower won a large part of the black vote in the 1956 election and so did Nixon in 1960 IOTL. To bolster his left of center credentials, he persuades Nelson Rockefeller to be his running mate. When conservative Republicans such as Goldwater balk at this, Nixon quietly takes them aside and tells them he'll put strong right-wingers at the head of Defense and the Treasury (he has Henry Cabot Jr. in mind for State). This unifies the Republican Party.
Nixon then makes several speeches that strongly imply he'd be in favor of a Civil Rights Act. Reporters of course want to ask Kennedy the same question, but his foot is in his mouth: mind you, he _really_ wants to come out in favor of civil rights, both out of personal conviction and to prevent the GOP siphoning off votes in this election... but in the end, he just can't risk alienating the South. He beats around the bush.
So, including a broad coalition that includes people from both ends of the political spectrum, Nixon wins the election with a better showing in the North, including narrowly winning New York, that more than makes up for his worse showing in the South than historically.
And he won 60% of the black vote.
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In the ensuing years, Nixon marches up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial arm-in-arm with MLK to announce he will push for a Civil Rights Act to a cheering crowd of nearly a million.
"Dr. King has just said he had a Dream, folks, well let me tell you, I share that Dream!"
When it comes to a vote in 1963, Nixon and his conservative liaison in the Senate, Barry Goldwater, manage to get nearly the whole GOP to vote for it.
The Democrats, however, are badly divided: despite what is best politically, many liberal Northern Democrats decide to vote their conscience on the Act. The Dixiecrats, of course, vote against it, and the intraparty debates on Congress' floor far exceed the fury levied against the Republicans. Civil Rights passes by a wide margin in both houses.
The Democratic primaries in 1964 are the stuff of legends. In the end, Lyndon Johnson barely comes out with the nomination. The Dixiecrats pull a 1948 and run third party with George Wallace. Liberals defect to the Nixon/Goldwater ticket (Rockefeller was tragically killed by a certain Lee Harvey Oswald). In the end, Johnson wins his home state of Texas, Wallace wins the Deep South... and Nixon wins everywhere else in a landslide.
And he wins nearly 80% of the black vote.
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The election of 1968 was also kind of funny in a sad way. RFK won the Democratic nomination, sure, but his attempts to reunite the Democrats failed; Wallace is running again. Goldwater, Nixon's successor (reluctantly on Nixon's part), nominates a man that he thinks will split much of the Northern vote with Kennedy.
That man is Edward Brooke.
Goldwater/Brooke wins in a landslide.
With over 90% of the black vote.
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Howzat? :eek:

I would love to see a TL of this
 
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