AHC: Barack Obama as a Moderate Republican

Nixon wins in 1960 with no southern strategy. George Wallace and the Dixiecrats subsequently take over the Democrats. Republicans more or less become the party of the left whilst the Dems are to the right (at least socially, economically i'm guessing both are towards the centre).
 
Nixon wins in 1960 with no southern strategy. George Wallace and the Dixiecrats subsequently take over the Democrats. Republicans more or less become the party of the left whilst the Dems are to the right (at least socially, economically i'm guessing both are towards the centre).

The problem with that is the GOP is still going to be right of center, and the party that represents business interests as opposed to labor. The Dixiecrats are a minority and have no hope of taking over the National Democratic Party, which was already the more liberal party on economic issues before the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Had a Republican President passed civil rights, he'd be doing so with the support of a Democratic Congress. So the GOP would be socially liberal but fiscally conservative, the Democrats would be both socially and economically liberal, while the American Independent Party would represent the Dixiecrats who in OTL were absorbed by the Republicans.

At any rate, I'm not sure that Nixon would've passed civil rights had he won in 1960. That year he ran on a pro-civil rights platform, but he was already moving away from civil rights at that point when he rebuffed Jackie Robinson and deferred from extending his support to MLK after his arrest. And Nixon was genuinely a racist, as shown by his comments on the White House tapes. JFK was prompted to introduce a civil rights bill after the Birmingham campaign, we can't know for sure if Nixon would've likewise proposed sweeping reform or simply called for "order" and better enforcement of existing laws. Nixon would also be preoccupied by Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. Not to derail the thread on a Nixon discussion, but I don't think "Nixon defeats Kennedy" is a sufficient POD to put Obama on the path of a moderate Republican.
 
Nixon wins in 1960 with no southern strategy. George Wallace and the Dixiecrats subsequently take over the Democrats. Republicans more or less become the party of the left whilst the Dems are to the right (at least socially, economically i'm guessing both are towards the centre).
Going back to the discussion on the previous page, 1960 was too late for such a major shift. The black vote was already heavily Democratic, and Northern liberals were way more influential in the party than the Dixiecrats, who simply weren't numerous enough to make a difference.

George Wallace did come close surprisingly close to winning the Democratic nomination in 1972 and 1976, but for that he had to rebrand himself as a "racial moderate" and seek the support of the Northern working class. Him being the nominee at some point would be an interesting scenario due to the sheer clash between him and the liberal activist types, but this site is way too prone to a great man theory of presidential nominees, wherein Wallace would immediately overtake the Democratic Party and reshape it into his own socially conservative image.

It'd be like if someone in a "Gore wins 2000" TL asserted that if Bush, who supported immigration reform and got a relatively large amount of the Latino vote, had become president, then the Republicans would become pro-immigration, the Hispanic vote would turn safe Republican, and Democrats would be forced to become the anti-immigrant populism.

Socio-political trends are more powerful than any one individual person. Nixon passing the Civil Rights Act instead of Johnson would have made some ripples, but I don't see a major direct difference. The majority of the Democratic Party - the Hubert Humphreys, the Ken Galbraiths, the Eugene McCarthys - would still vote for civil rights and continue to defend them against the Dixiecrat minority. The conservative Republicans, who had comprised the party base since 1932, would continue doing their damnest to claw the Eastern Establishment out of power, and they would eventually find an ally in the Dixiecrats, who were linking segregationism to "small government" values and were becoming increasingly likely to side with the Republicans on other social and economic issues anyway. "Liberal Republicans vs Populist Democrats" scenarios aren't completely implausible, but they require a change far more intricate than some guy winning one election.

And, of course, this thread completely throws the butterfly effect out the window. Most of the discussion seems to be "how can we get to a point wherein the Republican Party's policies match those that Obama supported as president?" (e.g. an individual mandate-based universal healthcare policy), which is the complete wrong way to go about this. If we're continuing with the strategy of changing the Republican Party to suit Obama rather than changing Obama to suit the Republican Party and we're assuming that any major changes to the American political system won't have any effect on Obama's early life, the question is "how can we get to a point wherein the Republican Party is one that Obama would want to join when he first became political active?" (presumably during his college years). And that requires a much deeper dive into his early life and and his mentality during that period than I have time or energy to do right now.
 
The problem with that is the GOP is still going to be right of center, and the party that represents business interests as opposed to labor. The Dixiecrats are a minority and have no hope of taking over the National Democratic Party, which was already the more liberal party on economic issues before the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Had a Republican President passed civil rights, he'd be doing so with the support of a Democratic Congress. So the GOP would be socially liberal but fiscally conservative, the Democrats would be both socially and economically liberal, while the American Independent Party would represent the Dixiecrats who in OTL were absorbed by the Republicans.

At any rate, I'm not sure that Nixon would've passed civil rights had he won in 1960. That year he ran on a pro-civil rights platform, but he was already moving away from civil rights at that point when he rebuffed Jackie Robinson and deferred from extending his support to MLK after his arrest. And Nixon was genuinely a racist, as shown by his comments on the White House tapes. JFK was prompted to introduce a civil rights bill after the Birmingham campaign, we can't know for sure if Nixon would've likewise proposed sweeping reform or simply called for "order" and better enforcement of existing laws. Nixon would also be preoccupied by Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. Not to derail the thread on a Nixon discussion, but I don't think "Nixon defeats Kennedy" is a sufficient POD to put Obama on the path of a moderate Republican.

Most likely, yes. It would probably be that you'd get a socially moderate to even progressive, big business party (Republican) vs socially conservative, Labor and Union favoured party (Democrats) which isn't that much of a stretch really. I think if you have Nixon supporting civil rights over the democrats, you could easily see the shift to the left as at that point, socially there wasn't that much difference really.
 
A scenario I've suggested before. Circa 1990 (before he marries Michelle), Obama gets sucked even deeper into trendy-far-left politicking, and spends some time in Cuba. He sees the reality of Cuba, not what his revolutionary-tourist associates see. He speaks out, or tries to help Cuban dissidents, gets in trouble with the Cuban regime, and is expelled. Thereafter he is shunned by his former associates for his continuing heresy. Disillusioned with activism, he goes to work at a BigLaw firm in Chicago, marries a Jewish girl, moves to the North Shore, and gets involved in Republican politics through an in-law's campaign.

He gets talked into running against an incumbent Democrat state legislator who is entrenched and thought invulnerable - but whose age, corruption, and laziness catch up with him in a "wave year". Obama becomes a "rising star" in the Ilinois GOP, also a known "troublemaker" for the bipartisan "Combine" of insiders. When the GOP establishment force out US Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald gets revenge by endorsing Obama to succeed him.
 
A scenario I've suggested before. Circa 1990 (before he marries Michelle), Obama gets sucked even deeper into trendy-far-left politicking, and spends some time in Cuba. He sees the reality of Cuba, not what his revolutionary-tourist associates see. He speaks out, or tries to help Cuban dissidents, gets in trouble with the Cuban regime, and is expelled. Thereafter he is shunned by his former associates for his continuing heresy. Disillusioned with activism, he goes to work at a BigLaw firm in Chicago, marries a Jewish girl, moves to the North Shore, and gets involved in Republican politics through an in-law's campaign.

He gets talked into running against an incumbent Democrat state legislator who is entrenched and thought invulnerable - but whose age, corruption, and laziness catch up with him in a "wave year". Obama becomes a "rising star" in the Ilinois GOP, also a known "troublemaker" for the bipartisan "Combine" of insiders. When the GOP establishment force out US Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald gets revenge by endorsing Obama to succeed him.

Being anti-Castro might just lead him to becoming a Jackson(Scoop, not Jesse) Democrat, at least on foreign-policy. Sure, that might alientate his erstwhile allies in the left-wing neighbourhoods, but would he really need to go the Full Monty and enter the GOP in order to win on the North Shore?

Plus, to get him on a GOP presidential ticket, you're still gonna need him to endorse the criminalization of abortion, as well as be, at the very least, unsympathetic to ANY advancement of gay rights(including repeal of DADT back when that was still an issue). I'm not sure if these sorts of positions are neccessarily going to ensue simply from being estranged from his old firebrand buddies on the militant left. Lots of people have come to the conclusuion that Cuba is kind of a tyranny without morphing themselves into Jerry Falwell.
 
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Maybe he spends more time around his brother?

Perhaps a better POD would see Obama offered a job in corporate law during the early 1990s, and as time goes on he comes a standard issue Rockefeller Republican: socially liberal, but a believer in more limited government on economic issues than the Democrats. This is pretty close to how Obama actually governed anyway, even when he had a Democratic Congress, but it's debatable how much that's due to his own beliefs or simply his preferred style of governing as a consensus politician. Tax cuts played a big role in his 2009 stimulus and the ACA had been a Republican goal since the days of Tom Dewey. Aside from Dodd-Frank, which I doubt a Wall Street Republican would've implemented, it's pretty hard to distinguish Obama from a typical Eisenhower-Nixon Republican on economics. The conservatives who hated Obama should've loved him for implementing these policies, but it seems that US politics had moved so far to the right by 2009 that any government action on the economy would be considered "socialist."
 
Give him a more conservative running mate who proceeds to drag the whole administration to the right. He thus ends up de facto a moderate republican.

Evan Bayh or Sam Nunn would likely suffice in this regard. Get Bredesen at HHS and Obama's HHS secretary will be a man who cut medicaid while governor and supports shifting Medicare to a premium support system (much like Paul Ryan).
 
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