I once had a post in soc.history.what-if on Goldwater in 1968:
***
For reasons I have stated in another post, I do not think Barry Goldwater had any realistic chance of being elected president in 1964. (No, not even if JFK had lived.)
But...
Let's take as our POD that Happy Rockefeller had not gotten pregnant a little more than nine months before the California primary. In OTL her giving birth just before the primary re-ignited the remarriage issue, and may have well been decisive in Goldwater's narrow victory in the primary. So we'll say that Rocky narrowly wins the primary. This is a tremendous blow to Goldwater, not only because by 1964 California had become the nation's most populous state, but because its delegates were awarded on a winner-take-all basis. Nevertheless, even with California, Rocky does not have a majority of delegates. In fact, neither the Goldwaterites nor the liberal Republicans have a majority, and it is evident that some compromise candidate must be found who will be acceptable to both sides. A "draft Nixon" movement develops among middle-of-the-road delegates, and also gets the support of those Goldwaterites who see that their candidate just doesn't have the votes, and worry that either Rocky or someone almost as bad, like Romney or Scranton will get the nomination. Nixon is reluctant to run--he sees that LBJ has the advantage in November--but he is warned that if he does not do so, he will be blamed in the future for letting the party down when it needed him. Nixon finally announces that he will accept a "genuine draft," and gets nominated.
Even though Nixon's support for the civil rights bill is somewhat reluctant (he spends much more time attacking the militant tactics of some elements of the civil rights movement) Wallace still decides to run a third party campaign. In November, LBJ defeats Nixon and Wallace. Nixon does at least get the core Republican vote in the North and West, but Wallace prevents him from making the inroads he had hoped for in the South.
Meanwhile, Goldwater has decided that he will run again for the Senate. (I'm not sure just exactly when in 1964 the Arizona Republicans nominated Fannin as their candidate for the US Senate, but even if this happens before Goldwater realizes he can't win the presidential nomination, let's say Fannin agrees to stand down and let Goldwater run for re-election.) He wins in November. After Nixon's loss, Goldwaterites proclaim that LBJ's victory just proves once again that the GOP can only win with a "true conservative." In 1966, California gubernatorial candidate Ronald Reagan, answering accusations that he only means to use the governorship as a step toward the White House, replies that he will support Goldwater in 1968. In 1968, Nixon, having lost three elections in a row, including the last two presidential ones, is no longer considered a viable candidate. In fact, the "center" of the GOP has no major candidate. It's a race between the "right" represented by Goldwater and the "left" represented by Rockefeller. Goldwater wins this race, due largely to the unpopularity of Rockefeller even among many Republicans who have reservations about Goldwater. Wallace announces his support of Goldwater in the general election. Goldwater has learned some lessons from his 1964 defeat for the nomination, and while in substance his views are not much different, his rhetoric is a bit less provocative. The Democratic candidate, Hubert Humphrey, faced with a bitterly divided party, a seemingly endless war, inflation, riots on the campuses and in the inner cities, etc., tries to cast Goldwater as an extremist, but with less success than LBJ had in OTL in 1964. Goldwater (who chooses Governor Jim Rhodes of Ohio as his running mate), narrowly wins the election, sweeping the South (thanks largely to Wallace's support), the Rocky Mountain states, the Farm Belt, some Great Lakes states (at least Indiana and Ohio), and narrowly carrying California where embittered supporters of Eugene McCarthy and the late Robert F. Kennedy (no, I don't think this scenario butterflies away either RFK's election to the Senate in 1964--though it will be closer--or Sirhan's killing him in 1968) refuse to support Humphrey.
We've had enough discussion of what a Goldwater presidency in 1964 (which I regard as very unlikely) would look like. What about a Goldwater presidency in 1968?
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/Ghzn1YByCDA/M_btyd-KwB4J