AHC: Barry Goldwater becomes president

The rules:
  1. Any POD after 1945 (So basically WW2).
  2. Goldwater must remain a hardline conservative.
  3. He must be elected democratically--no line of succession, that's too easy. Electoral college shenanigans are allowed, however.
  4. He does NOT have to be elected in 1964--any election year is acceptable.
  5. However, he always dies on May 29th, 1998 (as in OTL).
 
For 1964, literally, this is the rare occasion where I will say nuclear war. It is cheap, but frankly accurate as to how Goldwater could become president. Or he could wait for 1968.
 
Hmmmmm............

1. Kennedy lives, the attempt on his life doesn't take place. Say Oswald's gun jams on the first shot he attempts and by the time he's cleared it, the motorcade has gone too far. Oswald slinks away with no one the wiser.
2. Johnson's scandal comes to light forcing Kennedy to dump him from the ticket.
3. Goldwater declines to run in '64. Whatever reason, doesn't really matter.
4.Kennedy, re-elected in '64, is found in a compromising position with another woman. As it gets investigated deeper, Kennedy's affairs and womanizing comes to light.
5.Goldwater runs in '68 claiming the democratic party is the party of corruption, both morally and otherwise, citing Kennedy and Johnson.
6. Goldwater's conservative platform wins in '68.
 

Anchises

Banned
The rules:
  1. Any POD after 1945 (So basically WW2).
  2. Goldwater must remain a hardline conservative.
  3. He must be elected democratically--no line of succession, that's too easy. Electoral college shenanigans are allowed, however.
  4. He does NOT have to be elected in 1964--any election year is acceptable.
  5. However, he always dies on May 29th, 1998 (as in OTL).

Well Reagan won after Carters presidency was considered disastrous by most U.S. citizens.

So we need an equally disastrous presidency/time period (depending on your view of Carter) that allows Goldwater to succeed. In "good times" Goldwater is perceived as a dangerous radical.

So lets assume that LBJ actually wins a second time in 1968 while Goldwater looses the Republican primaries. Maybe the Tet offensive fails because for some reason the U.S. military is prepared. We don't have the media pictures of a destroyed U.S. embassy and the narrative that the war is nearly won isn't completely destroyed. Johnson wins a narrow reelection against Nixon/Rockefeller/Romney. He continues his Great Society program and he continues the Vietnam war.

Moderate/liberal Republicans have failed again and again so the Conservatives finally get their shot. Goldwater wins the nomination in 1972. Meanwhile the Jom-Kippur-War and the OPEC embargo happen a little sooner than OTL in the evening of LBJ's second term. LBJ's Great society, the costs of the Vietnam war and the high oil prices lead to a economic crisis.

The democrats nominate a very left leaning candidate and in the election Goldwater is able to win the presidency.
 
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
 
A Goldwater win in '68 is hard to imagine IMO because as a hardliner he favored the Vietnam war whereas many Americans by then wanted out, albeit on decent terms. Nixon won with his "secret plan to end the war." Humphrey improved his chances by appearing more dovish on Vietnam, but it was too late.
The Republican win in '68 owed much to white/middle class concern that social programs, largely intended to help minorities, and civil unrest involving blacks, had gone too far. I suppose Goldwater could've got the nomination in '68 had he stayed out in '64 and then got the oval office with an approach like Nixon's in the OTL. Not sure if he could feign a more dovish attitude effectively, though, lol; he couldn't help but be ingenuous in '64...
 
Goldwater denied 64 nomination. Dem President refuses to commit ground troops in Vietnam and Communist win. Goldwater runs on cold war platform (whilst also getting votes from the white south)
 
A Goldwater win in '68 is hard to imagine IMO because as a hardliner he favored the Vietnam war whereas many Americans by then wanted out, albeit on decent terms.

Yet "win or get out" (which Goldwater repeatedly said) might have some popular appeal...
 
Yet "win or get out" (which Goldwater repeatedly said) might have some popular appeal...

Sure, but by the aftermath of Tet there was considerable skepticism that a win was possible, without risking armageddon. If people assumed he'd go allout to win first....
 
Major party nominees for US President since 1964 have gotten one shot at winning the general election and that is it, no second chance of getting the nomination.

Coming second or even third in the primaries and then winning the nomination later on the other hand happens alot (Johnson, Humphrey, Reagan, Bush, Dole, Gore, McCain, Romney, Hillary Clinton) though most of this group did not win when they finally became the nominee.

But Dewey and Stevenson got nominated two times, despite losing in the general election the first time. What happened in their first run is that they came surprising close to winning against a popular wartime president/ national wartime hero. And then you have Nixon, but the 1960 election was virtually a nationwide popular vote tie.

So you can have Goldwater run in 1964 and get another crack at it, he just has to come in second for the Republican nomination, or win the nomination but hold Johnson or Kennedy to below 55% for the popular vote and for this to be something of a surprise outcome. Nixon running again in 1964 would help with the first scenario.
 

bguy

Donor
A Goldwater win in '68 is hard to imagine IMO because as a hardliner he favored the Vietnam war whereas many Americans by then wanted out, albeit on decent terms. Nixon won with his "secret plan to end the war." Humphrey improved his chances by appearing more dovish on Vietnam, but it was too late.

Even as late as November 1968 the percentage of Americans who favored escalation in Vietnam was almost double the percentage that favored withdrawal. (34% to 19%).

https://books.google.com/books?id=P...y 1969 support for Vietnam War gallup&f=false

So there is a large constituency that would support Goldwater's views on trying to win Vietnam. And Goldwater could probably win over a lot of the voters who want the U.S. to stay in Vietnam but try and end the fighting if he can convince them that his plan will actually win the war in a reasonable amount of time.
 
Possible scenarios:
1. Reagan in 1976 picks Goldwater instead of Schweiker and wins the Mississippi delegates this narrowly winning against Ford. Reagan wins. Runs for 8 years and Goldwater runs in '84 and wins with popular Reagan.
2. Nixon selects Goldwater in 1960 and either wins and gives Goldwater the election in 1968, or loses like in OTL but has name recognition and runs later on.
 
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