AHC: Have the Liberal "Rockefeller" Republicans in control of the GOP

How can the liberal "Rockefeller" Republicans become the stronger branch of the party, holding control of the party until at least the 1990s? In OTL, they competed with the conservatives for several decades before Reagan finally established conservative dominance over the GOP. Can they be the ones to beat the Conservatives? I'm not going to set some cut-off date for "too early for the POD", but the group that dominates the GOP should be the OTL liberals during the 60s and 70s. I'm using Rockefeller in the name, but it doesn't have to be involved with him. You can have the Democrats do whatever you want.
 
If you can get George H. W. Bush to triumph to the nomination in 1980 over Reagan, than I think you can hold off conservatism in the Republican Party for at least six to eight years, perhaps longer, depending on how history views his presidency.
 
I think the latest you could do it is probably 1968/72, and it has to be without Nixon. So have Nixon die in a car crash or something between 1963-1967, then let Rockefeller himself, or if not him maybe Romney get the nod in 1968 and go on to beat Humphrey. Then have their moderate VP win in 1976, but loses to a moderate Democrat in 1980 (someone like Jerry Brown or Gary Hart). Have conservative Republicans get the nominations in 1984 & 1988 and lose in landslides. Then a liberal Republican gets the nod in 1992, and defeats the sitting Democratic President due to recession, and that persons moderate VP wins in 2000. That gets you into the 00's with "Rockefeller" style Republicans being seen as the only type of Republican that can win nationwide.

I think if you time it so the years where a conservative gets the nomination it's in a bad year for Republicans in general so they lose, while the liberal Republicans get the nomination in years favorable to Republicans, you can hold off a complete takeover by the conservatives for a while.
 

Japhy

Banned
Several Options come to mind for me, they don't really promote the Rockefeller, Rockefeller Republicans but if we mean Moderate-Liberal Republicans, they all gain ground here with these:

-Nixon's Actual Southern Strategy Prevails: Basically, the infamous Southern Strategy was never intended to be so bold as the 1972 landslide presented it as. Nixon's view was rather complex and is based on the fact that he wanted to build a coalition Republican Party to wreck the New Deal and secure his own triumph as a GOP FDR. Nixon had always been someone with a foot in the Dewey and Taft (Later Rockefeller and Goldwater but less so then) camps of the GOP. Overall his goal was to take stances from each of those and fuse them together, as well as targeting both "moderate" Southern Votes hand in hand with Black Voters and the Labor vote. The means to achieve the last three were where things get complicated.

The Labor vote would be won over by the rise of the "New Left" in the Democratic Party tied with making an argument to the average Union Worker that his middle class status put him and his organization more in line with the GOP.

Southern voters from those states with a history of occasional GOP swings (Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida and Texas) would be won over by a system where in Nixon appointed activist judges who would rule positively in Civil Rights cases and then declare that however he felt about it he would have to enforce the Law. Voters in these states often had a history of responding pretty well to those results, and then as the laws were enforced and Nixon's programs continued those states growing secure middle classes would come over.

In the Deep South Nixon hoped for the region to remain at least on paper, Democratic, that way the Democrats would constantly be rocked with New Dealers forced to try and work with the New Left and the Old South, always in danger of a party split and always dragged back from decisive action.

Black voters in turn would be wooed by Nixon's economic programs (National Guaranteed Minimum Income, Federal II requiring non-discrimination for state funded programs, busing, and CHIP) which would also provide for a pathway to the Middle Class, where like the others they would realize the advantage of the GOP.

Basically, if Tricky Dick is a little less paranoid about those bondage photos getting leaked the new infusions into the GOP are groups that will inevitably support a more Nixonian/Rockefeller/Dewey school of thought, and will help swing the party.

-Thomas E. Dewey gets elected: If there was ever a party nominee who would have transformed the path of his party had he won, it was Tom Dewey. In 1948 his victory would have seen a Pro-Civil Rights, Pro-ERA, Pro-Modification (Not Rejection) of the New Deal President. For all the problems that a Hoover on the Court brings, such reforms are going to reorganize the party, fuse that with the idealized version of the Baby Boomer's youth, and you have a movement that is going to get a massive shot in the arm long term. The Bob Taft/Barry Goldwater wing is going to lose more and more ground with the prosperity and the tough foreign policy decisions, and will be on the projected course of joining their Pre-New Deal colleagues in the dustbin. The one question that comes to mind though is if Nelson Rockefeller is going to be able to become the next leader of this Wing of the GOP, or not. Long term, the party has definitively alienated those factions of the Democrats who would later come over and those factions of the GOP which rejected Deweyism are going to be on painful ropes, opposition to Truman is what saw their redemption and revival, and Dewey unlike Eisenhower is partisan enough to reinforce his establishment's gains in the GOP, setting a stage which forces the Right to reconsider itself and the GOP to focus more on "Effectiveness" against the Democrats then Rejection.

-George Wallace Avoids Arthur Bremer: This is not to say that Wallace is somehow going to take the 1972 Presidential nomination, thats ridiculous. But Wallace's gains in that election showed a path to meant to many the continuation of the New Deal Coalition (Or at least as much as possible of it as could be saved) in contrast to the McGovern Youth-vote centered coalition. One can go into the nature of Wallace's larger result and healthy demeanor lending itself to the triumph of a Dump McGovern Convention play but I'll leave that to the side for now.

In 1976 Wallace can run again on his own two feet ---Yes that was a cruel pun. Consider that Former Klansmen and Former Race-baiters were prominent candidates in that race and that one of the latter actually became President. It is not beyond reason to suppose that Wallace could get the nomination and win in such a scenario. If that happens the GOP reaction to the left-moderate wing of its own party is not a surprising one.

On the other hand, its worth discussing that In 1976 the real winner from Wallace's crippling was Reagan, it was the same folks who voted for Wallace in Democratic Primaries that went and voted for him in Republican ones, giving him a competitive edge that almost allowed him to come close to defeating Ford. With Wallace still going in the Democratic party Dutch loses that level of support. His early loses are bigger and his first half dozen or so wins are in line to be lost or only be squeakers. The challenge against Ford from the right is set to fizzle in such a situation.

Even if Ford loses (And lets be honest he might be able to beat Ol' George if he's the Democratic Nominee) Reagan is in a battered state, he had no 1976 Convention to tamper his image and build up a long term base due to his willingness to compromise first in his VP choice and then in letting Ford go on. In 1980 he's in a rough position with his age and his political radicalism being at the forefront, leaving things open for another Rightist to jump in splitting the vote or allowing a moderate to take his momentum away from him. Presuming a Republican victory, and that the 80s follow a similar projectory, the GOP's rightward stand, based on the teachings of St. Ronald is dramatically shifted our outright stopped. The party in this instance probably doesn't go in a Left-Moderate direction but certainly will continue to operate as a "Moderate" party --- Ideas one can toy with here being anything from European Liberal Conservatism to One-Nation Republicanism --- that plenty of folks would hate as very right wing.
 
So, for example, might a less paranoid Nixon not sabotage the campaign of Muskie, thus going against a stronger Democrat than McGovern who is able to stop the entire south from swinging to Nixon? Is that how a less paranoid Nixon could be successful? The other two are easily explainable, though the second ones exact POD (how does Dewey actually beat Truman?) would need to be worked out.
 
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