AHC: John Anderson as the kingmaker in 1980

John Anderson's run in 1980 was the last, dying gasp of the Rockefeller wing of the Republican party, before it was completely taken over by Reagan/Goldwater conservatives.

Anderson has no real chance of winning. He's far, far too liberal for the GOP in 1980, but what if he's able to force a situation where he is the kingmaker at a contested convention. Likely between Bush and Reagan, or possibly Reagan and Connoly. Would they make a deal with each other before reaching out to Anderson?

Interested to hear your guys thoughts on this scenario.
 
If there really is a scenario where Anderson + Bush AND Anderson + Reagan could both result in a majority, then Bush is really the kingmaker here. Anderson's not going to deal with Reagan, period.

So the question is, what does Bush do? He can make a deal with Anderson, which very likely means squeaking by with a delegate majority, and gain the nomination himself. Or he can make a deal with Reagan, a show of party unity as the ticket is approved by a strong majority of delegates. Considering Bush's behavior in the 1970s- stepping into a party role to do damage control in the wake of Watergate, being a loyal man of the party- and his character in general, I think it's more likely he goes with Reagan.

However, if you build an alternate scenario where Reagan and Bush end up having a much more bruising, personal fight for the nomination, one where reconciliation is impossible at the convention, an Anderson/Bush alliance is possible. At that point, Anderson's the one making the decision: does he withhold his delegates, or does he support Bush? Is he more interested in just stopping Reagan or does he take a principled stand on issues Bush could never support and refuse to release his delegates?

The type of campaign Bush has run in this scenario is crucial to understanding which decision Anderson makes. Has Bush pushed to the middle, or to the right? I don't think Anderson is going to support Bush just for the sake of being anti-Reagan (not in 1980). He'll need good, sound policy reasons. He wouldn't see supporting a slightly less conservative Bush against a slightly more conservative Reagan as "saving" his party. If Bush moderates, in this situation, Anderson backs him, if not, Anderson backs no one and we get a floor fight.

I don't know the delegate release rules in 1980 off the top of my head. I'd imagine released Anderson delegates would migrate to Bush if they had to, but then I'd imagine a lot of nominal Bush delegates would be swayed to join the Reagan camp. Who switches when becomes crucial.

It's unclear how a brokered convention would have worked under RNC rules at the time. Wikipedia is very vague, does anyone have info on what this would look like?

One final thought is that if Reagan didn't appear overwhelmingly strong going into the convention, the Republican establishment had a much better chance of rallying around the likes of Bush to force his nomination through.
 
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