AHC: Liberal Rockefeller wing keeps control of GOP

The conservative movement is still going to grow and be influential. If we don't have the riots, crime, and inflation of the late sixties and seventies, its influence can be mooted, but the Republicans will still need to accommodate it somehow.

Probably the best way to do that is for Nixon to win the 1960 Presidential election. He wasn't a true conservative, but he was popular with all levels of the party, had some good conservative credentials, and was broadly acceptable to them. Departures to ensure that could include 1) no 50 state strategy, 2) no debate with Kennedy, and 3) Nixon sends support to King while he's in jail like Kennedy did.

We then say Nixon wins in 1964 again. He avoids Vietnam. The Great Society is never implemented. Civil Rights still advances, and some kind of act gets passed, but perhaps not as comprehensive as OTL's Civil Rights and Voting Acts. It's also possible Nixon loses in 1964, but I think the economy's strength will get him through despite one party holding the White House for 12 years at this point. If so, I don't think much will change by that point. LBJ becoming president and the immense landslide he had because of JFK death sympathy just can't be duplicated by anyone ITTL. No Great Society is going to happen. Any such programs will be less ambitious and more bipartisan.

America is not as radicalized as it was under LBJ, and the social disturbances are much less. Civil rights movement is not as influenced by other radical leftist groups, and the Republicans retain considerable support in the black community. 1968 goes to the Democrats as 16 years of GOP Presidency is hard to continue. However, the Rockefeller faction is still dominant, and Nelson gets the nomination and wins in either 1972 or 1976.

Conservative activists probably influence policy on the margin, particularly free market, but there is much less government intervention in this timeline because there is no Great Society.
 
The Republican Party was never founded as a conservative party and was very liberal and was intended as the liberal party in our system. The slogan of Free labor, free land, free soil should have included free love (which in the 1850s meant an easier more liberal ability to divorce, more freedom for women to work, etc). It lost that liberal edge along the way when the South was allowed to reenter the Union on par with the other states with no penalties and the Southern States used Jim Crow et al to re-enslave the Black population in a different way.

Basically the reason the Republicans moved conservative is that the Northern Democrats, like Samuel Tilden and Al Smith culminating in FDR moved that party left. Hoover was quite liberal and he did try doing public works to pump the economy, there's a reason the Hoover Dam is named for him. The Southern Democrats (Dixicrats) began to see there was no reason to be Yellow Dog Democrats anymore and began to move towards the Republicans; culminating en masse with Reagan, it wasn't a revolution as much as a realignment of people's priorities with their party.
 
The conservative movement is still going to grow and be influential. If we don't have the riots, crime, and inflation of the late sixties and seventies, its influence can be mooted, but the Republicans will still need to accommodate it somehow.
That's why I had my POD in the 1940s; better for the New Right to be aborted before the movement even arises.

I am heavily doubtful Nixon had enough political capital after his "last press conference" to run in '64.
What if he wins the California gubernatorial election?
 
? ? maybe if southern politicians had been a little more far-seeing in the 1950s and realized things would shake out largely like they did, with urban schools being predominantly African-American and suburban schools largely Anglo ? ?

and thus the way to play the poker hand is to bring urban schools almost up to par in order to mute the criticism of courts, 'libruls,' northerners, etc.

*And yes, back in the '50s, things weren't so divided between urban and suburban, but there were definitely black and white neighborhoods.
 
It [Republican Party] lost that liberal edge along the way when the South was allowed to reenter the Union on par with the other states with no penalties and the Southern States used Jim Crow et al to re-enslave the Black population in a different way.
The most common answer here at Alt Hist is that southerners cared more about disenfranchising African-Americans than northerners cared about their rights to voting being respected. This may well be true, but I still want to push at it a little.
 
? ? maybe if southern politicians had been a little more far-seeing in the 1950s and realized things would shake out largely like they did, with urban schools being predominantly African-American and suburban schools largely Anglo ? ?

and thus the way to play the poker hand is to bring urban schools almost up to par in order to mute the criticism of courts, 'libruls,' northerners, etc.

*And yes, back in the '50s, things weren't so divided between urban and suburban, but there were definitely black and white neighborhoods.
Even today, the urban/rural racial divide is much less present in the South than in the North, and even then is mostly present in "Northernized" places like Atlanta. For example, see the rural "black belt" counties:
map_nhblack.gif

Furthermore, in the North, and in the (fewer) large urban areas in the South, the phenomenon of "white flight" had yet to occur, so cities had a much larger white population.
 
Good points, not that many places in Atlanta where there's a big urban-suburban split.

And back in the '40s and '50s, plenty of Anglo families still lived in cities.

I still think there's some way to push at it. If southern politicians are going to justify separate but equal, even indirectly, they might want to work the equal side of the equation! :cool: Of course, if they were that far-sighted, they may not be that much in favor of continuing segregation.
 
The Republican Party was never founded as a conservative party and was very liberal and was intended as the liberal party in our system. The slogan of Free labor, free land, free soil should have included free love (which in the 1850s meant an easier more liberal ability to divorce, more freedom for women to work, etc).

It's a mistake to project modern day definitions of conservative and liberal onto the past.

The Republicans were a coalition (as all major parties are) of abolitionists (mostly driven by their Christianity), industrialists, American School nationalists, and free soil farmers and workers who feared competing against slave labor. Their antecedents were in the same forces that propelled the Whigs and Federalists who represented the right wing of American politics.

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans of the 1860s fit well into today's schema because the national political system has been realigned several times since then. However, as the party of the "moneyed interests" it is hard to see how the Republicans would not be the more "conservative" party.

Of course, neither party would ever have defined themselves as conservative back in the day. Conservative then meant a defender of the old European social hierarchy with its aristocracy, established churches, and censorship. Both were "liberal" in the sense of the time.

Hoover and FDR argued over who was "liberal" in the 1932 election, meaning who was the classical liberal of limited government. FDR campaigned on a balanced budget. After FDR's victory, liberalism came to include an even greater number of Progressive platforms which was very different than what liberalism had meant before in America. As a result, classical liberals began to call themselves conservatives, as they were conserving the liberty of the past before the New Deal.
 
It's a mistake to project modern day definitions of conservative and liberal onto the past.

The Republicans were a coalition (as all major parties are) of abolitionists (mostly driven by their Christianity), industrialists, American School nationalists, and free soil farmers and workers who feared competing against slave labor. Their antecedents were in the same forces that propelled the Whigs and Federalists who represented the right wing of American politics.

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans of the 1860s fit well into today's schema because the national political system has been realigned several times since then. However, as the party of the "moneyed interests" it is hard to see how the Republicans would not be the more "conservative" party.

Of course, neither party would ever have defined themselves as conservative back in the day. Conservative then meant a defender of the old European social hierarchy with its aristocracy, established churches, and censorship. Both were "liberal" in the sense of the time.

Hoover and FDR argued over who was "liberal" in the 1932 election, meaning who was the classical liberal of limited government. FDR campaigned on a balanced budget. After FDR's victory, liberalism came to include an even greater number of Progressive platforms which was very different than what liberalism had meant before in America. As a result, classical liberals began to call themselves conservatives, as they were conserving the liberty of the past before the New Deal.

I'm sorry but I have to disagree with your assessment on the history of liberalism and conservatism based on the fact that I actually have a degree in political science and a master's in history.
 
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