With any PoD after 1900, your goal is to create a stronger movement of African American conservatism in the Republican Party. Bonus points if you can successfully elect people such as Ben Carson or Herman Cain to a state-wide office. 
AHC: Strengthen Black Republican conservatism
- Thread starter Prussian1871
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With any PoD after 1900, your goal is to create a stronger movement of African American conservatism in the Republican Party. Bonus points if you can successfully elect people such as Ben Carson or Herman Cain to a state-wide office.
Get Byrnes chosen as FDR's VP in 1944. When FDR dies, Byrnes, a die-hard segregationist, will not desegregate the army. Dewey wins 1948 with a landslide and he desegregates the army. If memory serves me right, he was a liberal Republican. This makes the GOP continue to be the party of Lincoln and the Democrats the party of social conservatism. In any case, their economic views would be as IOTL. Blacks are staunch Republicans, proudly of the party of Lincoln. As a result, economically conservative blacks are elected in the south in minority districts. If vote splitting between Democrats happens, BOOM: A black Republican governor.
No Barry Goldwater in 1964 and no Nixon and the Southern Strategy in 1968 in my opinion would do the trick. Pre 1964, if I remember correctly, blacks weren't solidly democratic yet and pre 1936 they were a Republican Demographic, as the GOP was the party of Lincoln and not the party of Nixon, Reagan, and Bush. Of course, the south wouldn't flock to the GOP like it did OTL without these, so maybe there's a strong southern third party???
IMHO, it isn't really hard to strengthen Black Republicanism. Even though they vote Democratic in large numbers, African Americans aren't very liberal at all.
IMHO, it isn't really hard to strengthen Black Republicanism. Even though they vote Democratic in large numbers, African Americans aren't very liberal at all.
The first ingredient is a strong black upper middle class and upper class early on. Then racism should continue as a central feature of organized labor, making anti-union politics a potential vehicle for affluent blacks to enter the conservative movement. Instead of a civil rights movement, segregation should die slowly due to economic pressures. Increase black religiousity in a way that will get large numbers of voters to identify with conservative evangelicalism.
Ehh... ask any conservative Republican today, and they'll claim that what you said was OTL. They'll claim that the Republican party that freed the slave and passed the Civil Rights movement were "conservative" even though it's pretty obvious that the Republicans of the past were the liberal ones.
I think Goldie and Nixon are too late. Truman already desegregated the arms forces and had overwhelming black support, Kennedy campaigned for black support and he attempted to pass civil rights legislation before death interrupted him, Johnson was the guy who passed the Civil Rights Act, and even before that Roosevelt was sympathetic to the plight of blacks. I think you need to stop Truman to avoid the transformation of the Democratic Party from the party of rebellion to the party of civil rights.
As for the last point, I agree with you in social terms, but economically blacks are very liberal.
Have Warren Harding choose a more Progressively aligned running mate like La Follette in 1920. When he dies then he'll push for further civil rights legislation that wasn't able to pass due to obstructionism by the Democrats.
I think there weren't enough Democrats to obstruct Republican bills in the 1920s. In any case, LaFollette is never gonna be nominated by the Republicans as vice president. He was just too left-wing for the US. He makes Teddy in 1912 look reactionary, for chrissakes.
There is the core of it. The middle class of all the ethnic minorities was growing, albiet slowly in the first three decades of the 20th Century. After the interruption of the Depression middle class growth resumed again until the 1970s. Grow the ethinic minority, especially African American, middle class faster, more solidly, and past the 1970s and you increase the 'conservative' subgroup in it.
If the minority middle class is larger then the Republican party may choose something other than the Southern Strategy, or drop it after they see larger blocks of minority voters and their money shifting to the Democratic Party.
There may be a way to do it a little later:
1996: Herman Cain runs for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, and beats Max Cleland.
1998: Ken Blackwell wins the Senate seat in Ohio instead of Voinovich, winning that election; Ward Connerly runs for governor of California in 1998, and loses a close race to Gray Davis; Joe Rogers wins the governorship of Colorado
2001: Armstrong Williams runs for governor of Virginia and wins
2002: J.C. Watts runs for governor of Oklahoma and wins; Lynn Swann runs for governor of Pennsylvania and wins (he originally ran for governor in 2006); and then-Charleston City Council member Tim Scott upsets Lindsey Graham in the primary - and then wins the general election for Strom Thurmond's old Senate seat in South Carolina; Michael Williams defeats John Cornyn for the GOP nominate and wins a Senate seat in Texas.
2004: Alveda King runs for the seat held by Zell Miller in Georgia - and wins, giving Georgia two African-American senators, BOTH Republican;
The GOP boasts five African-American senators and four African-American governors - with three Senators (Michael Williams, Cain, and Scott) and two governors (Armstrong Williams and Watts) from the South by 2005 - with Michael Williams, Rogers, Watts, and Scott being considered possible presidential candidates in 2008, while Cain and Blackwell join the other three as potential VP nominees.
In fact, with a butterfly or two, the GOP in 2008 could have a fully African-American ticket (say, Watts and Cain). This puts African-American conservatism on the map - when the photos of African-American senators in January 2005 feature three Republicans, it's hard to ignore. When you have two or three African-Americans running for the GOP nomination in 2008, conservatism becomes viable for African-Americans.
1996: Herman Cain runs for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, and beats Max Cleland.
1998: Ken Blackwell wins the Senate seat in Ohio instead of Voinovich, winning that election; Ward Connerly runs for governor of California in 1998, and loses a close race to Gray Davis; Joe Rogers wins the governorship of Colorado
2001: Armstrong Williams runs for governor of Virginia and wins
2002: J.C. Watts runs for governor of Oklahoma and wins; Lynn Swann runs for governor of Pennsylvania and wins (he originally ran for governor in 2006); and then-Charleston City Council member Tim Scott upsets Lindsey Graham in the primary - and then wins the general election for Strom Thurmond's old Senate seat in South Carolina; Michael Williams defeats John Cornyn for the GOP nominate and wins a Senate seat in Texas.
2004: Alveda King runs for the seat held by Zell Miller in Georgia - and wins, giving Georgia two African-American senators, BOTH Republican;
The GOP boasts five African-American senators and four African-American governors - with three Senators (Michael Williams, Cain, and Scott) and two governors (Armstrong Williams and Watts) from the South by 2005 - with Michael Williams, Rogers, Watts, and Scott being considered possible presidential candidates in 2008, while Cain and Blackwell join the other three as potential VP nominees.
In fact, with a butterfly or two, the GOP in 2008 could have a fully African-American ticket (say, Watts and Cain). This puts African-American conservatism on the map - when the photos of African-American senators in January 2005 feature three Republicans, it's hard to ignore. When you have two or three African-Americans running for the GOP nomination in 2008, conservatism becomes viable for African-Americans.
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The biggie would be Alveda King running in 2004. At that point, the GOP has Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece. The "race card" goes away at that point, especially when Alveda King would be there to call it out.
For the Senate seat in Georgia? I think he is. All you need is for him to leave the Kansas City Federal Reserve about six months earlier. The other option would be for Alveda King to run against Max Cleland in 1996 and for Cain to run for the open seat after Zell Miller retired in 2004.
That could make African-American conservatism even bigger: Imagine, if you will, George W. Bush naming Alveda King as his running mate in 2000.
If anything, I could have gone a little further with this timeline with 1994:
1994: Gary Franks becomes governor of Connecticut, and Ward Connerly defeats Dianne Feinstein for the Senate seat in California.
1998: Thomas Sowell makes the unsuccessful run for the governorship of California.
I'm thinking of what a trigger for that scenario would be....
Maybe some big event damages Clinton's relation with the black community. The Rodney King incident happens on his watch and he reacts very poorly?
Maybe some big event damages Clinton's relation with the black community. The Rodney King incident happens on his watch and he reacts very poorly?
Actually, I was thinking that Charlie Rangel makes a certain comment his infamous comment in 1993 as opposed to 1994. The comment is quoted in the link. WARNING: Rangel used the n-word and another racial epithet in that comment.
In response, Haley Barbour decides to get a lot of African-Americans running statewide. In 1994, he gets Representative Gary Franks to run for governor of Connecticut and recruits Ward Connerly to run against Dianne Feinstein. In 1996, he gets Herman Cain/Alveda King to run for Sam Nunn's senate seat. His successor then recruits Rogers, Blackwell, and Sowell to run in 1998, and gets Armstrong Williams to run for the governor of Virginia in 2001.
Nah, can't be anything related to police brutality. There was too much law-and-order conservatism but blacks to defect to the Republicans. By the 1990s, it's total ASB.