AHC: U.S. Republican Party from 1986 to 1995 — The Center Holds?

I'd say this is the key ten years in which the Republican Party went radical. In '86, there was the Iran-Contra hearings and many conservatives may have felt President Reagan was being unfairly criticized. In '87 and '88, Reagan pursued nuclear weapons agreements with the Soviets and many conservatives may have felt let down.

I'm looking for what you might consider to be the three key PODs and/or missed oppotunities during this period. Please feel free to discuss both personalities and policies. :)
 
I suspect the POD may be too late: Iran-Contra and Poppy's rush to the right in '88 in order to get the top job, along with increasing generational turnover were essentially signs the cancer had spread to the liver and lymph nodes (after '88 there were exactly two genuinely liberal Republicans in the Senate, John Chafee and Mark Hatfield, and even moderates like Kassebaum were an endangered species -- critically the party in the House was already significantly more feral, held in check mostly by Bob Michel and wafer-thin social conventions.) Probably the last best shot for at least a GOP split between New Right and old-school wings is some kind of significant challenge to Reagan's drag nach Weiss Haus in 1980 and no Poppy doesn't cut the mustard as he demonstrated IOTL. Ford, who let's remember was an actual small-c conservative especially on economic issues, just sane, polite, and socially moderate, was in effect the last stand of the GOP Establishment when it came to *executive* control of the party. By 1980 they'd been outmaneuvered by the holy trinity of new machinery: the direct-mail noise machine, the new think tanks, and the emergent religious right. After that rather like the Noldorin of the First Age reasonable Republicans were fighting the long defeat, with no flying swan ships in sight.
 
Or to put it a different way when you have the very avatar of reasonable Republicanism, Howard Baker, frantically working the refs in the Senate and the establishment press that the country really didn't need another impeachment proceedings re: Saint Ronnie of Pacific Pallisades, you've already lost the war.

ETA: apropos of not much of that, am currently enjoying a delightful but terribly brief visit to British Columbia, a reminder that it is actually, not just theoretically, possible for parts of North America to be a sane and reasonable place. Got to keep slavery out of it though. Bad shit went down in Canada too, Lord knows, but you're better off getting as far from that long plantation archipelago that ran from the Tidewater down through the Caribbean to the pampas as possible.
 
Last edited:
. . . (after '88 there were exactly two genuinely liberal Republicans in the Senate, John Chafee and Mark Hatfield, and even moderates like Kassebaum were an endangered species . . .
In selling his Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), President Reagan often repeated the phrase "Trust, but Verify."

Perhaps if Senators Dennis DeConcini (edit: D-Arizona), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), John Danforth (R-Missouri), etc, etc, had made the case that conservatism means both principles and engagement with the world. This might have provided a good counterweight to the principles-only approach.

So, we might have a U.S. polity where the majority of Republicans take the view, of course we take a medium set, see how it works out, and then take another medium step, why would we ever do anything differently? ! ?

EDIT: I made a mistake. I was thinking of Senator Pete Domenici (R-New Mexico).
 
Last edited:
Please elaborate on what this means, especially the German.
"Journey to the White House," usually phrased in the original German as a kind of inevitable pull in a direction, not quite manifest destiny but a little like that. After Reagan grabbed the mike he was on his way to the nomination and then it was just a matter of convincing the waverers that it was ok to vote for him as the means to turf Carter out. The lack of a really substantive challenge, that went down to the wire, left the old-school GOP without a force to rally round in opposition to Reagan; Anderson dissolved into a protest vote as the prospect of actually voting for someone got closer. If you can find an Anderson like figure who can do more than be an expression of doubt about the two major-party candidates then you might get somewhere. But that still puts a POD in relation to 1980 which is not what you're looking for.
 
In selling his Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), President Reagan often repeated the phrase "Trust, but Verify."

Perhaps if Senators Dennis DeConcini (R-Arizona), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), John Danforth (R-Missouri), etc, etc, had made the case that conservatism means both principles and engagement with the world. This might have provided a good counterweight to the principles-only approach.

So, we might have a U.S. polity where the majority of Republicans take the view, of course we take a medium set, see how it works out, and then take another medium step, why would we ever do anything differently? ! ?

Danforth feels like the best bet. Grassley's career plots to a course on the axes of grumpiness and diminishing returns, and DeConcini has that scandal (his love child with Paul Laxalt's much younger daughter) waiting for some Gingrich type to backstab him with it. Danforth might have been a figure to rally round, if he'd put his mind to it.
 
By 1980, the New Right had taken hold. While you can find a way to get Bush the 1980 Republican Nomination that does not necessarily solve the rise of the far-right as the cultural reasons for their prominence originate in the mid-60s as a backlash to that radical left rise in the Vietnam/Watergate era.

That being said there remain significant differences between the Gingrich style and the McConnell style. Even Gingrich, though certainly no Dirksen or Tip O'Neill, believed in working with Clinton on some things. The McConnell approach of opposing the entire Obama agenda outright is a different thing altogether and could be altered by a different senator taking GOP leadership/McConnell never winning his Senate race.
 
Speaking of Gingrich, he's probably someone else who needs to fail in order for Republican moderation to succeed in the long run. Perhaps if Tip O'Niell had controlled his temper better during their feud over Gingrich's habit of grandstanding in front of an empty House chamber, ordered the cameraman to pan over the empty seats and mock Gingrich for his choice of "audience", he'd have been seen as the winner of the exchange and humiliated Gingrich in return. That might have discredited tactics like that designed to hurt the integrity of Congress in the medium to long term.
 
I agree with Yes that it's too late. I think the only way you can maybe halt the social and political turn to the right is if the GOP doesn't dominate the 80s, that is to say, if Ford wins in '76 and a Democratic 80s. Neoliberalism is still inevitable in the 80s no matter who is in the White House but it would be more like Hawke-Keating in Australia than Reaganomics and concomitant DLC/Clintonism: similarly the 90s will probably see a political "ascendancy of conservatism" like John Howard there but only after the Democrats exhaust themselves rather than an actual *social* ascent of the right. The evangelicals may not be as powerful here, so social hot button issues may not be quite the same litmus test they became under Reagan and the right may not be as "bold" and prone to overreach a la Gingrich.
 
I agree with most of the above, also if you can get rid of the Keating 5 fallout, maybe McCain can be a more powerful voice in the body at an earlier date.
 
But again it might not, the US right, probably thanks to Jim Crow and the later social conservative-big business pact in the south, has generally *not* had to deal historically with such powerful labor forces as the rest of the west and isn't use to the diplomacy.
 
Just as the Rs were shedding Liberals, Dems were losing Conservatives.

The Great Realignment to two 'pure' Parties was underway.

Adapt, or leave Politics. Switching Parties was the last option.
 
I agree with Yes that it's too late. I think the only way you can maybe halt the social and political turn to the right is if the GOP doesn't dominate the 80s, that is to say, if Ford wins in '76 and a Democratic 80s. Neoliberalism is still inevitable in the 80s no matter who is in the White House but it would be more like Hawke-Keating in Australia than Reaganomics and concomitant DLC/Clintonism: similarly the 90s will probably see a political "ascendancy of conservatism" like John Howard there but only after the Democrats exhaust themselves rather than an actual *social* ascent of the right. The evangelicals may not be as powerful here, so social hot button issues may not be quite the same litmus test they became under Reagan and the right may not be as "bold" and prone to overreach a la Gingrich.

There was a semi-legendary "1980s Democratic Revolution" thread a little while back that looked at that. Ford losing in '76 was arguably one of the great American tragedies of the late 20th century. Then he spends a second term carrying the can for the woes of the Seventies, puts a crimp in Reagan's potential to do more than mobilize the emerging core of Republican voters behind him, and you get at least initially a Democratic administration that's much likelier to be relatively Keynesian and paleoliberal (although wary of inflation) in power for much of the decade before the neoliberals start to ascend late in the decade. And probably, since the New Right's approach to election losses was to double down rather than change their views or approach, one that at once polarizes the GOP faster and makes them electorally unpalatable for longer. That way, by the time the Republicans return to the White House it's either someone more moderate as the party's desire for power overcomes ideological purity, or when the purists finally win one and at a later point drive the financial sector off a cliff (it's baked in to New Right ideology), the country will be healthier than IOTL and better able to absorb the shock, and the Democrats returned to power will be more willing to entertain "what worked in the Eighties" as a formula for repair of the economy. I agree broadly about the social issues, not so much that they won't be hot-button matters but that the culture warriors are more likely to be defined as a minority in the American polity, rather than making dominance displays that cause otherwise more moderate conservatives to follow them because they (the Religious Right) are acting like alpha chimps...
 
Just as the Rs were shedding Liberals, Dems were losing Conservatives.

The Great Realignment to two 'pure' Parties was underway.

Adapt, or leave Politics. Switching Parties was the last option.

At the very least, switching parties, or electing a new generation of people with similar ideologies but different party labels (see: most of the South), was one of the final symptoms of the change. The transformation of Dixiecrats into outright and highly partisan-aligned Republicans, and the emergence of the Rockefeller Republicanism of the DLC as a dominant establishment force in the Democratic Party, were two of the last great ripples in the realignment wave.
 
I do think there was a transformation in Dixie politics by a social conservative-big business alliance (Ferguson points to Big Oil exiting the Democratic Party as a culprit), even in the late 70s the south was *not* dominated by economic rightism per se, the real shift to it comes in the mid-late 80s.
 
There was a semi-legendary "1980s Democratic Revolution" thread a little while back that looked at that. Ford losing in '76 was arguably one of the great American tragedies of the late 20th century. Then he spends a second term carrying the can for the woes of the Seventies, puts a crimp in Reagan's potential to do more than mobilize the emerging core of Republican voters behind him, and you get at least initially a Democratic administration that's much likelier to be relatively Keynesian and paleoliberal (although wary of inflation) in power for much of the decade before the neoliberals start to ascend late in the decade. And probably, since the New Right's approach to election losses was to double down rather than change their views or approach, one that at once polarizes the GOP faster and makes them electorally unpalatable for longer. That way, by the time the Republicans return to the White House it's either someone more moderate as the party's desire for power overcomes ideological purity, or when the purists finally win one and at a later point drive the financial sector off a cliff (it's baked in to New Right ideology), the country will be healthier than IOTL and better able to absorb the shock, and the Democrats returned to power will be more willing to entertain "what worked in the Eighties" as a formula for repair of the economy. I agree broadly about the social issues, not so much that they won't be hot-button matters but that the culture warriors are more likely to be defined as a minority in the American polity, rather than making dominance displays that cause otherwise more moderate conservatives to follow them because they (the Religious Right) are acting like alpha chimps...

Yeah, I think even a very liberal and ambitious 80s Democratic President would wind up like Mitterrand. I'm not sure if it butterflies the Great Recession, but the political and social-economic rot should be marginally less. I think Democratic neoliberalism would be more Coalition For A Democratic Majority than Clintonite (simply because the ballgame hasn't been moved so right, and the "Old Guard" won't be so discredited), though like Australia it would probably have a lot of trouble in the 90s/00s until a Kevin Rudd-style "unaligned anti-partisan/political popular technocrat" emerges (our closest analogue OTL being Obama).

I think the most likely figure to emerge for 1980 would be some "pragmatic New Dealer", if only because the New Left and New South had already been tried and failed, and it's too early for the Atari Democrats.
 
Last edited:
I suspect the POD may be too late: Iran-Contra and Poppy's rush to the right in '88 in order to get the top job, along with increasing generational turnover were essentially signs the cancer had spread to the liver and lymph nodes (after '88 there were exactly two genuinely liberal Republicans in the Senate, John Chafee and Mark Hatfield, and even moderates like Kassebaum were an endangered species -- critically the party in the House was already significantly more feral, held in check mostly by Bob Michel and wafer-thin social conventions.) Probably the last best shot for at least a GOP split between New Right and old-school wings is some kind of significant challenge to Reagan's drag nach Weiss Haus in 1980 and no Poppy doesn't cut the mustard as he demonstrated IOTL. Ford, who let's remember was an actual small-c conservative especially on economic issues, just sane, polite, and socially moderate, was in effect the last stand of the GOP Establishment when it came to *executive* control of the party. By 1980 they'd been outmaneuvered by the holy trinity of new machinery: the direct-mail noise machine, the new think tanks, and the emergent religious right. After that rather like the Noldorin of the First Age reasonable Republicans were fighting the long defeat, with no flying swan ships in sight.
I'd argue that sort of in between that of the Senate Republican coalition, you sort of probably had that of Bob Dole in a unique position in terms of that. Dole was similar to that of Ford in terms of economic issues (if I recall in reading while he worked on trying to balance the budget as Senate Majority Leader, he got constantly annoyed at Reagan for blowing the deficit up when they were trying to lower taxes and cut spending), but he arguably did fit in among some of the more Democrats on the left in terms of certain things in terms of social welfare (for example he was a strong supporter of food stamps and with McGovern got the McGovern-Dole Food Stamp Act which got rid of the Extended Purchase Requirement, and in '88 did support the creation of a federal childcare program if I recall reading through something in there).
 
Yes: I don't know if I agree on McConnell myself and think he's purely a careerist and a symptom of the political culture, he was a very moderate Republican in the Kentucky legislature.
 
Yes: I don't know if I agree on McConnell myself and think he's purely a careerist and a symptom of the political culture, he was a very moderate Republican in the Kentucky legislature.
That one (the "let's get rid of McConnell" comment) wasn't me, but I agree with you that McConnell's early career isn't an indicator of his later one -- he is again one of the symptoms as much as a part of the causality :)
 
Top