AHC/WI: Republican Northern Strategy

Delta Force

Banned
What if the Republican Party had opted to pursue a Northern Strategy focused on securing the Northeast and Upper Midwest? Would it have been a realistic option in 1968 or 1972, or did Goldwater prevent such an option from being pursued after 1964?
 

Wallet

Banned
Eisenhower passes stronger civil rights.

Have 1960 be Nixon vs LBJ. Nixon pick Rockefeller as VP. Nixon adds more civil rights. He wins in 1964 against Al Gore Sr.

Rockefeller wins in 1968, but loses in 1972 to George Wallace. This leads to disaster and George Romney wins in 1976 with Edward Brooke as VP

Basically you need a pro civil rights party.
 
Dewey wins in 1948, which discredits Truman's pro-civil rights approach and shifts the Democratic Party rightward on the issue of civil rights, while Dewey, who passes (toothless) civil rights legislation, secures black votes. A Republican wins in 1956, but loses in 1960 to Al Gore, who opposed civil rights. Gore annoys the North, and this leads George Romney to win in 1964 by doubling down on civil rights.
 
What if the Republican Party had opted to pursue a Northern Strategy focused on securing the Northeast and Upper Midwest? Would it have been a realistic option in 1968 or 1972, or did Goldwater prevent such an option from being pursued after 1964?

The Southern Strategy came even earlier, in 1960, with Nixon using his appeal as the son of a poor man to attract Southern votes. To break it, I think you need a pro-civil rights Republican (George Romney?) to win in 1968, but it's gonna be hard to win without the Southern Strategy.

Another way is to have Kennedy choose Gore or even Connally as his VP. Neither president would pursue civil rights and the Republicans exploit that to win in 1964.
 
What if the Republican Party had opted to pursue a Northern Strategy focused on securing the Northeast and Upper Midwest? Would it have been a realistic option in 1968 or 1972, or did Goldwater prevent such an option from being pursued after 1964?

The Republican Party already dominated those areas, though not absolutely. Back in the McKinley Era, the Republicans swept those areas while the Democrats held the South and West - but the Republicans won the elections. However, the margins were always close, and there was no possibility of "securing" those areas, particularly the northeast.

The point of the "Southern Strategy" was not to switch the Republicans to a southern base, but to take advantage of the natural breakdown of the unnnatural fixation of the South with the Democrats - a process that required 40 years to complete.
 
It's interesting to think about a later POD, like 1960 or even 1964. It shouldn't be too hard to maintain a party leadership that simply refuses to court the south, that has a stronger notion of the intrinsic definition of the Republican Party as opposed to Southern designs (which held up for a century with little effort after all). Honestly if you keep nominating moderates (of which there are a strong stock through at least the 1970s, at which point careers that were derailed IOTL would not be ITTL and more strong moderates would follow) the conservatives aren't ever going to have the numbers to win. Southern conservatives needed to be courted by the GOP to come around, and that won't happen under this scenario.

But by that point the Democratic trajectory is also fixed against the designs of southern whites. It seems hard to believe that the two party system might break down, but if you look back at the electoral maps, you can see that was a very possible trajectory. I posit that it's less likely the Democrats would be able to successfully retreat on civil rights and regain white southern voters than it is that you'd have a 2.5 party system emerge.
 
You also do need a shift in the AA vote.

One of the reasons some in the GOP accepted the Southern Strategy was that during the 50's they pushed for civil rights at the cost of southern votes but the northern black vote remained with the Democrats.
 
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