AHD republican president bill Clinton

I've read a few things lately in the political chat that makes it seem like Clinton is more to the right than the left. I'm not sure if that true, but it got me thinking, what if he was a republican?
A Goldwater boy bill Clinton just like a Goldwater girl Hillary.



What POD would you need to make Clinton a republican? I've heard that the reason he wanted to be President was because he met JFK, and JFK was a democrat. I'm not sure if that's true. What if he had become a Goldwater conservative first just like Hillary?

I know there was a similar theme exist. But I want to see more What if discussion.


What sort of path would his political career take?

If he were to become president, and he pick a conservative like Jack Kemp to
Be VP?

Can he lead the Reagan conservatism well into 2000s?

What happens to Hillary? A Goldwaterite female president?
 
Clinton is not remotely more right than left. That's largely an artifact of current political discussions left over from the election, and basically requires ignoring the context of the 1990s.

That said, in a TL where he is more conservative, he's certainly talented enough politically to have advanced far, though I'm not sure the presidency is realistic (the South was still much friendlier to Democrats at that point, and as an outsider he'd have difficulty winning the support of the Republican establishment that was still fairly firmly in control of the Republican Party at the time he was running).

I could certainly see him as a governor or senator.
 
By the standards of the 1990s, he was squarely in the centre. It's often forgotten just how far left the nation went in the last eight years.
Well Bill clintons economic policy is more to the right than Bush. Bush is almost an eastern establishment. More left to the Clintons. Bush 2 add more regulations than Clinton by far.
 
Do the words "welfare reform" ring a bell?
How about "Hillarycare" or "Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg" or what his Republican opponents called "the biggest tax increase in history?" Sure, politics in the 1990s were more conservative for both parties, but he was definitely well left-of-center for the time (and got a ton of pushback for it; the Democrats lost Congress in 1994, and Don't Ask, Don't Tell was the result of a compromise when his original plan to end the ban on gays in the military was blocked by the Joint Chiefs and a nominally Democratic Congress, while Hillarycare was again blocked by Congress).

It's also worth remembering that he came to power in a period where the Democratic Party was not in a particularly strong place on the national level. The Democrats had lost 3 straight presidential elections (and 5 of the last 6, with the very moderate Jimmy Carter as the only exception), and conservative Democrats were still a dominant force in Congress (and rapidly being replaced by even more conservative Republicans). That meant Clinton had to make a lot of compromises, and some of his compromises were more conservative than what some of today's liberals would prefer, but that hardly makes him a conservative. The conservative movement absolutely hated Clinton; there's a reason that Republicans invested so much time and effort in investigations and impeachment.
 
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