If G.O.P decided that President Bush needed a new V.P candidate in order to win reelection (I'm not saying it would succeed) who would be Quayles successor as the Republican V.P candidate?
 
It would need to be someone approximately as acceptable to conservatives as was Quayle. That suggests Jack Kemp to me. At the time, he was HUD Secretary, so getting the VP nomination would position him well for a run on his own in 1996. I don't know that the more polished Kemp would have done enough for Bush to beat Clinton, but certainly he'd be an attractive candidate four years hence--certainly more so than the rather metallic Dole (who, IIRC, was perceived as the presidential candidate largely as a retirement present). Team up Kemp with NJ Governor Christie Whitman in 1996 and suddenly Clinton has a good bit to worry about: a rather charismatic opponent, and a woman VP candidate with real executive credentials.
 
It would need to be someone approximately as acceptable to conservatives as was Quayle. That suggests Jack Kemp to me. At the time, he was HUD Secretary, so getting the VP nomination would position him well for a run on his own in 1996. I don't know that the more polished Kemp would have done enough for Bush to beat Clinton, but certainly he'd be an attractive candidate four years hence--certainly more so than the rather metallic Dole (who, IIRC, was perceived as the presidential candidate largely as a retirement present). Team up Kemp with NJ Governor Christie Whitman in 1996 and suddenly Clinton has a good bit to worry about: a rather charismatic opponent, and a woman VP candidate with real executive credentials.
Thanks for the advice (this was never going to be a Bush winning reelection timeline anyway) would you like to collaborate on a timeline?
 
I was thinking if Bush replaces Dan Quayle for V.P Candidate in 92 would Democratic candidate Bill Clinton chicken out of his gamble of having two southern Democrats running and instead picks George Mitchell, or Paul Tsongas as his V.P. candidate
 
Colin Powell.

Literal war hero, decades of public service, and it would be the first African-American on a major party ticket, not coincidentally in a year where the Dems ran a pair of Southerners.

And before someone says "BuT hE wUz PrO-cHoIcE" hardly a deal-breaker for the VP slot, and it has a built-in perfect counter.

"You know who else is pro-choice? Whatever Justice that gets on the court if Clinton wins."
 
I wouldn’t have minded seeing someone like George Deukmejian. A moderate-to-conservative Republican, and an Armenian-American with an inspiring story of how his parents escaped the Armenian Genocide, who had a great track record as a Republican Governor of California (more fondly remembered than his successor, Pete Wilson). George H.W. Bush actually seriously considered Deukmejian for VP in 1988, but he turned it down, saying he didn’t want to hand over control of the state to Leo McCarthy, a Democrat.
 
Colin Powell.

Literal war hero, decades of public service, and it would be the first African-American on a major party ticket, not coincidentally in a year where the Dems ran a pair of Southerners.

And before someone says "BuT hE wUz PrO-cHoIcE" hardly a deal-breaker for the VP slot, and it has a built-in perfect counter.

"You know who else is pro-choice? Whatever Justice that gets on the court if Clinton wins."

The counter works great until the convention falls apart and Pat Buchanan stages a third party run that dooms HW worse than OTL.

Edit: he’s also still JCS Chairman, and presumably enjoys being at the pinnacle of his profession, instead of the relatively powerless position of VP.
 
The counter works great until the convention falls apart and Pat Buchanan stages a third party run that dooms HW worse than OTL.

Edit: he’s also still JCS Chairman, and presumably enjoys being at the pinnacle of his profession, instead of the relatively powerless position of VP.
So did Buchanan join Ross Perot in scenario? Or are we looking at a fourth party?
 
So did Buchanan join Ross Perot in scenario? Or are we looking at a fourth party?

I guess I don't have a great answer on the butterflies electorally, but I'm basing most of my speculation on the meltdown when McCain almost put Lieberman on the ballot in 2008, and it was scuttled because of how much the spotlight would shift to the pro choice/pro life divisions, which would also serve to alienate swing voters. At the end of the day, the thinking from the McCain camp was even if we could get Lieberman on the ballot, the effort required would kill all the other messaging they'd be trying to get through. The 1992 IOTL was already a bit over the top on social issues, so the blowback could be even more severe here. At the very least, we're looking at a de-motivated base that's already really angry at Bush over reversing the tax pledge.

Here's a 1991 NY Times article discussing the Bush/Powell ticket that I found after my initial post, and they have some interesting thoughts. It's called the Dream Ticket, so it's not like Bush/Powell is a bad idea. The following paragraphs come after they discuss Powell's sky high popularity and appeal of that ticket.

A Bush-Powell ticket might even be considered a cynical exploitation of the war's political spoils and an implicit promise of a militaristic foreign policy. Republicans hardly need a general on their ticket to claim that they're tough and the Democrats soft on national security; they've successfully touted that line for two decades and now can cite as evidence the gulf war and Democratic opposition to it.

The Dream Ticket also would give greater credence to the Democrats' certain charge that Mr. Bush has no interest in or program to cure the nation's domestic ills. And black voters are unlikely to be swayed massively by one black on one Republican ticket, against Mr. Bush's poor record on civil rights issues.

General Powell campaigning as a Republican in 1992 -- how much bloom would that take off the military rose? -- might win over enough blacks who otherwise would have voted Democratic to swing a close election; but a close election doesn't appear to be in the cards. And Republicans who care about the black vote need a long-term party approach to serving blacks' needs and interests, not one spectacular gesture of questionable sincerity.

That part about Bush not really needing Powell on defense credentials is a good point, and turns out to be a bit clairvoyant in that 1992 turned out to not really be about foreign policy, if it would have been, HW would have crushed it. Powell doesn't do a ton of Bush a ton on what Clinton really started hammering him away on. And, at the end of the day, folks vote for the top of the ticket, not the bottom, so with any switch, you have to ask if it's worth the week of horse race/sausage stories about why the change was made and lose a few news cycles for negligible gain.
 
Also, if the cynical calculation on the part of the Bush team is that adding Powell to the ticket will boost the president’s performance among African Americans, then they would also have to guess that for every one black voter they win over, they will lose at least one white voter. The America of 1992 was not the America of 2008, and between Powell’s race and pro-choice position on abortion, it would not be surprising if Clinton sweeps the South nearly entirely in this scenario.
 
Dumping Quayle was sounded out in a very tentative way by some parts of the Bush campaign, but it went nowhere - the polls they commissioned confirmed what they already knew, VPs have very little effect on elections. In addition, Quayle was a fave of the right, and dumping him would have played merry hell with them. (Kemp, a name already mentioned, was held in very low regard by Bush) Bush himself seemed to have absolutely no interest in this - probably partly because doing so would have raised very significant questions about tapping Quayle in the first place.

In short, removing Quayle was very unlikely to ever happen, and if it had been done, it would probably have been a net negative for Bush.
 
Bush nominates either Jack Kemp, Carroll Campbell, or John McCain. The Republican Party was not adventurous enough back then to nominate someone quite as groundbreaking as Colin Powell. The most he gets during a second Bush term is probably Secretary of Defense.

If Bush nominated Kemp in 1992 and still lost to Clinton, I wonder who Bob Dole nominates in 1996. Probably Campbell.

Second Bush secretly wanted his father to nominate Dick Cheney to replace Dan Quayle. If Senior Bush nominated Cheney and still lost to Clinton, I wonder who Second Bush would nominate in 2000.
 
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