Conservatives who could have been Liberals and vice-versa

Oswald Mosley famously started off as a Conservative, became an independent, then became a Fabian socialist in the Labour Party, then founded the New Party which promoted Keynesian economics and protectionism before adopting fascism and founding the British Union of Fascists, before creating the pan-European, corporatist (and fascist) Union Movement and the National Party of Europe, which brought together similar movements from across Europe such as Jeune Europe. If he'd been more patient while a Conservative or Labour MP he could have got ahead in his career.
 
As EdT's brilliant TL details, Mosley could have been a very influential Labour PM. However reading on his Tory years he seemed to hold no loyalty, and indeed crossed the floor when he realised his developing views were out of sync with them. He was practically handed a seat in 1918 due to family connections and indeed campaigned against another Tory.

Clegg may have turned Tory if a left-winger managed to topple Thatcher
 

Susano

Banned
Now for an odd thought: Emperor William II of Germany. He was a notoriously inconsistent personality, changing moods and opinions depending on who was around him. Now and then he also had hopes of becoming an Emperor of the people, and he was supportive of Bismarcks social programms while opposing Bismarcks ideas for violent supression of the workers/social democratic movement. Of course, his belief in the divine right of monarchs was kinda in the way of that. But it should not be impossible to eradicate this trait of personality from him...
 
Franklin Roosevelt could very well have been a Bourbon Democrat. He was notoriously fiscally conservative in the early New Deal (calling for $500 million in cuts to the meager federal budget in 1933) and wasn't really big on a lot of the jobs programs and unemployment insurance he eventually came around to supporting. His polio and his association with others down on their luck changed that, I think.

Alternatively, Roosevelt could very well end up a Republican. He was a member of the College Republicans and supported both McKinley and Teddy before becoming a Democrat out of respect for his father.

Dwight Eisenhower could very easily end up a Democrat if the Republicans retrench into isolationism.

Bill Clinton would probably have been a moderate Republican had he been born in any region in the country other than the South.
 
Norton is correct, and Nixon was always McCarthy's political superior, never a subordinate. McCarthy hated Nixon more than anyone for engineering his downfall by the end.

How was Nixon Joe Mc Carthy's superior? McCarthy was a Senate committee Chairman when Nixon was a freshman in the House, The Vice President has no authority at all over the Senate except as a pro tem tie-breaker. I was wrong about Nixon and RFK though ( I should look thes things up):eek:

However, JFK did run to the right of Nixon on defense policy in 1960, claiming that Eisenhower/Nixon had allowed the formation of a "missile gap" with the USSR

From Wikipedia on Joe McCarthy:

"McCarthy established a bond with the powerful Kennedy family, which had high visibility among Catholics. McCarthy became a close friend of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., himself a fervent anti-Communist, and was a frequent guest at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. He dated two of Kennedy's daughters, Patricia and Eunice,[47][48] and was godfather to Robert F. Kennedy's first child, Kathleen Kennedy. Robert was chosen by McCarthy as a counsel for his investigatory committee, but resigned after six months due to disagreements with McCarthy and Cohn. Joseph Kennedy had a national network of contacts and became a vocal supporter, building McCarthy's popularity among Catholics and making sizable contributions to McCarthy's campaigns.[49] The Kennedy patriarch hoped that one of his sons would be president. Mindful of the anti-Catholic prejudice Al Smith faced during his 1928 campaign for that office, Joseph Kennedy supported McCarthy as a national Catholic politician who might pave the way for a younger Kennedy's presidential candidacy.
Unlike many Democrats, John F. Kennedy, who served in the Senate with McCarthy from 1953 until the latter's death in 1957, never attacked McCarthy. McCarthy had refused to campaign for Kennedy's 1952 opponent, Republican incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., due to his friendship with the Kennedys.[50] Asked by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. why he avoided criticism of McCarthy, Kennedy said, "Hell, half my voters in Massachusetts look on McCarthy as a hero."
 
Tom Watson:

At the start of his career, Watson was a member of the Populist Party who supported an alliance between poore whites and blacks before he became a staunch race and Jew baiter and a supporter of the Ku Klux Klan.
 
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