Could the Rockefeller Republicans Survive?

The Rockefeller Republican is an extinct breed. You may still be able to find a few in the Northeast, certainly among elder Republicans, but for all practical purposes, they no longer exist. The Republican party, once a big tent of factions (as the Democrats once were as well), is now a wholly Conservative party.

The issue I've always wondered is could the Rockefeller Republicans have survived, or was this always the way things were going to turn out? And please don't rebuke with "the Republicans could have been Liberals, and the Democrats could have been Conservatives". This is focused on the factions.
 
It is completley possible that the Rockefeller Republicans could survive. All you need is for Nixon to not run in 68' and Romney's campaign to implode. This would result in a Rockefeller victory. However this would have alienated the Conservative wing, which may have resulted in Reagan running as an independent. The election of 68' would then result in a Humphrey victory. Though Reagan could have won in a 72' primary, you still have Rockefeller surving as a 'Goldwater figure', paving the way to a future, more liberal GOP.
 

Agree that Rocky winning in 1968 makes the most intuitive sense as a PoD. There are later PoDs that'll keep the Fusionist Right from taking over the party (eg Ford wins in 76), but I'm not sure those wouldn't mean the rise of a different breed of conservative...
 
A different 1948 or 1952 would do the trick. Either have Dewey win, vindicating the Northeastern Establishment that so loved Rockefeller a decade and a half later, or have Taft win the nomination and lose the general, which would take the drive out of the conservative movement that culminated in Goldwater's nomination in 1964. Also, if anything changes in 1952, Goldwater probably loses his race and the conservatives are denied a lightning rod. If the establishment gets Dewey instead of Eisenhower, the party gets a politician who understands how to strengthen his wing of the party rather than a leader who lets the apparatus pretty much rot away. If the conservatives lose with Taft in 1952, I imagine they'll be less than enthused going forward and the establishment Republicans will retain their control of the party apparatus.
 

Stolengood

Banned
Why not just have Charles Evans Hughes win in 1916? Or, better yet, butterfly Taft as President? He's the one who finally let the big-business Republicans take control, with their "smoke-filled room" politics...
 
In terms of the presidency, the biggest problem Rockefeller Republicans had was the fact that beginning in 1972, nominees were selected in primaries.
 
In terms of the presidency, the biggest problem Rockefeller Republicans had was the fact that beginning in 1972, nominees were selected in primaries.

Good point. This encouraged Republican candidates playing to a variety of 'conservative' groups (and some of them are not, they are fairly radical), causing Republican primary winner to move their center of mass further to the fringe.

There may be other PoD later than 1916, 1948, 1952 or 1968, tho the last is a good one. Given the fallout from the Vietnam war, the end of the post WWII economic boom, and several social trends I'm unsure if the movement of the Republican party from the center could be changed in the 1980s or 1990s.
 
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