DBWI: Bush 2000?

Wait, wait, let me clarify. Now, as anyone who's spent even a little time of this site knows, there's many a thread about a scenario where Al Gore won the 2000 Presidential Election instead of John McCain. However, this scenario is different. George W. Bush, a name i'd honestly be surprised if anyone outside of Texas still remembers anymore, challenged McCain in the Republican primaries, and may well have beaten him, had it not been for Bush's campaign being implicated in a dirty poll scandal in South Carolina, something which McCain jumped on. So, in honor of the 9th anniversary of McCain's own death, I ask: what if that scandal had never happened, and Bush had won the primaries? Could he have beaten Gore? The 2000 election was famously close, coming down to 1500 votes in Ohio, and a mere 15 votes in Florida, a fact which no doubt contributed to Gore's appointment as head of The EPA, shortly before it's upgrade to a full Cabinet-level position, in addition to the spirit of bipartisanship. Could Bush have beaten those odds? Or would Gore have pushed the needle just enough the other way? Now, of course, famously, McCain's presidency, which had initially been focused on reform, mostly in the fields of campaign finance, immigration, energy, and various others, soon evolved into the field where McCain really shone: foreign affairs. The 9/11 attacks, which killed 1402 people, and, by all accounts, would have killed far more had it not been for McCain's suspicions regarding an attack on American soil, soon led to war in Afghanistan. Then, of course, there was the conflict in Korea afterwards...How would Bush have handled these things, if he got in office at all? Would we see the "New Conservative" movement at all? Your thoughts?
 
It’s unlikely, but still possible, especially given with the rise of more conservative elements around the time.

As for McCain, he was pretty meh as a president. His campaign finance reforms with Feingold were pretty nice, but he wasn't that much of a reformist. As for foreign affairs, he was a war hawk through and through. Yes he led to war in Afghanistan and busted up the Taliban, but we ended up in a pointless war in Iraq and the conflict in Korea led to worse relationships with China for a while.

The "New Conservative" movement meanwhile was just basically the newer iteration of the Neo-Conservatives of Reagan's time and so on, just with being more supportive toward LGTBQIA people (which is good news, especially since it dented the evangelists' influence in the GOP.)

But at the end of it, McCain's tax cuts worsened the economy and was believed to have contributed to the 2008 recession along with his increase in militarization. So when the Recession hit, many began the New Conservative movement to try and represent "old-school values" with the growing contemporary times and the the fiscal policies. While they were more moderate than either the Neo-Cons or the Paleo-Cons, it wasn't enough to save them from the 2010 Democratic Wave.

Though President Feingold did manage to work enough with McCain on some things like immigration and campaign reform to become a big name to run against Clinton and win.
 
Bush probably would have to resign really early in his term because of his connections with Enron. He didn’t run for Governor again in 2002 because of that, and would’ve been in more trouble if the McCain Administration bothered with a real investigation into those political connections.
 
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