DBWI: Conservatism survives in America?

Is it possible, with a POD after 1964 defeat of Goldwater in the presidential election, to have a conservative resurgence in America? The 1964 election is widely considered to be the death of conservatism in America, although the downward trend began with the Great Depression and New Deal, but I have been wondering if it is possible to prevent this.
 
Simple: have half the country suffer from sudden amnesia and forget the mistakes that lead to the Great Depression :rolleyes:
 
The only way I can think of is for:

  1. an economic depression to happen and for the government to fail to solve it (which itself could be considered ASB considering that leftwing policies have ended every recession in recent history) and for
  2. conservatism not to be discredited by the French junta of 1967-1993
 
What if Ronald Reagan survived the assassination attempt against him while campaigning for Governor of California in 1966?
 

JoeMulk

Banned
What if Ronald Reagan survived the assassination attempt against him while campaigning for Governor of California in 1966?

We might actually have seen a more vibrant counter-culture like the one that was already starting to bloom in San Francisco that was also more political. A lot of that got discredited when it was discovered that the shooter was a left-wing radical connected to SDS. Although a more widespread counter-culture would have led to a stronger conservative backlash and that could be a good POD for this scenario. Maybe the Republican Party would have been able to win more elections, we all remember how after Johnson left office in 73 and was followed by RFK's two terms the Republicans realized that the only way to win elections was to nominate a non-ideological national hero ala Eisenhower which led to President and retired astronaut Jim Lovell serving two terms.

Thank god conservatism was heaped on the ash bin of history. If someone like Goldwater or Reagen had been elected president we might have ended up with a return to the inequity rate of the pre-new deal era. It's great that after you graduate from high school you can either go to college for cheap or get a great paying unionized job with benefits.
 
OOC: A little tricky saying "conservatism" is dead TTL, when "conservative" is a broad term used to describe a wide history of ideas. Much better would be "fusionist conservatism" or something...
 
If some opposition view did surive we might still have regular elections, that might be interesting to see.
 
OOC: A little tricky saying "conservatism" is dead TTL, when "conservative" is a broad term used to describe a wide history of ideas. Much better would be "fusionist conservatism" or something...

OOC: What he said. Even worse, 'conservative' and 'liberal' are relative terms. Even two wildly liberal parties that differ on certain issues can be liberal and conservative relative to one another.
 
If some opposition view did surive we might still have regular elections, that might be interesting to see.
You still do. They're just so boring that nobody cares about them. I mean, what exactly is newsworthy about primaries in which the current president/anointed successor garners ~95% of the vote and around the same margin in the general? No wonder your news media doesn't report on them.
 
Well that was what I meant. Elections in which everyone has a chance to express views rather than only the 'official parties' that are allowed to participate.
 
  1. conservatism not to be discredited by the French junta of 1967-1993

I think this is just the tip of the ice burg, the rise of "conservative" parties in Europe and else where really put down any self proclaimed conservatives in the USA (and Canada) though its unfair to link the neo-liberal economics of conservatism to say the racial policies of the French in Algeria (both before the Junta and during it) I mean there are almost no Algerians left there (why they voted to stay French in 1995) we saw the Rise of racial conservative parties all over Europe in the 1960s-70s, though most not as cartoon evil as the French, I think the National Front Government in the UK under Enoch Powell in the 1970s turned the Irish-Americans very much against conservatism for reason we call all understand, and if any of us forget we can all look at Australia after 40 years of the National Party "elections" the White Australia policy going strong and the things that come out of John Howard mouth are enough to make your head spin.
 
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