Hmmm...Wonder if they could have brought down the Soviet Union, like the Democrats did...1976 was a poisoned chalice, it was one of those years that who ever won it, who ever gained it would be obliterated as a party.
The republicans could have bounced back from watergate, they could have bounced back from Iran, from the oil crisis, from the recession and even stagflation but not all of them at once. It took decades for them to come back from that, if they had lost that year they would have at the minimum owned the 80s.