DBWI: What if Reagan won the SC nomination in 1968?

Ronald Reagan was a contender for the SC nomination in 1960, 1964, 1968 and 1976. What if he won in 1968 instead of Gump could he have led the party to victory?
 
Obviously, any SoCon candidate, perhaps even Harry Wright himself, would have beaten Short after that shitshow of a presidency. Now how he does in office is the real question
 
The SoCons would have won in any circumstance, the policies of Maxie Short and the Race War in the south made pretty much everyone want some stability and the SoCons were able to deliver.
 
OK.

Anyway, if so, Yes, I think that Reagan had much higher odds of delivering victory to the SCs in 1968 than Forrest Gump did.
Don't you mean his aunt Mellie? :p

OOC: This is based off The Crossroads of Destiny, an election game in Shared Worlds run by @Heliogabalus and has now reached its third thread. For those who are unfamiliar with the game, I'll provide a synopsis of the 1968 election:
The two main parties are:
  • The Citizen's Alliance, whose members range from moderate leftists such as JFK and LBJ, to radicals such as McGovern,
  • The Social Conservatives, who, as the name implies, are right-wing
There are also three semi-major parties:
  • The Forward in Unity Party, who are centrists
  • The Patriotic Independent Party, basically TTL's AIP
  • The Nature and Left Coalition, an environmentalist/New Left/socially liberal party
Elections are decided by a mixed PV/EC two round system, with the top two candidates in the popular vote from the first round facing off in a second round determined by the Electoral College.

Basically, the situation in the South is somehow even worse than OTL, with white supremacists(the KKK) and black nationalists(known as the Socialist Liberation Continuity Army) both committing acts of terror across the region. On December 23rd, 1966, an SCLA member by the name of Huey P. Newton assassinated President Henry Jones of the Citizen's Alliance and his Vice President Denson Bell in a shooting/bombing at Indiana University. The line of succession laws ITTL make Jones's Secretary of State, Maxie Short, a radical socialist, in office.

Jones had already had a mediocre presidency, being obstructed by the SoCon dominated Congress and losing the popular vote in both of his victories in 1960 and 1964, and an economic downfall that had already begun during his first term became even worse during his second, becoming a bona-fide recession. The midterms show America is quickly turning to extremism in order to solve their problems, as the PIP and NLC win 101 seats in the House between them, and the CA is in danger of actually becoming the third or even fourth largest party in Congress. So, in essence, Short is given a near impossible task: Turn this sinking ship around, stop the bloodshed in the South, and win re-election. Nobody expects him to succeed.

But somehow, Short doesn't manage to just fail, he actually manages to actually underperform everyone's expectations. The economy is now in its worst state since the Great Depression, possibly even worse, and Short's attempts to solve the situation between the KKK and SCLA just make both sides angrier, leading to even more terrorist attacks, one such example being the assassination of Roy Wilkins in early 1968, and turning major cities across the nation into war zones.

Unsurprisingly, everyone expects the Citizen's Alliance to lose in a landslide, and no one tries to challenge Short at the convention, as the party is content to let him be a sacrificial lamb. Some analysts even think that he may lose his spot in the runoff to the PIP, FIU, or NLC.

Five candidates declare their intention to compete in the SoCon convention:
  • Former Secretary of State and current SML Mellie Gump, the 1960 nominee who lost an extremely close race to Jones but won the popular vote
  • Senator Artemis Fowl, a maverick famous for his condemnations of party leadership and their obstructionism
  • Representative Al Lodge, an outsider who is hawkish and pro-business but more moderate on social issues
  • Representative Ronald Wright, an isolationist who is also supportive of small government
  • Former Governor Ronald Reagan(he entered politics earlier ITTL)
After the first ballot, the vote looks like this:
Gump 13
Fowl 10
Lodge 6
Wright 5
Reagan 2

Eventually, Fowl decides to give his delegates to Gump, making her the nominee, and in return he gets the running mate spot.

The PIP re-nominates their 1964 nominee, the far-right governor of Alabama and former Vice President under Richard Nixon, who was President from 1953 and 1961 ITTL and presided over a period of prosperity(although his critics on the left will argue that his policies led to the depression and his term was "the calm before the storm.") Basically a scarier and more influential version of George Wallace.

The FIU nominates the Secretary of the Treasury, Alben Nations, who is a centrist himself and whose 1964 endorsement of Jones was thought to have given him the victory, and the NLC nominates the same candidate from 1960 and 1964, Wendy Hamburger, a social democrat and dove.

Unsurprisingly, Gump wins the first round in a landslide, although predictions of Short getting supplanted by one of the semi-major parties prove to be unfounded.
Capture.JPG

(yes, Puerto Rico is a state and Virginia remained in one piece during the Civil War)

In the second round, the SoCons decide that they don't need to make concessions to the PIP, since they're about to win in a landslide with or without their support anyways, and the NLC endorses Short. The FIU, seeing this runoff as a lesser of two evils, also refuse to endorse a candidate. However, it's not enough to stop the wipeout.
Capture.JPG

So what @emk163 is asking here is, what if Reagan was able to get more support at the convention and became the nominee instead of Gump? How would he have done against Short, Nations, Wright, and Hamburger?
 
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