What if, during the 1972 presidential election, George Wallace decided to again run for president on the American Independent Party ticket? In that year, the AIP nominated the unknown California (bad) Republican (worse) Congressman John Schmitz, who was so far-right that he was expelled from the ultraconservative John Birch Society for "extremism." This was a little too much even for the Southern segregationist voter. If the much better-known George Wallace ran, he may well have done very well in several Southern states, taking the votes from those who were rather wary of voting either for McGovern or for a Republican, and presumably would throw a big wrench in Nixon's "Southern Strategy," if he even attempts it at all.
What would be the effects of Wallace's campaign, and the delaying or altogether preventing the North/South realignment of American Presidential politics?
What a dichotomy! McGovern on one side and Wallace to the other?! That scenario totally blows my mind. The TV debates would have been extremely weird/interesting/incomprehensible. Let's not go there.
Nixon would still have won of course, and Watergate likely would have gone down same as OTL. As for "Southern Strategy" -- I think the real catalyst for political realignment was
Roe and the ERA, and not so much the Strategy. While Nixon's assessment of the future role of the GOP was farsighted, it took the legalization of abortion and the question of women's rights to forge the alliances, lobbies, and socio-religious unions critical to today's highly moralized and "confessional" GOP (for lack of a better word.) Similarly, McGovern presaged the Democratic opposition to this movement in many ways, particularly in his willingness to advance the cause of abortion, for example. The
Roe/ERA alignment brought together groups previously antithetical to one another -- like Catholics and Evangelicals -- and created a lasting if somewhat antagonistic union at times.
Don't get me wrong -- I think that racism and civil rights were still significant and troubling issues in 1972. Wallace still would have won a good degree of support from those that harbored resentments against desegregation and the antagonism towards the civil freedoms of African-Americans. But I think alliances from that point forward were beginning to align themselves along socio-religious structures, and that by the time of Reagan this type of structure became a large plank in the GOP platform.