Might Nixon just go slow as possible on civil rights and try to build the sunbelt conservative coalition and break into the south for the GOP if he wins?
How does a Nixon win in 1960 shape the political parties going forward?
- Thread starter dw93
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the great party flip if it happens is put off till the 80s or 90s thanks to 8 years of nixon
So basically the modern day GOP as a libertarian party, endorsing freedom of choice in every aspect of life including social issues?
He also oversaw big improvements in Medicaid. Ironically, Donald Rumsfeld is probably best known for uh, the Iraq War, but before that, he was actually a pretty effective leader of the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon. Rumsfeld probably honestly saved a lot of those Great Society programs and you could pretty easily pinpoint him as the father of much of the rural public healthcare infrastructure in the United States.
I suspect the legacy and public image of Rumsfeld would have been very different had he never made the jump from social welfare policy to his true passion, defense/foreign policy.
Pretty much, though they'd be less disingenuous than the current lot of ancaps since they'd recognise that a strong federal government is integral in ensuring civil rights, and they'd probably still have a large neocon bloc since Nixon would've still been a massive war hawk ITTL.
I know end of Keynesian consensus or something similar is shorthand for the economic traumas of the 1970s and the end of an expanding middle class,
but all Keynesian economics really means is being counter-cyclical. We prime the pump and deficit spend during economic downturns, and we run much smaller deficits or even slight surpluses during economic good times.
Yep, not disputing that. I should've been clearer that I meant the post-war economic consensus from 1945 until 1979, 1980. Basically, how Mark Blyth describes it here:
For the last part you would have to butterfly the Bush administrations. The neocon wing lost credibility because of failed interventionism.
Yep, that's fair. I'll say in retrospect that they would have had a strong neocon wing post-1980 ITTL.
e: I mean, a Nixon win in 1960 would butterfly so much in the Middle East and beyond that idk if Bush would ever have come into power, but eh.
In OTL the Pennsylvania Railroad's management were largely Republicans by party affiliation, so they hired Stuart Saunders as CEO, in large part because Saunders was a well-connected Democrat and a friend of LBJ. The PRR was deeply concerned in the early 1960s with finalizing its merger with the New York Central, and they hoped that Saunders as CEO would help win over the White House, which (under JFK) was hostile to the merger. Saunders' mismanagement was at least part of the reason the Penn Central's crash and bankruptcy were so spectacular.
If the PRR management has no particular reason to want a Democrat to become CEO, they might hire someone else, perhaps Herman Pevler of the Wabash Railroad (basically a PRR farm team in terms of managers) to run the PRR upon the 1963 retirement of James Symes. There's an outside chance that Pevler might have been better able to work with Alfred Perlman, the NYC's president, and make the merger process smoother. I still think the PC would be in major trouble until railroad deregulation and some equivalent of Amtrak become a thing, but the fall might not be so disastrous if the top management is not incompetent and quarreling all the time.
Even if the PC does go bankrupt, what unfolds in the wake of it would surely be different from OTL's Conrail and Amtrak.
If the PRR management has no particular reason to want a Democrat to become CEO, they might hire someone else, perhaps Herman Pevler of the Wabash Railroad (basically a PRR farm team in terms of managers) to run the PRR upon the 1963 retirement of James Symes. There's an outside chance that Pevler might have been better able to work with Alfred Perlman, the NYC's president, and make the merger process smoother. I still think the PC would be in major trouble until railroad deregulation and some equivalent of Amtrak become a thing, but the fall might not be so disastrous if the top management is not incompetent and quarreling all the time.
Even if the PC does go bankrupt, what unfolds in the wake of it would surely be different from OTL's Conrail and Amtrak.
Under these circumstances, who says there will be a Goldwaterite takeover? I suggest the near-seismic rightward shift of the GOP may well be mitigated or avoided entirely.
Thanks for putting this up here, but . . .
1) The guy makes circa 1969 & 1970 inflation too simple in just blaming a tight labor market. And he doesn’t dive into things such as the “Phillips Curve” being over-believed in and over-used.
https://books.google.com/books?id=p...ssary price of reducing unemployment”&f=false
2) And he describes a tight labor market such that never existed! although I almost wished it would, and partly for selfish reasons
Stagflation
And of course . . .
Following the oil shocks of 1973 and ‘79, this is easy pleasy to explain.
The Supply Curve shifts inward, and that is that.
So, we’ve certainly had oil price hikes other than just the 1970s. How much it hurts you depends on what else is going on.
For example, I understand that in 2008 some poorer countries experienced food shortages, because of energy prices and also because corn prices had been bid up (in large part due to ethanol production).
Thomas1195
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We can see the likes of Charlie Baker being a typical Republican ITTL rather than a RINO.
Ricardolindo
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Sorry for the late reply but, the African-American vote for Faubus was in 1964, when the poll tax still existed, and, thus, appears to have been the result of fraud, read https://books.google.com/books?id=0nrRplcPk88C&pg=PA47&dq=blacks+voted+for+Faubus&hl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwju2Ijk5NblAhXSDmMBHf_6CX0Q6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=blacks voted for Faubus&f=false.
Gentleman Biaggi
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
nixon “supported” the EPA? fuck that. he was doing it to divide muskie’s support. meanwhile, nixon was still the mccarthyite he always was, and while he was less broken than in 1969-1974, a similar 1960 (ike doesn’t campaign with nixon), nixon would see the snub from ike and the years of vice-presidential neglect as reason to try to surpass ike as a great president. problem is- congress is very republican and the new deal coalition is still intact, oh also republicans are on their third term and have no more Ike. expect some watergate-type shenanigans against [insert candidate here] in 1964, and if he wins, the democratic congress will not be as willing as they were to johnson.
as for civil rights- nixon could push through some legislation, but without LBJ pushing as hard as he did and some northern support will drop. however, i see no reason for this to cause a massive rift. even with a potential VRA passed, southern democrats would just be like they were OTL- they’d try to push for black support. plus black voters were already pretty democratic OTL- voting democratic with +60% support even against IKE. could nixon change that for a few years? yes. we could even see black voters be more swingy than OTL, but it really depends on republican support for certain issues.
oh also a reagan/goldwater revolution is still very possible, republicans were lead by liberals for 24 years before 1964, and that went away quickly. a big tent that moves right wing later is possible, but we may face bigger-tent parties right now ITTL with potentially 4, 6, or 8 years of nixon as president.
On the other hand, it is said that third time is a charm.
the only way we get a President Nixon in 1960 is if he challenges the election results and it comes out that Kennedy's brother Robert work with the mafia to steal the election in Illinois the political bombshell that would come out of that would probably nearly killed the Democratic Party Kennedy would still win the election but he would be forced to step down all of this would have to happen before inauguration day to which is quite possible with J Edgar Hoover as leader of the FBI
president-elect Kennedy and his vice president elect Johnson have two choices in this scenario where everything is snowballing into hell fight it and possibility go to jail for life or get a deal with Nixon so he'll pardon them when they step down and give the election to him
going with the one with Nixon pardons Kennedy the American political system is rocked to its core. Robert F Kennedy is probably in jail and his family reputation is destroyed. Nixon will also not emerge from this unscaved he basically showed the world that America's democracy is flawed and there will be a lot of people that are angry because he challenged the election results an did so much damage to the United States
president-elect Kennedy and his vice president elect Johnson have two choices in this scenario where everything is snowballing into hell fight it and possibility go to jail for life or get a deal with Nixon so he'll pardon them when they step down and give the election to him
going with the one with Nixon pardons Kennedy the American political system is rocked to its core. Robert F Kennedy is probably in jail and his family reputation is destroyed. Nixon will also not emerge from this unscaved he basically showed the world that America's democracy is flawed and there will be a lot of people that are angry because he challenged the election results an did so much damage to the United States
The most likely outcome given Nixon's personal and political inclinations is that he tries to slow-walk Civil Rights legislation as much as possible without directly opposing it. You probably see incremental progress over the course of his administration, but no legislation on the scale of the laws signed by Johnson IOTL. This might have the effect of permanently splitting the Democratic party between a Northern wing that wants major Civil Rights reform immediately and a Southern wing that either defects to Nixon or goes third-party.