How would George HW Bush affect the South's shift to the Republican party

nickboy000

Banned
One very importamnt knock-on: GHW Bush gets to appoint two more Supreme Court Justices. These appointments replace OTL Ginsburg and Breyer. Bush's record on Supremes was weak: Thomas was stalwart, but Souter was a stealth liberal. By 1993, when the next appointment would come up, Souter had shown his true colors, and Bush would be under pressure to nominee a known solid conservative. OTOH he still has to get the nomination through a Democrat-controlled Senate. The same in 1994. Hmm, if the Democrats attack his next two nominees as viciously as they did Bork and Thomas, and tried to do to Souter (they didn't know what he really was either), then control of the Senate could be a huge campaign issue in 1994.

Still, even if only one of the two additional appointees is actually conservative, that's one more than OTL, and that probably means that US Term Limits v. Thornton (1995) is reversed. And that starts changing the political landscape in 1996.

Bush got away with appointing Thomas because he was black and Thomas was able to make the Democrats look like racists trying to stifle "uppity blacks". Perhaps this causes Bush to nominate Conservative women and minorities.
 
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