Introduction
The premise of this TL is to explore what would happen if Nixon decided not to resign following the Watergate scandal. In OTL, President Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment. But what if he stuck it out? In searching the site, I’m a little surprised nobody has done a timeline on the subject (aside from a seemingly unfinished TL by
@Gorrister from 2013). However, there are about a dozen relevant threads speculating on would happen, such as this recent one, which inspired me to write this up:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wi-nixon-doesnt-resign.413731/
It was far from inevitable that Nixon would resign, even in early August 1974. It appears that Nixon had every intention to stay on and face impeachment up until the very end. In OTL, a last minute meeting with Senator Barry Goldwater (along with Hugh Scott and John Jacob Rhodes) seems to have changed Nixon’s mind. Basically, they said that Nixon would not have enough Republican support in the Senate, which made his impeachment inevitable.
But let’s say with a POD of August 7, 1974, Nixon makes a decision not to resign, even with the advice of Goldwater et al. to step down. What happens then?
Now some people are probably saying: is this inspired by current events? No, not at all! Nope! No sir! Nyet!!!
Seriously though, since this is not about Current Politics (even if it might be of some relevance to current events), please don’t bring up the T word!
So…We’ll see how this goes. I’m very tempted to write a lot about this, but I’ll probably stop with the election of 1976.