Nelson Rockefeller, GOP Nominee 1964

What if: He had been nominated instead of Goldwater. Possible running mates? Party platform? Electoral outcome?
 
Could you please first give some plausible scenario for *how* Rocky gets nominated in 1964? (Winning California is plausible for Rockefeller, but even with the loss of 86 delegates and possible second thoughts by some reluctant Goldwater supporters in other states, it will almost certainly not be enough even to deprive Goldwater of his convention first-ballot majority, let alone nominate Rocky.)

The OTL delegate count:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Republican_National_Convention

Add together *all* the anti-Goldwater delegates--who in real life could not possibly unite behind someone as controversial as Rockefeller--and Goldwater still wins by better than 2-1... And no, avoiding the divorce and remarriage will not be enough, though it will narrow the margin somewhat.
 
In Making of the President 1964, Teddy White said that if Rockefeller had stayed with his first wife, he would have won the nomination. He thought that Rocky's pregnant second wife reminded New Hampshire voters of his divorce and that is why Lodge won New Hampshire in a write in campaign. White thought without the divorce scandal Rockefeller would have won New Hampshire and then gone on the win the nomination. I think he is underestimating the power of the Goldwater movement but it is an interesting POD>
 

Japhy

Banned
I mean it's doable, but you have to prevent the 1952 Convention Rules change that defeated Bob Taft but made a Goldwater type canidate an inevitable outcome.

Of course then you have to deal with President Taft, though briefly and who knows where Nelson winds up politically at that point? Or Goldwater for that matter.
 

Deleted member 9338

The OTL delegate count is based more on county and state conventions and not primary delegate. For Rocky to do this he has to beat Goldwater at these local elections.
 
In Making of the President 1964, Teddy White said that if Rockefeller had stayed with his first wife, he would have won the nomination. He thought that Rocky's pregnant second wife reminded New Hampshire voters of his divorce and that is why Lodge won New Hampshire in a write in campaign. White thought without the divorce scandal Rockefeller would have won New Hampshire and then gone on the win the nomination. I think he is underestimating the power of the Goldwater movement but it is an interesting POD>

I think White was totally wrong about this. Yes, Rocky might have won NH. That is *far* from winning the nomination.

"If there is no Lodge candidacy and if the majority of Lodge's OTL votes go to Rocky, allowing him to win New Hampshire, it's obviously a boost for Rocky, and almost certainly means he will win the California primary (which he almost did even in OTL, despite the remarriage issue) but Goldwater would still have enormous strengths. Above all, there was his support in the South. In OTL, of the 278 southern delegates, 271 voted for Goldwater, and Goldwater's southern coordinator, John Grenier, claimed that 260 of them were "rock solid", meaning that they would have stayed with Goldwater even had he lost in California. (Gilder and Chapman, p. 184). Had Rocky not remarried, and had he won both New Hampshire and California, the numbers for Goldwater in the South might be a little lower, but not much. Goldwater also had the advantage that whereas he had virtually unanimous support of delegates in southern and some western states, even the most "liberal" northeastern states were not solidly anti-Goldwater. There were at least *some* absolutely unshakeable Goldwater delegates almost everywhere. Even Massachusetts contributed five Goldwater delegates--including the man who had been campaign manager for Robert Welch in the latter's unsuccessful 1950 campaign for lieutenant governor... " https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/_JrgSpNcJp0/AusEnmEw5hIJ

I can see Goldwater falling short of a majority of delegates in 1964, but I just cannot see Rocky getting a majority, even without the remarriage (which, by the way, hurt him much worse than the divorce). He was just not a good ideological fit for the GOP of 1964.
 
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