alternatehistory.com

In 1962, after having lost the race for Governor of California, Nixon famously declared that the press wouldn't have him to kick around anymore. He would spend the next six years in relative obscurity before staging one of the most remarkable political comebacks in U.S. history and winning both the Republican nomination and the Presidential election of 1968.

But what if he'd meant it? What if Nixon had stayed out of the spotlight? Who would have won the Republican nomination in '68? It probably wouldn't have been Nelson Rockefeller, who was widely regarded as a "Country club Republican" by the Goldwater/Reagan crowd. So maybe Reagan gets the nod and we might have had the Gipper in the White House twelve years earlier?
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