No Gipper - An Alternate 1980s

This idea was inspired by the thread: "No W- An Alternate 2000s". In this ATL, the POD is when Ronald Reagan is crippled after falling off of his horse and becoming paralyzed from the neck down in 1979. With his Presidential ambitions now impossible, the GOP faces the challenge of selecting a backup candidate. What do you think will happen? Will the second coming of the Great Communicator emerge? Will the GOP's microscopic credibility vanish entirely? Or will a third party rise? This is all up to you to decide.
 
With Reagan out of the running there will not be an obvious choice for the Republican nomination. I do not see the party rallying to say-John Conally to the same extent. There is an intriguing possibility.

There is a chance that Former President Gerald Ford would have entered the race if the path for the nomination was this open. After all he at least briefly entertained the notion of running as Reagan's running mate which indicated he wasn't adverse to entering the political arena again.

If Ford enters I think he has a great chance of winning the nomination given he's largely running against either fairly minor figures or people who were not effective campaigners on a national scale.

I think without Reagan Ford vs. Carter round II is the most intriguing option.
 
With Reagan out of the running there will not be an obvious choice for the Republican nomination. I do not see the party rallying to say-John Conally to the same extent. There is an intriguing possibility.

There is a chance that Former President Gerald Ford would have entered the race if the path for the nomination was this open. After all he at least briefly entertained the notion of running as Reagan's running mate which indicated he wasn't adverse to entering the political arena again.

If Ford enters I think he has a great chance of winning the nomination given he's largely running against either fairly minor figures or people who were not effective campaigners on a national scale.

I think without Reagan Ford vs. Carter round II is the most intriguing option.
I agree. I did a Timeline on a second Ford Presidency not too long ago.
 
With Reagan out of the running there will not be an obvious choice for the Republican nomination. I do not see the party rallying to say-John Conally to the same extent. There is an intriguing possibility.

There is a chance that Former President Gerald Ford would have entered the race if the path for the nomination was this open. After all he at least briefly entertained the notion of running as Reagan's running mate which indicated he wasn't adverse to entering the political arena again.

If Ford enters I think he has a great chance of winning the nomination given he's largely running against either fairly minor figures or people who were not effective campaigners on a national scale.

I think without Reagan Ford vs. Carter round II is the most intriguing option.

Still, I think Ford's chances in the general election are low.
 
Still, I think Ford's chances in the general election are low.
Not really. Just about anyone would've beaten Carter in 1980 with things as they were. The only Republicans I can see loosing to Carter are Phil Crane and John Connally. Ford is one of two recent losing Presidential candidates that has a lot of room to tell voters "I told ya so," the other is Al Gore.
 
He's running against Jimmy Carter in 1980. Hard to see Carter winning after the crises of 1979-1980 and the accumulated failures of the Carter Presidency prior to that point and the division in the Democratic Party.

Given everything that happened in that period Carter's as doomed as an incumbent can be almost regardless of who his opponent is.

Ford would have to be a historically inept campaigner to lose under those circumstances. And given how close 1976 was, I don't think that conclusion is justified.
 
He's never a bad way to go. I'd say he's the most likely. He wins by a bigger margin as he isn't perceived as a reactionary, and he likely keeps the GOP from getting as reactionary as it is currently.

The issue is that presidents come and go, but Congress sticks around. So long as Gingrich and his fellow travelers are determined to create the party of Ayn Rand, Bush probably can't stop them.
 
The issue is that presidents come and go, but Congress sticks around. So long as Gingrich and his fellow travelers are determined to create the party of Ayn Rand, Bush probably can't stop them.

Depends. Carter was actually the one to bring the religious right into politics. Reagan melded them into the GOP. I can't see Bush, who supported the Equal Rights Amendment, chase after them with the same vigor. It may lead to evangelicals more detached from politics after being disenchanted with Carter.

Also, I can't see the economy going terribly differently other than a much smaller deficit due to no chasing after the myth of supply-side economics; in fact, Bush would likely do whatever it takes to balance the budget as he did IOTL. So with the Austrian School more powerful than supply-side, that means people like Gingrich don't reach the same kind of influence.
 
One possible scenario is Ford 1980 followed by George Bush in 1984. Granted Bush will not be Vice President and therefore will not be automatically Ford's designated successor. But Bush might have a prominent position in the Ford White House. Perhaps even Secretary of State if Ford doesn't want to bring back Kissinger. Bush and Ford were similar enough in outlook that he's a more natural successor to Ford than Ford's Vice President. If Ford selects a running mate who isn't a designated successor-or someone without the wherewithal to run-I could see Ford throwing his support to Bush.
 
No-not Rumsfeld. Anyone but Rumsfeld. There's too much animosity there dating from the Ford administration-which is too much in the recent past to be papered over. If Rumsfeld were the sole conservative available that would be one thing.

I don't know who Bush would pick-but there's almost no way he picks Donald Rumsfeld.
 
No-not Rumsfeld. Anyone but Rumsfeld. There's too much animosity there dating from the Ford administration-which is too much in the recent past to be papered over. If Rumsfeld were the sole conservative available that would be one thing.

I don't know who Bush would pick-but there's almost no way he picks Donald Rumsfeld.

Huh. It can't be Kemp either as he was a pseudo-libertarian and a social moderate - anyone else?
 
@theev,

Not only is Crane way out there in right field, he was also a closet alcoholic with not a lot of legislative or personal substance. He could charm a small room of New Right donors, but getting in the race in 1980 was part vanity project, part "keeping Reagan honest" because before the retrospective hagiographies of St. Ronnie, the New Right were both madly in love with Reagan and scared that if the last people in the room to talk to him were moderates he'd move to the middle. There's always Ashbrook but he's somewhat scarier, as basically a smart Crane with lots of shady ties (like friendships with some of the Italian neofascist organizations that were blowing up public squares and trains in the Seventies) that would just buy trouble from a Democratic ad campaign. I would guess there are three major possibilities in a non-Ron scenario:

1) Ford does a Grover Cleveland. It is as some posters above mentioned a possibility, and it would be the same sort of "Buyer's Remorse" ticket that came up in another thread recently about Humphrey and McGovern for '76 (in a world where The Hump, God bless him, wasn't between serious and fatal bouts of bladder cancer respectively.) In that case, or in the case that it's Ford-by-proxy via HW Bush (I've always liked referring to Poppy's presidency as "Gerald Ford's second term") I'd say two strong VP possibilities are Jack Kemp (socially... complex on the issues, but a hardened supply-sider and a pretty boy of the New Right despite his empathy for the poor) and Paul Laxalt (Reagan's best friend in Congress and a rock-ribbed Western right-winger, which would unify the Western and Midwestern wings of the party that were, at the time, its strongest.)

2) John Connally does a Mitt Romney. Connally was something of the Muskie of the '80 cycle before NH when people realized a Reagan comeback was very real. He had tremendous money, a larger-than-life personality, a long resume despite his party switching, and the tacit backing of the Nixonite machinery as Tricky Dick's old favorite (Nixon did like him some charismatic manly-men, at least in part due to envy.) He also had a lot of establishment consensus around him as a strong candidate, just the kind of thing that can break like a glass jaw against a smart challenger with a voter base, but also the kind of thing that can steamroll a mediocre field (like Romney the younger in 2012.) In that case I could still see him going with Kemp for telegenic youth and regional difference, or with someone like Bill Milliken, the longtime Rockefeller Republican governor of Michigan.

3) Jack Kemp does a Kennedy/Obama. Kemp was a young representative with a thin resume, but he had a great head of hair (don't knock it, that and Grecian Formula worked for Reagan), a winning smile, a name to conjure with (his middle initial was even F, "Time For Another JFK" anyone?), and a Dubya Bush-like combination of right-wing orthodoxy on many issues and a few touches of "compassionate conservatism" for undecided voters. The trouble with Kemp, as shown in his brief '88 bid, was that he was notoriously undisciplined on the campaign trail. But if the likes of John Sears or Richard Viguerie got hold of him and read him the riot act, he might be able to get past a field of folks too far left for the 1980 Republican primary voters (see Howard Baker) or too obscure (see Phil Crane) or too straight-up sketch (see John Connally) to stop him. He's going to want an elder-statesman type for VP but not one that overshadows him, so there's really some range from which to choose there. Hell, he might even go for HW Bush on "not overshadowing" grounds.
 
With Bush supply-side economics isn't a thing. In the primary against Reagan he advocated a smaller more targeted cut, hard to know if he would have done that without Reagan. He won't fire Volcker and the recovery happens on schedule. Bush v. Mondale might be boring, but Bush wins reelection.

Domestically, he will have the same enormous leverage after the election Reagan had in 1981, so whatever modest tax cut Bush wants passes easily, as does the Bush budget. Will Bush be as aggressive in pursuing anti-labor policies as Reagan was? If he isn't that's almost as huge as no Reagan tax cut and perhaps even more important in broad terms. When he became President in 1989 he followed Reagan's precedent here where issues like appointments to the NLRB were concerned-but would he initiate that anti-labor shift?

Bush was a believer in the idea that deficits matter-which at least means he will not explode the deficit the way Reagan did. He might even try to craft a deficit reduction plan in 1981.

In foreign policy one thing to keep in mind is that the Kremlin will be at least cautiously optimistic with Bush. Bush is in the same Nixon-Ford line that the Soviet leadership liked. They hated Carter by 1980, blaming him for the rising tensions between the U.S. and USSR. Historically the tensions of the Carter years worsened in Reagan's first term.

For the Politburo a Bush Presidency would be seen as meaning return to how the United States had behaved in the Nixon-Ford era-which would be the Soviet preference.

Now what does that mean? While I doubt Bush can reverse the impact of Carter the Politburo will probably give Bush the benefit of the doubt where they wouldn't do so for Reagan. Which means tensions in 1981-1983 are less than they were which is no small thing. Given this is the era of the Gerontocracy I doubt any major agreements can be reached in Bush's first term from a practical standpoint.

One question is whether Bush would push a reduction based approach to nuclear weapons way Reagan was when he is able to negotiate in a more consistent manner when and if Gorbachev comes to power. I'm not sure. Although that kind of approach had been circling around for awhile by that point. See Carter's 1977 SALT II offer. Admittedly what they were calling for was less ambitious than what Reagan called for in his second term but the point is the idea of a reduction based approach predated Reagan.

If he does push for what Reagan pushed for he's too much of a realist to squander an achievement like the elimination of nuclear weapons to protect SDI.
 
With Bush supply-side economics isn't a thing. In the primary against Reagan he advocated a smaller more targeted cut, hard to know if he would have done that without Reagan. He won't fire Volcker and the recovery happens on schedule. Bush v. Mondale might be boring, but Bush wins reelection.

Domestically, he will have the same enormous leverage after the election Reagan had in 1981, so whatever modest tax cut Bush wants passes easily, as does the Bush budget. Will Bush be as aggressive in pursuing anti-labor policies as Reagan was? If he isn't that's almost as huge as no Reagan tax cut and perhaps even more important in broad terms. When he became President in 1989 he followed Reagan's precedent here where issues like appointments to the NLRB were concerned-but would he initiate that anti-labor shift?

Bush was a believer in the idea that deficits matter-which at least means he will not explode the deficit the way Reagan did. He might even try to craft a deficit reduction plan in 1981.

In foreign policy one thing to keep in mind is that the Kremlin will be at least cautiously optimistic with Bush. Bush is in the same Nixon-Ford line that the Soviet leadership liked. They hated Carter by 1980, blaming him for the rising tensions between the U.S. and USSR. Historically the tensions of the Carter years worsened in Reagan's first term.

For the Politburo a Bush Presidency would be seen as meaning return to how the United States had behaved in the Nixon-Ford era-which would be the Soviet preference.

Now what does that mean? While I doubt Bush can reverse the impact of Carter the Politburo will probably give Bush the benefit of the doubt where they wouldn't do so for Reagan. Which means tensions in 1981-1983 are less than they were which is no small thing. Given this is the era of the Gerontocracy I doubt any major agreements can be reached in Bush's first term from a practical standpoint.

One question is whether Bush would push a reduction based approach to nuclear weapons way Reagan was when he is able to negotiate in a more consistent manner when and if Gorbachev comes to power. I'm not sure. Although that kind of approach had been circling around for awhile by that point. See Carter's 1977 SALT II offer. Admittedly what they were calling for was less ambitious than what Reagan called for in his second term but the point is the idea of a reduction based approach predated Reagan.

If he does push for what Reagan pushed for he's too much of a realist to squander an achievement like the elimination of nuclear weapons to protect SDI.

How do you feel the 1980s might look culturally under Bush Sr, as opposed to Reagan? As far as I recall, while he was still fairly socially conservative, he wasn't as much as Reagan in regards to the latter's more black-and-white outlook on things such as AIDs, the Drug War, etc.
 
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