Plausibility Check: Pearl Harbor hits an Isolationist America (w/o FDR as president)

In order to prevent the pacific war, you would have to go further back. There was a tariff law of some kind in the late twenties or early thirties (don't remember the name), that screwed over the Japanese economy and thus made raging militarism inevitable.
 
Dale brings up some great points regarding the bigger picture.

However, assuming this butterfly's away Pearl Harbor - reasonable assumption, since there would be no fleet at PH, and a strike on the West Coast is ludicrous - then we have a basically intact US fleet in mid December. For the sake of argument, I'm going to assume the war starts as in OTL, except that the Kido Butai is available as support. The bottleneck against additional targets hit simultaneously was of course soldiers and transports/amphibs, but does the presence of the Kido Butai speed up any battles significantly?

Also, with Admiral Kimmel still in command of USPacFlt (I'm assuming no command changes, but would this be butterfly'd as well?), would the US execute War Plan Orange to relieve the Philippines, and sail across the Pacific with 8-10 BBs, supported by carriers? I can't imagine this better going remotely well for the US in early 1942, although if it came to a day time gun battle I think the US would have a good shot at holding their own. BTW, this brings up another point - I'm assuming that the South Dakota and North Carolina class BBs won't be coming available soon, to say nothing of the Iowa's or Essex's, right? If so, the US is likely fighting with what they have for an extra year or more, depending on their existing ship building capacity - to Dale's point. In fact, do the Hornet and Wasp even exist in this timeline?

If the US is fighting with what they have, and knows it, and loses - or even fights to a tactical draw but loses a ton of ships - a War Plan Orange-ish engagement, what does this do to US aggressiveness for the rest of the campaign?
 

burmafrd

Banned
Roosevelt baring huge butteflies wins in 32 and 36. Now there COULD have been more opposition to his third term which went against all the presidents before him right to Washington. So it is possible a better campaign against that might defeat him. So instead you have Wilkie who was a supporter of Aid to Britain. Not an isolationist by far.
 
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