Reagan Assasinated in '66

Much has been made about the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981, but I propose instead that Reagan is assassinated during his first campaign for Governor of California in 1966. In this hypothetical scenario, a bomb explodes in the backroom of his campaign headquarters, killing:

- Ronald Reagan

- Robert Finch, his candidate for Lieutenant Governor

- Holmes Tuttle, a successful Californian auto dealer and one of the men who convinced Reagan to run

- Alfred Bloomingdale, heir to the Bloomingdale's department store fortune

- Charles Z. Wick, head of Wick Financial Corp and a communications adviser for Reagan

- Joseph Coors, president of the Coors brewing company

What are the effects of the death of Reagan and some of his closest supporters during his first campaign for elected office?
 
Conservative Revolution is butterflied away, and by 2012 America is probably on par with Europe politically.

-AYC
 
Conservative Revolution is butterflied away, and by 2012 America is probably on par with Europe politically.

-AYC

If it wasn't Reagan it would have been another conservative. The stage was set. The change wouldn't have been THAT different. All the political systems in America have come to an end, and so would the New Deal, inevitably to a rightward movement.
 
If you want a very plausible PoD to get rid of Reagan in the 60s, there was a gunman loitering around the National Governors' Association meeting in Cincinnati in 1968 supposedly looking for him, but the assassin was foiled when Lester Maddox noticed and called the police.

As to the effects: a conservative backlash in the 80s was more or less inevitable in OTL, although a different PoD could change this. Simply losing Reagan wouldn't prevent it.
 
Who could have been a viable alternative to Ronald Reagan as head of the Conservative Revolution.?

Also, how would the Republican Party in California respond to the assassination of their candidates for both Governor and Lieutenant Governor? The only other serious candidate for the Republican nomination was George Christopher, Mayor of San Fransisco, and he received only half as many votes as Reagan did during the primary.
 
As to the effects: a conservative backlash in the 80s was more or less inevitable in OTL, although a different PoD could change this. Simply losing Reagan wouldn't prevent it.

Are we so certain the 80's ends up the same? Without Reagan there to run against Ford in the primary, that puts Ford in a stronger position for the General election and could help him win against Carter. If that happens doesn't it basically flip how the 80's plays out?
 
The cold war might have ended in a different way without Regan and his advisors at the helm

The Cold War was ended by a succession of strong, anti Soviet presidents. Reagan's role is overstated tremendously.

Don't kid yourselves, fellow liberal folk. The Conservative Revolution would have happened with or without him, the only question is how lasting it'd have been.
 
I agree Regan's role isnt the be all and end all but he had a major influence and i think its crazy to believe we would have the same ending to the cold war now within a regan presidency
 
Are we so certain the 80's ends up the same? Without Reagan there to run against Ford in the primary, that puts Ford in a stronger position for the General election and could help him win against Carter. If that happens doesn't it basically flip how the 80's plays out?

True, but I was thinking in the long term - the fact that the Democrats had lost their automatic lock on the white working/middle classes, which had shifted to the cultural right, meant that with a timeline close to OTL, it was very likely that at some point (even if not in the 80s) there would be a conservative Republican presidency that would lock the parties into their current arrangement.
 
Guys, even if there is a Conservative Revolution, would it look at all like it does today?

For example, what if the new conservatives adopted more economically interventionist, hence, populist rhetoric?
 
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