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Reagan wins the Republican nomination. He loses the election by a wider margins than Ford, however: the USA post-Watergate and post-fall of Saigon is in no mood for his conservative message, and Reagan has not yet met Arthur Laffer and gotten tax-cut-uber-alles religion. Carter governs more or less as in OTL, with the same successes (Camp David), events-out-of-his-control (OPEC tripling oil prices) and failures (Iran hostages.)

The question: would the Republicans re-nominate Reagan (who remember lost big-time 4 years before) in 1980, or turn to someone else? If so, then who? Consider that in 1980 the Republican party was badly fractured between their Eastern, low-tax and business-friendly wing, their Western, defense-and-libertarianism, and their Southern socio-religious agenda wing. Reagan united all these factions because they all saw him as one of their own (rightly or wrongly.) If the Republicans shun Reagan because of his 1976 defeat, do they unite? What changes?
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