Reagan nominated and defeated in '76, would he be back in '80?
- Thread starter Frances
- Start date
While Reagan may throw his hat into the 1980 campaign ring after losing to Carter in '76, I can't see him being the nominee again. The impact of no-RWR Presidency depends on ...
How unifying or decisive the 1980 GOP primary campaign is.
Who wins the 1980 GOP presidential nomination (Bush, Baker, Anderson, Connally, or Ford).
Whether or not Carter run for re-election.
Whether or not Kennedy challenges Carter for the Democratic nomination.
Who wins the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination (Carter or Kennedy).
Whether the Republican ticket or the Democratic ticket wins in November.
Which party has a majority (and how big) in the House and in the Senate during the 97th congress.
How unifying or decisive the 1980 GOP primary campaign is.
Who wins the 1980 GOP presidential nomination (Bush, Baker, Anderson, Connally, or Ford).
Whether or not Carter run for re-election.
Whether or not Kennedy challenges Carter for the Democratic nomination.
Who wins the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination (Carter or Kennedy).
Whether the Republican ticket or the Democratic ticket wins in November.
Which party has a majority (and how big) in the House and in the Senate during the 97th congress.
Plenty of people who won the presidential nomination and lost the general election went back to be renominated--often after only four years, like Bryan, Dewey, and Stevenson. Assuming he makes the 1976 election close, I see no reason Reagan can't come back in 1980. Yes, his opponents will say he's too old, yesterday's man, etc.--but they said that in OTL, too. And they will have the same problem in New Hampshire they had in OTL--too many candidates splitting the anti-Reagan vote.
Reagan will argue that 1976 was bound to be a bad year for Republicans, that he had almost closed a huge gap in the polls, etc., and that four years later a lot of Carter voters would have buyer's remorse. Not all Republicans in 1980 would accept these arguments, but IMO enough would to get him the nomination.
Reagan will argue that 1976 was bound to be a bad year for Republicans, that he had almost closed a huge gap in the polls, etc., and that four years later a lot of Carter voters would have buyer's remorse. Not all Republicans in 1980 would accept these arguments, but IMO enough would to get him the nomination.
Yes, while the margin of victory wouldn't be the same, a Carter-Reagan election would end up being much like the Johnson-Goldwater race. I wonder if Reagan would be as successful in TTL as he was in OTL at refining and toning down his extremism between 1976 & '80? I have my doubts.
1976 Carter/Mondale v. Reagan/Schweiker
1980 Carter/Mondale v. Bush/Kemp
1984 Mondale/Sasser v. Dole/Lugar
1988 Biden/????????? v. Dole/Lugar
1992 Cuomo/?????? v. Kemp/?????
A Carter win in 1980 is relatively unlikely. Unless Carter screws the country up, there is little chance of a loss in 1984 for the Democrats.
Paul V McNutt
Banned
Carter is able to paint Reagan as an extremist . sSo I don't think Reagan gets the nomination.
Jimmy Carter 1977 - 1981
gGeorge HW Bush 1981 - 1989
bBob Dole 1989 - 1993
bBill Clinton 1993 - 2001
gGeorge W Bush 2001 - 2009
bBarack Obama 2009 -
Jimmy Carter 1977 - 1981
gGeorge HW Bush 1981 - 1989
bBob Dole 1989 - 1993
bBill Clinton 1993 - 2001
gGeorge W Bush 2001 - 2009
bBarack Obama 2009 -
Reagan was well aware of the need to persuade voters he wasn't far-right. Unlike Goldwater, he would do his best to conciliate moderate Republicans (something he was also careful to do in California in 1966; Geoffrey Kabaservice has a good discussion of this in *Rule and Ruin*), not alienate them. (No "extremism in the defense of liberty" acceptance speech--and a moderate running mate, whether or not it is Schweiker.) He would emphasize his eight years governing the nation's largest state, California in a non-extreme fashion. Unlike Goldwater, he would get a chance to debate his Democratic opponent on TV and come off as reasonable there.
Will all this be enough to defeat Carter in 1976? Probably not. The Republican brand was tarnished by Watergate; there will still be Republicans who resent Reagan's defeating Ford; and Carter's southernness will limit Reagan's gains in the South and border states, while he will probably lose such OTL Ford states as Illinois, Michigan, Connecticut, and New Jersey. But it will not be a Goldwater-style debacle, it will be much closer than initial polls showed, and it will be good enough to keep Reagan a plausible candidate for 1980.
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I wonder, if Reagan loses 1976, and comes back and wins 1980, could we see more defeated presidential candidates coming back to win the nomination again?
I suspect that Reagan would have lost by LOTS
He would not be a serious candidate for the 1980 nomination
He would not be a serious candidate for the 1980 nomination
Because no matter who ends up colonising America - Paul knows that Obama's election in 2008 was inevitable - it is the fulcrum upon which the multiverse is dependent.
You are making the common mistake of underestimating Reagan. (This underestimation led Pat Brown to undermine George Christopher's campaign for governor of California in 1966 because Reagan would supposedly be a far easier candidate to defeat.) What I think a lot of people fail to understand is that Reagan never came across *to the voters* as an extremist, despite some of the things he said. He would seem very genial and reasonable in his TV debates with Carter.
I again urge you to read Geoffrey Kabaservice's *Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party* in which he goes into detail on how after winning the gubernatorial nomination in 1966, Reagan was careful to be conciliatory to moderate Republicans: "In stark contrast to the gloating and purging that Goldwater's conservatives had indulged in two years earlier, Reagan's team made peace with the defeated moderates and asked them to join a unity ticket." http://books.google.com/books?id=GJ9baqZLVIYC&pg=PA172 And of course Reagan could in 1976 point to eight years of having been governor of the largest state in the US, without, apparently having led it into either fascism or anarchy.
We should not forget that while in the general election, Reagan would have some disadvantages compared to Ford, he would have some advantages, too. After all, *he* hadn't pardoned Nixon or presided over the recession of 1974-5.
Does this mean I think Reagan would win? No. The GOP brand was tarnished after eight years of Republicans in the White House; however conciliatory Reagan tried to be, some Ford supporters would resent his successful primary challenge; and Carter's southernness and evangelical Christianity would eat into part of Reagan's natural constituency. But I do not see Reagan losing in a landslide, and it is even conceivable he might make it almost as close as Ford did, at least in the popular vote. (In the Electoral College, Reagan would probably lose worse than Ford, losing such Ford states as Michigan, New Jersey, and probably Illinois; OTOH, he had an excellent chance of carrying Texas, which Ford lost, as well as a couple of other southern states, like Mississippi and perhaps Louisiana.)
Once again, I really think that an understandable resentment of the Reagan cult which the Right has built up in a the past few decades leads some people to underestimate the man's political appeal.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
And more candidates in the running is probably healthy for democracy.
An exception might be if states have goofy winner take all rules for their primaries. For example, I'm going to have to look up whether in some states a 30% plurality translates to all the primary votes.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
I'm not going to underestimate Ronnie Reagan either. For example, he had the ability of talking plain with people without talking down to them, and that's a considerable talent.
I think Reagan could have won in '76, in large part because an election has so much random flux anyway. And Ford made this amazingly clumsy mistake in which he said during one of the debates and then insisted for several days afterwards that eastern Europe was not under Soviet domination, which stopped his momentum. And he delayed too long in asking for the resignation of Earl Butz, rather than merely thinking about it over night.
I think Reagan could have won in '76, in large part because an election has so much random flux anyway. And Ford made this amazingly clumsy mistake in which he said during one of the debates and then insisted for several days afterwards that eastern Europe was not under Soviet domination, which stopped his momentum. And he delayed too long in asking for the resignation of Earl Butz, rather than merely thinking about it over night.
For an argument that Ford's premature liberation of Poland probably had little effect on the election, see http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ma...residential_debates_really039413.php?page=all
"Ford’s erroneous assertion about eastern Europe in the second debate of 1976 is considered one of the biggest debate gaffes of all time. On the night of the debate, however, none of the debate viewers interviewed in one poll named the gaffe when asked about the ”main things” each candidate had done well or poorly. Only for viewers interviewed the next day did this gaffe become more salient—evidence that the public needed the news media to point out that Ford had made a mistake.
"More importantly, Ford’s gaffe did little to affect the main trend in the fall campaign, which was a declining lead for Carter. According to Gallup’s polling, Carter had a 15-point lead before the first debate but only a 5-point lead after the second one. As Erikson and Wlezien put it, “Carter’s downward slide during the fall campaign seems to belie that this debate gaffe did much lasting harm.”"