Reagan Retires in 1976, 1980 GOP Primaries?

Let's say after Reagan's famous 1976 convention concession speech, he walks off into the sunset.

In 1980, who are the front runners for the GOP nomination, who is Reagan most likely to endorse (if he does at all), and what role does the religious right play?
 
Ford might run again in the absence of Reagan. If he doesn’t, it’s likely a Bush vs.Dole race, with Bush getting the nomination
 
Ford comeback tour.

Reagan stays out but like OTL still intervenes against Briggs Initiative in ’78.

The religious not yet right still ditch Carter but their support of Ford is lukewarm at best—no shadow presidency built to support Reagan.
 
There were quite a few people who were not George H. W. Bush that were pursuing the nomination that could have gotten it.

The problem for me with people always saying that was Bush's year was that, besides the fact his only elected office was being a representative in the House between '67-'71. His following positions, UN Ambassador, Chair of the RNC, Chief Liaison to the PRC, and then Director of the CIA are all unelected positions given to rising stars and career diplomats and military types, not future presidents. Reagan got him to where he was. First, Bush had the effect of rallying together all of the moderate anti-Reagan GOP behind him. The rallying effect was not even that strong, he only won six states plus D.C. and 23.8%. Then, after losing, was able to reconcile with Reagan and agreed to be his Vice-President. After eight years in the Vice-Presidency, he claimed he was reawoken as a conservative and was able to win a one-term presidency off of that.

With no Reagan, there is no Bush. At the very least, his win is an unlikely outside chance.

People who joined the race who are not Reagan or Bush:
Rep. John Anderson of IL
Senator Howard Baker of TN
Rep. Phil Crane of IL
Treasury Secretary John Connally of TX
Senator Bob Dole of KS
Senator Larry Pressler of SD
Senator Lowell Weicker of CT

Honestly, this is a pretty good lineup of strong candidates who went absolutely nowhere.

I personally believe that Senator Baker, Senate Minority Leader and native Southerner, would be the best choice for the nomination. He would be the first native Southerner on a GOP ticket (BTW, even to this day there has never been a native Southerner on a GOP ticket) and was a moderate conservative and a leader within the Republican Party for years by that point. He would be a transformative president if put in Reagan's position but would not have used his position in the same way RWR did.

But I also have a real soft spot for the independent-leaning Larry Pressler, who would have had an even weirder presidency and legacy than Baker.

Just for fun, here's a list pulled from Wikipedia of people who decided not to run:
 
Elliot Richardson is most known as Nixon’s Attorney General who resigned rather than carry out Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre” and fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox.

Bill Ruckelshaus was Deputy Atty. General and either resigned or was fired because he also refused to go along. And this was the key linchpin. Because it was 2 vs. 1, a lot of the public assumed Nixon was in the wrong (and the public was right!)

And then either Richardson or Ruckelshaus or both asked 3rd in command Robert Bork to stay, so they’d be at least someone with some experience in the Justice Dept. That is, Bork may have later been an extremist and a bad nominee by Reagan to the supreme Court, but he wasn’t a bad guy regarding Watergate.

————-

doddles.gif


Apparently, Elliot Richardson like to doodle during cabinet meetings. It’s a way to maintain concentration. Some poker players will rhythmically shuffle chips for the same reason.
https://www.ssa.gov/history/richards.html

And prior to Attorney General, he served as Secretary of HEW.
 
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Howard Baker won 15 percent of the vote in Iowa, and both he and John Anderson polled into double figures in New Hampshire. An odd definition of everyone uniting behind Bush, to be sure...

You mean the candidates who won 0 states and all were out of the race by early March (besides Anderson who would also run third party in the general).

Funny how your only examples are literally from the beginning of the election from before Bush was the center of the moderate conservatives. Your point doesn’t even make sense because my entire post was arguing how weak of a candidate HW Bush was and this just proves it. Despite winning basically every debate Reagan wasn’t involved in, Bush was only ever able to get 23% of primary voters behind him and won a single digit number of states.

Doesn’t change the fact that he was the only person who wasn’t Reagan or Anderson getting votes for most of the primary (and again, the only person besides Reagan winning states).
 
You mean the candidates who won 0 states and all were out of the race by early March (besides Anderson who would also run third party in the general).

Funny how your only examples are literally from the beginning of the election from before Bush was the center of the moderate conservatives. Your point doesn’t even make sense because my entire post was arguing how weak of a candidate HW Bush was and this just proves it. Despite winning basically every debate Reagan wasn’t involved in, Bush was only ever able to get 23% of primary voters behind him and won a single digit number of states.

Doesn’t change the fact that he was the only person who wasn’t Reagan or Anderson getting votes for most of the primary (and again, the only person besides Reagan winning states).

I focused on the early states because nomination campaigns are often functionally over after the early states, which usually result in one candidate pulling away from the rest of the pack. And indeed, this was the case in 1980, with Bush never truly recovering from the Nashua debate, and Reagan's resulting big win in the state. And yes, a win partially enabled by the moderate vote being split three ways. By contrast, the right-wing alternatives to Reagan never got off the tarmac.

But you don't like a focus on the early states, okay. Let's focus on Anderson continuing to pick up sizeable votes after New Hampshire. He nearly won Massachusetts in a three-way tie, he comfortably beat Bush in his own Illinois, and he almost certainly deprived Bush of wins in Vermont, Maryland, and Wisconsin.

Not only is 'First, Bush had the effect of rallying together all of the moderate anti-Reagan GOP behind him' outright factually inaccurate, it's a mirror inaccuracy of what actually happened; the centre and left vote of the party was split, and the right much more effectively coalesced around a single candidate in Reagan. Connolly never really took off, and the youthful Crane was waiting for a Reagan health crisis which never happened. Bush was a weaker candidate than Reagan, who emerged left-field over the more establishment-backed Baker, which is why he was never in a position to clear the field. However, any moderate candidate, probably including even Ford, would have faced that same problem.
 
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If Reagan retires in 1976 it is because he flames out early in the '76 primaries and his speech is given either in the afternoon of late night outside of Prime Time.
What Reagan did in 1980 was that he unified the conservative movement and that is how we got today's GOP.
So a discredited Reagan not running in 80 means that the conservative GOP primary voters are more split between candidates on the right and an establishment Republican wins the nomination and goes on to win in a landslide election over Carter, Anderson does not run an independent campaign because the establishment Republican is acceptable to him.
This means that Kemp-Roth does not see the light of day but there will be tax cuts in a more bipartisan reform bill, there will be a defense build up but we won't see the "Six Hundred Ship Navy" or the B-1 bomber.
 
If Ford “pulled a Cleveland” and was nominated for a rematch with Carter, might he appeal to people who OTL voted for Carter in 1980 because they thought Reagan was too conservative?
 
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