Bomster
Banned
What makes you think Wallace still wouldn’t run? Why did Wallace run in the first place IOTL?Which is why Pat Brown thought he never could be elected Governor of California in 1966 (a state which after all had overwhelmingly rejected Goldwater two years earlier). Geoffrey Kabaservice has shown how Reagan was surprisingly successful in getting conservative and moderate California Republicans to cooperate in electing him in 1966. https://books.google.com/books?id=ZlRpAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA173 Reagan's supporters in 1968, like William Rusher, were well aware of the importance that he not be seen as another Barry Goldwater, and were planning, for example, for him to have a moderate running mate; see my post at https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/ronald-reagan-in-1968.443980/#post-17038433 Then too there is the fact that even when Reagan said things as extreme as Goldwater, they somehow didn't seem extreme, thanks to the affable, aw-shucks way he said them.
However, all that is almost beside the point. My point was not that Reagan was in the abstract as strong a candidate as Nixon but that Wallace might not run if Reagan were the candidate and that might more than make up for Reagan's weaknesses.