Rockefeller-Brooke 1968

[Deleted member 109224]

There was a thread a while back about how the GOP could win the south without pursuing the southern strategy.

What if the 1968 ticket had been Arkansas Governor Winthrop Rockefeller and Massachusetts Senator Ed Brooke?

Strong black support for the ticket plus urban-suburban-professional white support and support from whites who like how Rockefeller governed give the GOP the majority (or plurality) of the southern vote.

 

[David T]

Winthrop Rockefeller had only served two years as governor, and was not a serious presidential prospect in 1968; he got the 18 votes of Arkansas at the GOP convention but this was simply as a "favorite son."

 

[Ariosto]

Despite all the talk of Ed Brooke being a vice-presidential possibility, I've never seen it as a real one; he is immensely alienating to the South for both racial and political reasons, and it is a nomination that would have be pushed through in opposition to many of the more conservative Republican delegates of the South and West. That isn't to say the possibility was never explored, to my knowledge both Nixon and Reagan entertained the idea, and Nixon commissioned a poll on the possibility but I can't find it, but for any campaign that went with him you'd be gambling the South away in return for votes in the North, particularly African American voters. There isn't any reason why this would be guaranteed, and amongst other difficulties I can't see it being tried.

As @David T has said Winthrop Rockefeller was not in any position to run for the Presidency by 1968, least of all when his infinitely more experienced and personable brother was in contention. It would be like if the Republican Party opted to nominate Jeb Bush instead of George Bush in 2000, with the caveat that this Jeb constantly would have fought and lost to the Florida legislature and seen as looking down on poorer Floridians.​