The Republican National Convention of 1960
Republican Partisans in 1924 famously mocked the Democratic National Convention of 1924 as the "klanbake", a reference to the presence of many KKK-affiliated delegates who united to prevent the nomination of the Roman Catholic Governor of New York, Al Smith. This time, the shoe was on the other foot, as Kennedy's chief intellectual, Arthur Schlesinger coined a term that stuck: the "Struggle Session", a reference to a small, but very vocal minority of Trotsykite (more accurately, Shachtmanite), Maoist, and Dilaist (inspired by Milovan Dilas of Yugoslavia) of delegates at the Republican National Convention. Most of them identified as Dilasist (even if they weren't), because Milovan Dilas was the leader of Yugoslavia, which had so famously struggled against the Soviet Union, which helped them avoid screams of "Communist treason". A bit.
The Deep South states, excluding Strom Thurmond's South Carolina, all put forward a straight slate of Marxists, namely Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. This shocked Goldwater, who had expected to easily win those states in the election. None of the actual candidates won - instead, a write-in campaign delivered all four states to Bayard Rustin, though it was generally implicit that all four states would send their delegates towards McCarthy. This was largely possible...because there were almost no Republicans in any of those states, which allowed Marxist to dominate those state parties by simply showing up to party meetings. This also came with the added benefit (to the Marxist bloc) of scaring off anyone else who considered becoming a Republican in those states.
After McCarthy's upset victory in both Iowa and New Hampshire, Everett Dirksen of Illinois, desperate to stop McCarthy, endorsed and campaigned with Barry Goldwater in the upcoming Illinois primary. In contrast, the party establishment candidates languished in a distant third and fourth. In addition, favorite son candidates ran and took their own home states, including in the newest American state, Hawaii (won by Republican Hiram Fong). The Goldwater campaign gained a massive amount of momentum from their stunning victory in Illinois, but quickly saw morale crumbled after their failure to sweep the Deep South. Only in South Carolina, where Republican Senate Minority Whip Strom Thurmond (many black humor jokes were made about his title), did Goldwater triumph.
Goldwater generally won the Upper South and California, while McCarthy generally won both the Midwest and the Great Plains, as well as many Rocky Mountain and Pacific Northwest states. The East Coast went down to the wire, with Goldwater triumphing in Maryland and Pennsylvania, but McCarthy edging him out in New York. Ohio went to John Bricker, Michigan George Romney, and Massachusetts to Henry Cabot Lodge.
In the end, Goldwater went in with 36% of the delegates, McCarthy (including Rustin) with 39%, and the rest of the delegates splintered between various favorite son candidates. In addition, the GOP primary had been thrown in chaos by news of the Syrian and North Chinese invasion of Israel, as it seemed quite possible that America was going to war again. American public sentiment was overwhelmingly in favor of intervention to protect Israel, especially as stories of war crimes and atrocities filtered out. However, both Goldwater and McCarthy had previously spoken out against intervening on behalf of Israel, angering many Republican delegates.
Violence predictably broke out again, as several shots were fired between the Marxists from the Deep South, as well as the Dixiecrats from the Upper North+South Carolina (both groups predictably came to the convention armed.) Several delegates were wounded, although none were killed. Although the original seating had the delegates assembled in much the same way the United States was, they had to quickly change this to separate the Marxists and Dixiecrats, many of whom were in fact actual KKK members. One delegate actually showed up in full KKK regalia, which meant for a really awkward meeting when he sat next to an African-American socialist. Hilariously, the new seating (intended to pretend violence) put the Marxists right next to Massachusetts delegate Robert W. Welch, the President of the John Birch Society, which had claimed that the Civil Rights Movement was infiltrated entirely by Communists seeking to destroy America.
Much to the shock of all included, after another brief fistfight (after it was too late to change the seating again), the Marxists and the Birchers actually eventually began to tolerate each other after one member of the Marxist bloc, James Burnham, explained that they were Dilasists who actually supported violent confrontation against the "social-imperialist Soviet Union", which one Bircher heard as "socialilist Soviet Union." This helped actually bring the convention to a close, because they were currently on the 79th voting ballot. As Goldwater and McCarthy both picked up steam, the Republican National Committee, in hopes of forcing an establishmenty candidate, required a successful candidate to receive 60% of the delegates. This led to dozens and dozens of ballots, though it was not as bad as the 1924 Democratic National Convention, which lasted for 103 ballots. The fact that the two extremes of the Republican Party had actually managed to get along helped bring the fighting to a close.
Ultimately, the convention would end in one of the most dramatic nominations of American history, when one Senator rose to give a speech asking for the party to rally around Henry Cabot Lodge. This candidate (who ran a fairly non-serious campaign, winning only their home state), gave a speech where they castigated McCarthy and Kennedy as leading the "Four Horsemen of Calumny–Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear" and declaring that despite all of their uh, remarkably different political views, the Republican Party, unlike Kennedy's Democrats, stood for "the four basic principles of Americanism -
basic principles of Americanism: the right to criticize; the right to hold unpopular beliefs; the right to protest; and the right of independent thought." The speaker lambasted Kennedy's "brain trust" for smearing people as "fascists or communists" for merely "speaking their minds" (in defense of Kennedy, this was partly because there were individuals of both stripes in the GOP).[1] The speech was incredibly well received at the convention and would have led to an upsurge in support for Cabot Lodge...had he not declined the nomination...and thrown his support to the speaker in question.
Although there was great reservations about the viability of the speaker's candidacy for various reasons, they checked off most of the books that people needed. Fairly close relationship with several Zionist groups (as they knew Kennedy was going to use Israel as a bludgeon), broadly united the party against Kennedy, and while not beloved by anyone, wasn't particularly hated by anyone. The most skeptical members, the Dixiecrats, were in turn promised the Vice Presidency, while the Marxists were offered more positions in the Republican National Committee itself (due to the Trotskyite theory of entryism, they cared more about capturing party bureaucracy positions than actually winning elections or nominations). The establishment united and on the 88th ballot, the 60% threshold was breached, nominating Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith as the Republican presidential candidate. As promised, the Vice Presidential nomination was quickly granted to South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond.
This satisfied both the establishment and Dixiecrats, while the leftists got the consolation prize of taking the lead in drafting the Republican Party platform, which ended up one of the most interesting political documents of postwar America. Signed off on by several corporate leaders, civil rights activists, KKK members, Communists, Birchers, and pretty much any random political group you could think of, it had to be interesting. There was simply no mention of states rights or civil rights, either positive or negative (nobody could agree). However, conservative intellectuals such as William F. Buckley, upon reading the piece, were absolutely horrified, leading to the National Review immediately penning an endorsement of John F. Kennedy.
The Republican platform lambasted the Soviet Union as a "social-imperialist degenerated worker's state", while speaking of the United States as a "revolutionary people's state dating from 1776." Explicitly echoing Tito, the GOP promised to restore "brotherhood and unity" to the United States, their only comment on Civil Rights. Similiarly, they castigated President Kennedy for "putting America on the path towards being a degenerated worker's state", "dominated by an elite bureaucratic caste of Soviet-style nomenklatura." The Republican Party committed itself towards "a mass line, where the Republican Party will listen first and foremost regularly consult the will of American working families." As a document, it had more or less succeeded in mollifying both the far-left and far-right of the GOP - and the centrist establishment was willing to sign anything to get this convention over with. And so, it was over.
Coming out of the convention, the Republicans expected the worst out of the Gallup poll, expecting that the American people would gruesomely punish the GOP for its internal disorder and believing that nominating a woman would be destructive to the Republican cause. After all, she would be the world's first female elected leader. Well, second, but most people had never heard of the Sarawakan Prime Minister, Lily Eberwein. Sure, Chase Smith's eloquent speech might have mesmerized a room of Republican delegates, but they assumed she wouldn't have any chance in a general election. The first Gallup poll after the conventions had Kennedy leading Chase Smith...
47-
43. Which all things considered, was better than they had expected.
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[1] These are mostly quotes from MCS's OTL speech against Joseph McCarthy.
