WI: George Romney elected in 1968

Geoffrey Kabaservice's evaluation of the significance of George Romney's campaign is interesting:

"In hindsight, [George] Romney was the GOP moderates' last and best chance to elect one of their own to the presidency, which in turn would have preserved the long-term viability of the moderate movement. No other Republican candidate in the 1968 election--or for the next four decades, for that matter--could match the Eisenhower-like poll numbers Romney received at his zenith. None would combine his appeal to morality-minded Americans as well as secular moderates, his heartfelt support of civil rights, his potential to attract non-traditional Republican constituencies, his Midwestern and Western backing, and his willingness to challenge the Vietnam war and other Cold War shibboleths. Nor would any other moderate candidate be able to leverage the political potential of the moderate-dominated group of Republican governors, who were then at their peak of strength. The moderates would continue to exercise an influence within the party, but they would never again have the opportunity to build a national movement in the way that a successful Romney presidential candidacy, let alone a Romney presidency, could have afforded. When Romney's candidacy sank, so did the moderates' likelihood of leaving a lasting imprint on the Republican Party. For moderates, the path ahead would lead continuously downward." Geoffrey Kabaservice, Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party (Oxford University Press 2012), p. 223. https://books.google.com/books?id=ZlRpAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA223

Kabaservice also notes (p. 209): "Two weeks after the 1966 elections, Romney topped Lyndon Johnson 54 to 46 percent in the Harris poll of presidential preferences; no other Republican even came close. Nelson Rockefeller and [Pennsylvania's] former governor William Scranton lined up behind Romney's presidential drive, making it likely that he would get the support of the Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania delegations in his column." https://books.google.com/books?id=b1jPSXnnRHwC&pg=PA209 Romney assembled much of the best policymaking and speechwriting talent the GOP had to offer.

So what went wrong? A number of things.

First, he did not get the united support among moderates he needed. Observing his uninspiring speaking style, many of them longed for a more exciting nominee like Rockefeller or even Percy. Indeed, there was still a widespread belief that Romney was merely a stalking horse for Rocky (despite the latter's declared support for Romney). Romney was also criticized for his inability to grapple with difficult foreign policy issues like Vietnam, although as Kabaserrvice notes, the same criticism rarely was directed against Nixon, who avoided speaking of the war except in generalities, or Reagan who just called for the US to "win or get out." At the Republican Governors Association conference in the summer of 1967, a half dozen moderate governors retreated from their prior support for Romney, while Maryland's governor Spiro Agnew called a press conference in which he practically begged Rocky to enter the race. Instead of backing Romney, the moderate governors called on their state's delegates to remain uncommitted or to back favorite-son candidates. Some of them no doubt hoped that a "brokered convention" might put them on the ticket.

Second, the Detroit riots may have hurt Romney--though apparently not so much in the short run, judging from a mid-August poll I will mention later. Seeing that the Michigan National Guard could not restore order, he conducted negotiations with LBJ to get him to send federal troops into Detroit. "Johnson did so with great reluctance and attempted to place political responsibility for the riots on Romney, referring seven times in a nationally televised statement to the governor's inability to control his own state." (p. 214) In the long run, the riots in Detroit, Newark, etc. by encouraging a conservative white backlash would hurt Republican moderates (except for those who moved to the right in reaction to the riots) as well as liberal Democrats.

Third, and of course most famously, there was the "brainwashing" gaffe, that happened just as Romney was finally arriving at a coherent Vietnam policy. Romney argued that a purely military victory over North Vietnam was essentially unachievable. "He called for a new emphasis on a negotiated settlement to the conflict, a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam outside the supply lines where the Communists infiltrated men and materiel into South Vietnam, and a de-Americanization of the war effort that would transfer more of the military burden to the South Vietnamese. Without endorsing the politically unacceptable option of US withdrawal, he left the door open for such action if the South Vietnamese government proved unwilling or unable to combat the Vietcong and institute the necessary reforms to win the loyalty of the South Vietnamese people." (Kabaservice, pp. 219-220) Romney even suggested flexibility on Communist China's admission to the UN. In some ways, he anticipated Nixon's foreign policy (which should not be surprising, given that Romney's chief foreign policy advisor was Jonathan Moore, who had been recommended by Henry Kissinger, and that Romney and Moore worked out their proposed Vietnam policy in consultation with Kissinger).

Romney became more and more hard-hitting in his critique of LBJ's Vietnam policy, and his attacks seemed to be paying off, as more American turned against the war: "While Romney had trailed the president by five points in the mid-June Gallup Poll, by mid-August respondents favored Romney over Johnson 49-41, with ten percent undecided." (Kabaservice, p. 220) On August 28, 1967, the Detroit Free Press which had previously been critical of Romney on Vietnam, published an editorial "Romney Starts to Emerge from the Vietnam Tangle" praising the evolution of the governor's views on the war. While acknowledging that Romney's change in views might have been an opportunistic response to growing popular opposition to the war, it suggested a more charitable explanation: "He appeared to be brainwashed by the military during his 1965 trip." Two days later on the Lou Gordon talk show in Detroit, Romney, asked to explain his change of outlook on Vietnam, was no doubt thinking back to the wording of the Free Press editorial when he said "Well, you know when I came back from Vietnam I had just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get..."

That finished Romney's campaign. He dropped sixteen points in the Harris poll immediately after the interview, and never regained public support.

So the question is: Suppose Romney--or the Detroit Free Press--had not used the word "brainwashing"? Could he have won the nomination?

It is possible, but I doubt it, simply because conservatives by this time had so much power in the GOP that I doubt that anyone to the left of Nixon (who of course many people on the Right only accepted reluctantly) could have been nominated. Romney's failure to support Goldwater in 1964 was undoubtedly held against him. (Percy was one of the few possible GOP candidates to the left of Nixon who had endorsed Goldwater in 1964.)

There is one interesting respect, however, in which Romney might have appealed to some conservatives. That was what conservative publisher William Rusher called Romney's "noisy religiosity." Romney acknowledged that he was "completely the product of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." How much this would hurt him with blacks and liberals--given the church's refusal at the time to admit blacks to the priesthood--is uncertain, but Romney had a strong civil rights record, and did well for a Republican among Michigan black voters. It was also speculated that Romney's Mormonism could hurt him among evangelical voters. Yet Romney's strong religious and moral views might have attracted religious voters who were not Mormons. At a Lincoln Day speech in Boston in 1966, Romney described the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as "divinely inspired documents, written by men especially raised up by their Creator for that purpose." https://books.google.com/books?id=ZlRpAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA213 This of course is standard Republican talk nowadays, because the party has so thoroughly absorbed the language of evangelicals, especially in the South. But in the mid-1960's it was very unusual, and might have helped him connect with religious conservatives. Kabaservice also notes (p. 216) Romney's blaming urban violence on "the declining moral atmosphere in our country," citing a growing disdain for authority, lack of personal responsibility, "the aura of permissiveness our society encourages," and "our reverence for gold instead of God."

If Romney did get the nomination, he would probably do less well than Nixon did in the South, yet he might have made up for that in the North--in particular, he might have carried his own state of Michigan, which Humphrey carried in OTL. (Would the fact that he was born in Mexico hurt him? I doubt it, though William Loeb's Manchester Union Leader liked to ridicule him as "Chihuahua George." The legal consensus was that someone born to American citizens temporarily living abroad is a "natural born citizen." As with Obama, Romney "birthers" didn't dislike him because they thought him constitutionally ineligible for the presidency; rather, they thought him ineligible because they disliked him.) If he does not much improve on Nixon in the North and if some OTL Nixon states in the South go for Wallace instead, it is even conceivable that the race goes into the House...
 
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