WI: Goldwater Out in 1964

Barry Goldwater had a friendship with John F. Kennedy and looked forward to running against him in 1964. Following his assassination, Goldwater removed himself from from the Republican field, "saying he no longer had the stomach for a campaign." However, pressure from his colleagues led him to run against Johnson. [1] Goldwater went on to win the nomination against Nelson Rockefeller, who was still overcoming the scandal of his divorce, and nominated William Miller as vice president; a man who Goldwater said drove Johnson nuts, even though LBJ would have had no idea who Miller was since he was an unknown local politician. Goldwater was easily trounced in 1964 in one of the greatest landslide's in American history.

What if Goldwater remained without the stomach to campaign and stayed out of the 1964 election?
 
Rockefeller or Scranton or whatever goes down easily, but there are less coattails in the House. Goldwater probably wins the nomination in 1968.

An interesting thing is if the Republican convention was deadlocked, Nixon was trying to get it, and probably would have. Getting his ass handed to him by Johnson certainly removes him from politics altogether.
 
Rockefeller or Scranton or whatever goes down easily, but there are less coattails in the House. Goldwater probably wins the nomination in 1968.

An interesting thing is if the Republican convention was deadlocked, Nixon was trying to get it, and probably would have. Getting his ass handed to him by Johnson certainly removes him from politics altogether.

This sets up George Romney in '68, doesn't it? :p
 
Rockefeller or Scranton or whatever goes down easily, but there are less coattails in the House. Goldwater probably wins the nomination in 1968.

An interesting thing is if the Republican convention was deadlocked, Nixon was trying to get it, and probably would have. Getting his ass handed to him by Johnson certainly removes him from politics altogether.

I can't recall much of Scranton in 1964, but Rockefeller has his infidelity and divorce. If he gets the nomination then that will be what people don't like and will be what Johnson can exploit.
 
Scranton loses to Johnson by a much lower margin. gGoldwater stays in the Senates votes no on the Great Society and the Civil Rights Act of 1965. hHe runs and loses in a landslide in 1968. wWallace runs as a third party in 64.
 
The interesting thing would be how the South would vote in this scenario. Witohut a Republican candidate who opposed the Civil Rights Act, Southern segregationists have no one for whom to vote. So Wallace perhaps runs, most likely doing better than both his 1968 run and Goldwater's performance in OTL.
 
I know it's Wiki, but their rigorously footnoted article about Barry Goldwater's campaign states he was still an undeclared candidate at the time he may have voiced private concerns about running. I'm inclined to think the grassroots ideological wave he'd been riding almost the entire time of Camelot, that was more important to him than any grief at the assassination.

But sure, handwave, if he doesn't run, then this is the great chance for the Eisenhoevarians to win the nomination with one of their own guys, seeing as they cornered the market in open compromise candidates IOTL, and no Goldwater-lite conservative did. In fact, I'd wager any surrogate he supported would flame out as fast as Rocky did. There just aren't any AltGoldwaters with Goldwater's profile at this point. Ronnie isn't governor yet.

But you know who ran a secretive polling operation to gauge popular support for becoming a possible conservative compromise nominee, even in OTL?

Nixon.

Also, OT, but the verbal promise that Jack had made about multiple 'consensual' townhall debates with Ol' Barry? Not worth the paper it's written on.

I actually see the Kennedys developing a massive hate-on for the Republican during the campaign year proper, and vice versa--there's just too much ideological and tribal friction between them. William Manchester is right about the Right's hatred of JFK, and Manchester is totally simpatico with the Irish mafia and the Sorensons.

So JFK won't disarm in front of that, and giving Goldwater anything that goes beyond the format he and Nixon had agreed to in 1960, validating the Arizonan in some form of collegial manner, that's not happening.

It's studio bound debates moderated by journos, or none at all.
 
No Goldwater in '64 likely means to Reagan in '66 and then no Reagan in '68.

If Nixon does craft a chance in '64, he likely gets trounced and disappears forever. If not, then Nixon's path is even easier in '68, saving the GOP from the liberals.
 
Whanztastic, poor old Pat Brown lost the 1966 governor's race as badly as any major incumbent has in US history, Santorum levels bad.

I think Reagan can easily win that statewide election without the boost of his 1964 convention address, and he shouldn't have a problem getting there from the GOP primary, seeing as he'd already given 'the speech' dozens (hundreds?) of times to small business groups etc across California, even before he went on the air with campaign ads.
 
It might also make things a bit harder for Nixon to play the role of compromise candidate in '68 if a moderate loses. Perlstein has a great write-up of Reagan '66 in Nixonland. Not just white backlash and Watts but a bunch of local issues too, such as Brown's broken 2-term pledge.

Senate races: Laxalt or Wilkinson could win, doubtful Bush does.
 
Also, if Goldwater doesn't run for president he'll be running for his Senate seat. Presumably he'd be re-elected, which has very little impact on the make-up of the senate. Long-term, though, this is going to have big effects on Goldwater's career and could possibly end with him leaving the senate ten years ahead of schedule in 1977 if he loses to DeConcini in 1976; a real possibility given his poor performance IOTL's 1980. I'm not sure what effect it would have on the careers of Hayden and Fannin. I'd imagine Hayden would still retire and Fannin would run for and win his senate seat in 1968 unless there was another big-name Republican who would drive him away.
 
Just a thought: is the President Goldwater 1968 timeline being rebooted? If so, this is a nice way to get Goldwater out of the way for 1964 to give him a chance for 1968. And, if it is true that Nixon would have been willing to run in 1964 (a politically asinine act), that would be a good way to reverse the fortunes, eliminate Nixon politically, and open it up to Goldwater in 1968.

In 1968, the Conservatives were looking for someone. Rockefeller was the Devil, and they couldn't support him. Reagan was the successor to Goldwater as leader of the Conservatives, but he had only been Governor two years and in spite of that he had said he wasn't running. Nixon was an acceptable Moderate Conservative to the party Conservatives.
If you've blown up Nixon in 1964, you aren't going to have Nixon to kick around anymore because he's been a loser in three elections: the presidential election of 1960, the California gubernatorial of 1962 and the presidential election of this alternate 1964. No one is going to put him back up in 1968, at least I think, and you could have this Conservative burst of energy we saw in 1964, in this timeline further aided and expanded by all the factors that lead the Liberal consensus to be shaken between '64 and '68, hoist Goldwater to the nomination in 1968.
As an aside, It'd also be interesting for Richard Nixon to be the Republican Adlai Stevenson in consecutive succession to Adlai (Stevenson ran in 1952 and 1956 and *Richard Nixon runs in 1960 and 1964).

The issue would be getting Goldwater to victory over Hubert Humphrey.
 
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