WI: Robert A. Taft elected President in 1952 and survives his term(s)

Two PODs: Eisenhower doesn't run in 1952 and Taft's health is better. As a result, Taft gets nominated and wins thanks to 1952 being a Republican year. What would a Robert Taft Presidency look like? What effect(s) would this have on the parties going forward?
 
unless the Dixiecrats run a successful campaign and Henry Wallace comes back for round 2, a Republican as conservative as Taft could not win on a national level during the heyday of the New Deal Coalition
 
unless the Dixiecrats run a successful campaign and Henry Wallace comes back for round 2, a Republican as conservative as Taft could not win on a national level during the heyday of the New Deal Coalition

Undoubtedly Taft would have a much harder time winning than Ike did, but given frustration with the Korean War and the low job ratings of Truman at the time, it is certainly conceivable that he could (though probably narrowly) win.

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One problem Taft will have: because he is almost certain to win by a much smaller margin than Ike, he will have less in the way of coattails, and will have a more Democratic Congress to work with.

Republicans who narrowly won Senate races who might have lost if Taft had headed the ticket include Prescott Bush, John Sherman Cooper, Charles E. Potter, Barry Goldwater, and Frank A. Barrett. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_elections,_1952
 
Well, unlikely Taft would take Nixon as VP. Also, if Taft gets elected, would he have the same sort of gravitas that Ike had to help squash McCarthy and McCarthyism? McCarthy and his merry men simply could not work to impugn Ike.
 
My observation is that once elected many Presidents find the rhetoric of the campaign to be far too simplistic compared to the reality of both being President and the breadth of the job. Taft was certainly an earnest conservative but was quite flexible, in any issue he saw on the ground the opinions he held could change such as what occurred with housing, his stance being subject to great ridicule from other conservatives. I would not pigeon hole Taft, he might swing far more centric once in office, to the annoyance of conservatives certainly, perhaps ending as a one-term President, but he might surprisingly reinvigorate the GOP in ways Ike did but only while he held office, injecting moderation to the conservative slide that outlasts his Presidency and avoids the Nixon fiasco later.
 
Well, unlikely Taft would take Nixon as VP

Taft's running mate is likely to be not Nixon but the other Republican Senator from California--Knowland. As I noted at https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/robert-taft-running-mate.410378/#post-14252043

"Knowland was young (44), a veteran, from an important state which provided geographical balance, etc. Moreover, while ideologically compatible with Taft, he was a Warren supporter, so might not be as offensive to the party's internationalist wing as some other possibilities. (The internationalists would also note that despite Knowland's reputation as an "Asia Firster," flowing from his staunch advocacy of Chiang Kai-shek, Knowland had voted for the Marshall Plan and--unlike Taft--for the North Atlantic Treaty.) In fact, a biography of Knowland is entitled One Step From the White House: The Rise and Fall of Senator William F. Knowland. http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=2567 The point being of course that if Knowland had deserted Warren for Taft, and Taft had won the nomination and general election with Knowland as his running mate, and Taft had died on schedule from cancer, Knowland would become president in 1953."
 
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