AHC: even after Goldwater '64, U.S. Republicans remain pro-status quo, measured change party?

GeographyDude

Gone Fishin'
This is another strain of conservativism. You start with tradition and the status quo (I mean, what the heck else are you going to start with? ! ?), and from there, you're somewhat open to intelligent, medium steps and seeing how they work out.

This was generally the philosophy of Edmund Burke in the British Parliament the late 1700s.

AHC: even with Goldwater in '64, how might Republicans (and/or conservatives) more commonly take this second approach?

As we know in OTL, U.S. conservatives have generally gone the route of advocating for sudden, abrupt change.
 
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overoceans

I suppose a conservative might say that you've reversed the causistry here. It's not that conservatives started advocating "sudden, abrupt change"; it's that liberals started implementing "sudden. abrupt change", and so conservatives had to push for sudden, abrupt counter-measures to reverse the change.

So, to take a relatively non-inflammatory example, "It's not radical of us to want to abolish the Department Of Education. Heck no! It's Carter who was the radical, giving the government all this new power over local authorities. So we have no choice but to sweep it all away, so as to put the country back to the status quo that existed before Carter."

So might a conservative argue, and I'm mostly stating it out just for the sake of acknlwledging an alternative reading. Recent history has provided us with ample examples of conservatives embracing "sudden abrupt change", without being provoked into it by liberal over-reach. The War On Drugs, for example, was hardly a response to federal initiatives(DC was not in the habit of distributing narcotics to local communities), but was in fact very much a war against the everyday habits of common people, who under other circumstances conservatives would have lionized. And it was, in fact, a major incursion into state and municipal authority, making a mockery of every sentimental platitutude about the common-sense wisdom of local actors.

I think removing the messianic tendency from American conservativism might require a pre-1900 POD. An idea I've entertained(though I'm sure not original to me) is that having an established Church Of America get founded immediately pre-Independence might go some way toward taming the more radical religious impulses of the population. Basically, you make the "respectable" clergy into agents of the state, subject to only slightly more reverence than the bureaucrats filing papers away at your town's federal building. People are probably less likely to pay much attention when that kind of clergyman decides he's gonna start thundering away about moral issues.

You can google Monty Python's "Bishop" skit from their Contractual Obligation Album to get an idea of the kind of social respect that accrues to clergymen in the land of the C Of E. Not the kind of guy who would have liberals shaking in their boots.
 

Blackfox5

You need to avoid the social disruption and civil disorder of the late sixties and early seventies which means that large parts of the left does not become radicalized. So no Vietnam War to act as a radicalizing agent, no race riots, no increase in crime, no rampant drug use, or anything else that caused the old New Deal liberalism to collapse and push people into conservatism.

Even if you keep Goldwater as the nominee in 1964, you likely need a POD beforehand as direct US involvement in the Vietnam War had already begun. Perhaps JFK never authorized the coup against Diem, or LBJ was not Vice President so someone of better temperament/judgment becomes President when JFK is assassinated.
 

Derek Jackson

Easy Nixon's undermining the Peace talks and Agnew's naughtiness come out in the second half of October 68.

Reagan nominated 72 and beaten because his opposition to medicare becomes a big issue

In 76 Republicans run moderates and win
 

David T

"JOAN HOFF (9:14:01): In the long run, Nixon’s resignation really skewed American politics, I think, right down to the present day. Because if he had stayed in office, in all likelihood I think he would have been succeeded by another moderate Republican. But from Nixon’s resignation forward, the extreme right of the Republican Party begin to organize, against what he represented. And they ended up then with their candidates in Reagan, in Bush Sr. and again in Bush Jr. So it’s had a profound impact on American politics. I don’t think the extreme radical right dominating the Republican Party would have materialized if Nixon had completed his second term. But ’76 wasn’t really indicative of that. We didn’t know what was swirling here beneath the surface."

https://gln.dcccd.edu/asx/ta/TA20.pdf
 

GeographyDude

Gone Fishin'
@overoceans
' . . . The War On Drugs, for example, was hardly a response to federal initiatives(DC was not in the habit of distributing narcotics to local communities), but was in fact very much a war against the everyday habits of common people, who under other circumstances conservatives would have lionized. And it was, in fact, a major incursion into state and municipal authority, . . '
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Did Nixon in the Whitehouse or Rockefeller in New York crank up the war on drugs first?
 

GeographyDude

Gone Fishin'
Report: Aide says Nixon's war on drugs targeted blacks, hippies

CNN, Tom LoBianco, March 24, 2016

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/

' . . . according to a 22-year-old interview recently published in Harper's Magazine.

'"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people," former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper's writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.

'"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

'Ehrlichman's comment is the first time the war on drugs has been plainly characterized as a political assault designed to help Nixon win, and keep, the White House.

'It's a stark departure from Nixon's public explanation for his first piece of legislation in the war on drugs, delivered in message to Congress in July 1969, . . . '

' . . . Ehrlichman died in 1999, but his five children in questioned the veracity of the account.

'"We never saw or heard anything from our dad, John Ehrlichman, that was derogatory about any person of color," wrote Peter Ehrlichman, Tom Ehrlichman, Jan Ehrlichman, Michael Ehrlichman and Jody E. Pineda in a statement provided to CNN.

'"The 1994 alleged 'quote' we saw repeated in social media for the first time today does not square with what we know of our father. And collectively, that spans over 185 years of time with him," the Ehrlichman family wrote. "We do not subscribe to the alleged racist point of view that this writer now implies 22 years following the so-called interview of John and 16 years following our father's death, when dad can no longer respond. None of us have raised our kids that way, and that's because we were not raised that way."

'Ehrlichman's comments did not surface until now after Baum remembered them while going back through old notes for the Harper's story. . . '

' . . . Baum interviewed Ehrlichman and others for his 1996 book "Smoke and Mirrors," but said he left out the Ehrlichman comment from the book because it did not fit the narrative style focused on putting the readers in the middle of the backroom discussions themselves, without input from the author. . . '
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Well, good for the kids standing up for their Dad. And chalk one up for messy journalism, instead of pristine book writing.

And yes, someone can be non-racist and still play hardball with perceived political enemies. And too clever by half, which just seems to be a problem shot through the Nixon Administration.

So, a date of July 1969 for Nixon's war on drugs.
 
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Don Corleone

GeographyDude said:
This is another strain of conservativism. You start with tradition and the status quo (I mean, what the heck else are you going to start with? ! ?), and from there, you're somewhat open to intelligent, medium steps and seeing how they work out.

This was generally the philosophy of Edmund Burke in the British Parliament the late 1700s.

AHC: even with Goldwater in '64, how might Republicans (and/or conservatives) more commonly take this second approach?

As we know in OTL, U.S. conservatives have generally gone the route of advocating for sudden, abrupt change.
Click to expand...

They did, at least for a time. Nixon gave us OSHA and the EPA and attempted national health care. That's not exactly conservative. Ford held off a primary challenge from Reagan in 1976.

The sharp turn to the right came in the 1980s. That was caused by the mediocre to bad economy of the LBJ through Carter administrations. LBJ pursued guns and butter at the same time, Nixon and Ford tried to freeze prices, and we suffered two oil shocks. We also had the disastrous end to Vietnam and the Iran hostage crisis. That affected our sense of ourselves as a world power.

As far as the social issues are concerned, the sexual revolution broke the alliance between religion and liberalism, an alliance that had a long tradition in American politics. The abolitionists were primarily evangelicals. The civil rights movement was led by a Baptist preacher and supported by Jewish and Christian clergy. The environmental movement has its origins in the late 19th century and was rooted in the idea that we should respect God's creation.

With the sexual revolution, we began an unfortunate trend where religious people were rejected by the left, and liberalism became more about hedonism than social justice.
 

GeographyDude

Gone Fishin'
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21768668

' . . . It begins in the summer of 1968. Nixon feared a breakthrough at the Paris Peace talks designed to find a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam war, and he knew this would derail his campaign.

'He therefore set up a clandestine back-channel involving Anna Chennault, a senior campaign adviser.

'At a July meeting in Nixon's New York apartment, the South Vietnamese ambassador was told Chennault represented Nixon and spoke for the campaign. If any message needed to be passed to the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, it would come via Chennault. . . '
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To me, this is the key linchpin, that Dick planned it in advance.
 

GeographyDude

Gone Fishin'
Landmass Wave said:
As far as the social issues are concerned, the sexual revolution broke the alliance between religion and liberalism, an alliance that had a long tradition in American politics.
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I've talked about in-your-face sexuality on prime time TV, which I think people who didn't live through the '70s might under-estimate how big a change that was.

As far as a person being lesbian or gay or transgend, that's a situation of a person being true to who they are, which I hope I'd support even if I wasn't a good liberal. :)
 

overoceans

GeoDude wrote:

I've talked about in-your-face sexuality on prime time TV, which I think people who didn't live through the '70s might under-estimate how big a change that was.

Yes. In an era when jokes about Two Girls One Cup turn up in the early evening time-slot, it's difficult to transport yourself mentally back to a time when prosaic references to Burt's impotency made Soap into the most controversial show ever aired.

Landmass wrote:

With the sexual revolution, we began an unfortunate trend where religious people were rejected by the left, and liberalism became more about hedonism than social justice.

Well, I think it's quite possible to be in favour of glbqt rights, for example, as a civil rights issue, without it being part of an overall agenda pushing hedonism as an end in itself.

Granted, the fact that sexuality-related civil rights issues came to the fore at the same time Cosmopolitan started blaring headlines about Oral Sex Tips That Will Make Him Scream likely made it easier for those who were looking for a connection to hedonism to find one.
 

Don Corleone

overoceans said:
GeoDude wrote:

I've talked about in-your-face sexuality on prime time TV, which I think people who didn't live through the '70s might under-estimate how big a change that was.

Yes. In an era when jokes about Two Girls One Cup turn up in the early evening time-slot, it's difficult to transport yourself mentally back to a time when prosaic references to Burt's impotency made Soap into the most controversial show ever aired.

Landmass wrote:

With the sexual revolution, we began an unfortunate trend where religious people were rejected by the left, and liberalism became more about hedonism than social justice.

Well, I think it's quite possible to be in favour of glbqt rights, for example, as a civil rights issue, without it being part of an overall agenda pushing hedonism as an end in itself.

Granted, the fact that sexuality-related civil rights issues came to the fore at the same time Cosmopolitan started blaring headlines about Oral Sex Tips That Will Make Him Scream likely made it easier for those who were looking for a connection to hedonism to find one.
Click to expand...

Agree. I don't object to LGBT rights. That is a much more recent phenomenon anyway.
 

GeographyDude

Gone Fishin'
Derek Jackson said:
Easy Nixon's undermining the Peace talks and Agnew's naughtiness come out in the second half of October 68.

Reagan nominated 72 and beaten because his opposition to medicare becomes a big issue

In 76 Republicans run moderates and win
Click to expand...
Humphrey in the White House still probably faces the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Arab oil embargo, stagflation, and the '75 recession.

The moderate Republican elected in '76 most likely faces some crisis in Iran, '79 stagflation, and '80 recession.

And the 1980s most likely see a Democrat in the White House?
 

GeographyDude

Gone Fishin'

https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=zOWD1mHoxYQ

When oil prices go up, the supply curve shifts inward leading to an "equilibrium point" with both higher prices and lower GDP. Mystery solved.

Not sure why stagflation was so long believed to be this huge mystery. And this guy's a high school teacher for crying out loud, and he's explaining it. And good for him! :)
 

GeographyDude

Gone Fishin'
Energy crisis still doubted by public, Fredericksburg, Virginia: THE FREE LANCE-STAR, Evans Witt (AP writer), May 4, 1979, page 5.

" . . . Fifty-four percent said the nation's energy shortages are a hoax. Only 37 percent say the shortages are real. Nine percent of the 1,600 adults interviewed nationwide by telephone were not sure. . . "


http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=TuNNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=mYsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3366,571031&dq=energy-crisis&hl=en
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Maybe 54% of the American public was mistaken. But I kind of think we cleaned up the narrative after the fact and focused on less oil from Iran flowing into the world markets.
 

GeographyDude

Gone Fishin'
after the 1973 energy crisis

after the 1979 energy crisis

I'm pretty sure there were two periods of stagflation. But if someone is really interested in these aspects of economics, by all means, please dive in and let's see if we can get a couple more references.

=====

Bonus points if we can get a liberal Republican winning in 1976 other than Nelson Rockefeller!
 
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