Talk Elections

Romney in a heartbeat!

Hubert, and he'd likely win. Nixon was a more effective and less gaffe-prone politician, and concerns in the South about Romney's religion would make a Southern Strategy nearly impossible.

George Romney, but if he picks some one from the right as his running mate, then Humphrey.

Yes, but the Southern strategy had nothing to do with race or religion.  According to Pat Buchanan, it was an attempt to convince Southern moderates who were pro-civil rights to vote Republican as a protest against the segregationists in the Democratic Party.  And besides, even with Nixon on the ticket, a "Southern strategy" based on pandering to racists was impossible because most of tose voters were already supporting George Wallace.  Here are some links on this subject:

http://www.wnd.com/2002/12/16477/

http://www.freedomsjournal.net/2011/11/27/urban-legends-the-southern-strategy/#top

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT7pASof8Lc

http://www.scribd.com/doc/100265457/The-Truth-Nixon-s-Southern-Strategy

BTW: What's with all the Humphrey love so early in this thread?  Are you guys just saying he would win and/or you would vote for him because you don't like Mitt Romney as the GOP nominee this year?
And I stand by my answer: I would've voted for Romney, and he would have won.

Absolutely.

I would vote for humphrey. i think romeny would make a gaffe or 2 in his campaighn that  would make winning next to impossible.

Humphrey, and Humphrey would win.

The gaffe prone George Romney would probably make a better president in 1969 than his son would in 2013. But he would stumble a lot on the campaign trail. Humphrey would take Missouri and Kentucky, Wallace would take Tennessee and South Carolina, and many states around the country would shift to narrow Humphrey victories.

Humphrey ~45% 345 EV
Romney ~41% 129 EV
Wallace ~14% 64 EV

When was George Romney ever gaffe-prone?  He couldn't have possibly been worse than Joe Biden.

His numbers collapsed when he claimed to have been brainwashed into supporting Vietnam.

Did he ever really make any gaffe other than the brainwashing thing though? I mean, one gaffe doesn't exactly make someone gaffe prone.

I choose none of the above. I vote for nobody gets 270 and all hell breaks loose.

Had he won the nomination, what stance on Vietnam would he be taking? He was pro, then the brainwashing comment, but if he were to win the nomination, it's likely he would've never made the brain-washing comment. And as for "but if he picks some one from the right as his running mate", he'd have to. There's no way the GOP would be able to coalesce around two liberal Republicans, especially with Strom Thurmond as a powerful figure in the GOP. He'd probably rather support Wallace than two yankee liberal pro-civil rights northerners.

The biggest questions are IL, WI, and OH. Three mid-western states that went to Nixon in OTL. I'm wondering if Romney can manage to hold them, or if there'll be enough conservative bleeding to deliver them to Humphrey.
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This gives Humphrey 287.

This however has Romney in the lead but with no majority.
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I doubt states like PA and NY would shift from the OTL map. However, you're likely to see changes in TN, SC, NC, MO, FL, IL, OH, MI, CA and WI.

Of course the GOP would've coalesced around two civil rights Republicans.  The only major segregationist to switch from Democrat to Republican was Strom Thurmond, and with Wallace in the race, there was no way the segregationists would have gone Republican in the OTL (what does that mean anyway?).  Nixon was a strong supporter of civil rights and refused to compromise that position, which is why he immediately conceded the Deep South to Wallace.  And what do you think the map would have looked like without Wallace?

I urge you to read "Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus".

Who wrote that and what are his/her credentials?  I have evidence from Theodore White, the author of the Making of the President series, who wrote his books as these campaigns unfolded.  But thanks for the recommendation anyway!

Rick Perlstein. He's a liberal, but his books have been praised by people from both ends. On the back one of the quotes about the book is "For a man of the Left, Perlstein does great justice to a tale of the Right" or something of the such. Very interesting story and it shows that even before the 1972 election, the GOP was making great strides in the South and there were a surprising amount of people on the grassroots and such that were willing to ally with Southerners and/or spout segregationist rhetoric. Surprising given the book's events take place between 1959 and 1964.

(Also in RN's auto-biography he admits that Thurmond had a good amount of sway in his own VP choice.)

Yeah, but Agnew was a strong supporter of civil rights who had defeated segregationist Democrat George Mahoney for Governor of Maryland in 1966.  Mahoney's slogan had been, "Your home is you castle--protect it!" That same year, Nixon kicked off his comeback with a column ghostwritten by Pat Buchanan which stated that the GOP would leave it to Democrats, "the party of Maddox, Mahoney, and Wallace to squeeze the last ounces of political juice out of the rotting fruit of racial injustice." (http://www.wnd.com/2002/12/16477/)  In 1952, 1956, and 1960, Republicans ran presidential nominees on strongly pro-civil rights platforms (Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, Nixon in 1960) and made inroads in the South, while the Democrats ran racist Adlai Stevenson twice (with Southern running mates both times, one of whom was a segregationist) and Kennedy/Johnson in 1960, both of whom opposed the 1957 Civil Rights Act, the latter (LBJ) being a known racist and segregationist who only supported civil rights as president to get ahead politically (much like Kennedy).

We can travel down that road some other time, but what I'm stressing is that by '68, four years after Goldwater's folks had taken control of the party (at least temporarily), the party had a different attitude towards Southern interests than years before. And platforms say little about the way actual elections went. In '52 and '56, the Democrats lost electoral ground in the South, losing states like VA, FL, TX, and TN. In '60, Nixon had won KY, VA, FL, and TN. With Goldwater's people and a Democratic president pushing Civil Rights, the activist conservatives, not the higher ups or establishment types, but the activists had taken on a different tone. Stridently pro-states rights, you had Young Republicans groups even taking racist tones. And while Agnew had a good record on civil rights, he also had a good record on law and order. Were Romney to be paired with a fellow liberal Republican, that would not sit well with many of the grassroots, activist people. You could see things change with people like Jim Martin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Martin) and Howard Calloway (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Callaway)joining the party.

In 1968, Nixon tried to be the uniter of the GOP's various groups. As well, Agnew represented a cross-section, appealing both to pro-civil rights people as well as pro-law & order folks. He'd been supported by Nelson Rockefeller in the past but had been identified as a moderate or conservative. Romney would have represented only one of the various factions and were he to choose another member of that same faction, it would not bode well for the GOP's chances.

The opposite happened in '64 when Goldwater, offended by the attempts by liberals to deny him the nomination, vetoed the idea of choosing Bill Scranton for VP. (This was after a letter from Scranton's campaign that completely tore down Goldwater in every way imaginable) Instead it was a one-sided ticket and the party's moderates and liberals weren't too happy about it.

What I'm saying is that when Republicans were gaining ground in the South in 1952, 1956, and 1960, they weren't the ones pandering to bigots.  The vast majority of Republicans did not do that, though a few may have.  And also, if Wallace thought that the Republicans were any more friendly to racists than Democrats, then why did he run for president as an Independent rather than a Republican? 

Humphrey/Humphrey

Unless I was voting on Nam.

Reckon it would go to the House as Wallace would've done better in the South.

"It should be obvious to a half-blind n who can't see out his good eye that Goldwater and me would make a pretty good ticket!"

Point I'm trying to get across here is that a Romney/liberal Republican ticket isn't going to bode well for the general election. There were many who hated Rockefeller with a passion in '64 ("...By doing so, Scranton had joined a place reserved in their minds for Nelson Rockefeller and the Soviet Union") and I doubt they'd just disappear and take it four years later.

Yeah, but he probably meant as an Independent.  George Wallace was a Democrat who never became a Republican, even after his supposed change of heart.  Goldwater was anything but a racist, as he was a founding member of the Arizona NAACP and was insturmental in desegregating his family's department stores.

George Romney would have picked Jacob Javits as his running mate.  He would have won big, but Wallace would have won more Southern States to the point where there would have been no electoral college majority.

Had that happened, the Democrats would have instructed all of their electors to vote for Romney to prevent a Wallace Presidency.  If Romney had lost, the Republicans would have instructed all of their electors to vote for Humphrey.  The major parties reputedly had an agreement to do whatever was necessary to keep Wallace from having any significant leverage.