He wouldn't have. Ike had a genepool Plains-German dislike and distrust of the Democratic Party; the only reason he was seen as a potential Democratic substitute candidate in 1948 was that this was not commonly known at the time. I don't agree with the idea that he wouldn't have any issue with Bush or with Trump at all, but I think he would chart a course much closer to someone like Romney or Liz Cheney than to the Lincoln Project if he were alive and politically relevant today.
Yea, I agree with this analysis, though it is hard to say just how some historical figure would react in a future environment. One thing I have been pressing back hard against lately is the underestimating of political divisions in periods of "political consensus". These always come across as down playing the divides that rose up to fill the vacuum or a generally dismissive stance towards a previous policy position because such is not well regarded by the mainstream today.
Just because a lot of Republicans were of moderate temperament and "accepting of the New Deal", doesn't mean that every Republican could have just have easily been a Democrat.
Eisenhower was not a Conservative Republican. He intensely disliked the GOP Western and Midwestern conservatives in the party. He hated Sen. William Knowland (R-CA) and was happy when he left the Senate to run for CA Governor in 1958 and lost. He generally did not think much of the Republican Party in general. His favorite politicians appear to be Southern Democratic conservatives, and he personally cultivated them. If you look at the brain trust of the Eisenhower Administration, you will see that most of the people who were "somebody" in the Administration were very singular partisans; the only Republican they cared about was Eisenhower.
Another myth was the idea that Eisenhower would have been more dovish on Vietnam. Despite his dislike for the Western conservatives, Eisenhower endorsed Goldwater. One reason was that Ike was hawkish on Vietnam. He was invited into meetings with LBJ on Vietnam in 1965 and in each of those meetings he was unreservedly hawkish and urged LBJ to go for victory.
Eisenhower, himself, was something of a racist. He was not a Lincoln Republican on Civil Rights. It was Eisenhower that first cracked the Solid South in 1952, carrying 5 states in the peripheral South, and it was Eisenhower that put the brakes on integration. He was sympathetic to the South's desires for more time to integrate, although he did send troops to Little Rock. Eisenhower was not a segregationist and did not support Jim Crow, but he was willing to advocate slowing the pace of integration in the South. I suppose that was part of his legislative strategy; Southern Democrats controlled many key committee chairs in both Houses and Eisenhower wanted his program to get through.
In his own words, Eisenhower disliked the “conservative wing” of the GOP due to his preference for pragmatism, not due to their ideology. Eisenhower embodies pragmatic (rather than rabid/ideologue) conservatism perfectly, IMO. His reputation as a “moderate” that was anything less than a standard conservative of his day is really misguided, and it’s usually things like nitpicking one nice thing he said about how unions should literally be able to exist or not knowing that the interstate system was a defense spending project, lol.
Keep in mind Eisenhower helped mentor Reagan too so there were some conservatives that he liked
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/unearthing-the-eisenhower-reagan-connectionWhen Dwight Eisenhower left the White House in 1961, he didn't divorce himself from politics. He worried about the future of the Republican party, and this led him to Reagan. From 1965 to 1968, he advised Reagan—and not just on foreign affairs and national security policy. His guidance also focused on the practical politics of running for office. Ike was the teacher, Reagan his pupil. They met in person four times, once at Ike's farm in Gettysburg and twice at the former president's winter home in Palm Desert, California. The fourth location is unknown—at least, Kopelson hasn't nailed it down. And they communicated by telephone and by mail.
Eisenhower took a special interest in Reagan: He thought his vice president, Richard Nixon, was the most qualified Republican to be president; but he feared that Nixon, after losing to John F. Kennedy in 1960, couldn't get elected in 1968. But Reagan could, thus Eisenhower's eagerness to help. Ike never saw Reagan as too conservative; quite the contrary. He watched Reagan's famous television speech ("A Time for Choosing") for Barry Goldwater in 1964 with an expert's eye. "Looking and listening to Reagan, a new Republican star in the making, Eisenhower liked what he saw and heard," Kopelson writes. He saw Reagan as "an important part" of rebuilding the GOP after the Goldwater loss.
Ike decided, at some point, to "launch Reagan personally well beyond the governorship in Sacramento and potentially right into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," Kopelson writes. After their June 1966 meeting in Gettysburg—the summer before Reagan won the governorship—Eisenhower told reporters that "you can bet he will become a presidential possibility." Ike's endorsement "defused any accusations that Reagan was an extreme far right-wing candidate."
The Gettysburg session lasted two-and-a-half hours. "Eisenhower gave Reagan specific and detailed military strategic and tactical lessons," writes Kopelson. He said that Americans should always fight to win, deploy overwhelming force, and make threats. In Korea, he had threatened to use nuclear weapons; in Vietnam, Ike told Reagan that he had advised Lyndon Johnson to "mine Haiphong harbor." He favored bombing North Vietnam "hard" and the "hot pursuit of troops or aircraft into havens."
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