If Goldwater won in 1964
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  If Goldwater won in 1964
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Author Topic: If Goldwater won in 1964  (Read 943 times)
darklordoftech
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« on: April 18, 2022, 09:53:03 PM »

What would his Presidency be like? What bills would he sign/veto? What would his foreign policy be like?
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NewYorkExpress
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« Reply #1 on: April 19, 2022, 12:57:28 AM »

There'd be no Great Society (at least not in the sense that Medicare would be a thing). Goldwater probably would sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as he personally agreed with both bills. While he didn't support Federal intervention in that way, I think he'd intervene to get them passed to keep his chances of winning renomination in 1968 (where he'd need support from Northeastern Moderates).

He'd also almost certainly fire J. Edgar Hoover. I can't picture Goldwater, a civil Libertarian on most issues, approving of Hoover's FBI spying on American citizens, so unless Hoover has great blackmail on Goldwater, he'd be out of a job.

We'd be heavily involved in Vietnam, even more so than LBJ did IRL, and Goldwater would take the advice of Curtis LeMay, and would probably break the Nuclear Taboo in North Vietnam.
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Storr
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« Reply #2 on: April 19, 2022, 10:26:14 AM »

Obviously none of the Great Society would have happened.

It is interesting to wonder how the American effort in Vietnam would have played out had the Presidential administration allowed the military to go "all in". Would that have involved invading North Vietnam? Cutting off the Ho Chi Minh trail from the beginning by occupying Cambodia and/or Laos? Goldwater wasn't an idiot, he wouldn't have used nukes. That was just the Johnson campaign's characterization of him.
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Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers
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« Reply #3 on: May 18, 2022, 10:41:54 AM »

He would never have won Kennedy didnt need TX against Goldwater,JFK narrowly lost Cali to Nixon he would have won Cali against Goldwater

Since I was in HS I never understood why JFK aside from LBJ being from there went to TX, LBJ could afford to lost TX, sympathizers we're in FL and TX for Castro regime not in Cali and I heard they were on their trip to FL after😧TX too

The EC map is like now CA, PA, WI and MI , but WV was replaced by OH/VA
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Agonized-Statism
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« Reply #4 on: May 18, 2022, 04:26:39 PM »

Getting him to win in the first place would require the circumstances of 1964 to be very different. You definitely couldn't have Kennedy becoming a martyr or the election becoming a referendum on the Civil Rights Act. Maybe there's a conventional invasion of Cuba in 1961 that goes the way of Vietnam.
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The Mikado
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« Reply #5 on: May 28, 2022, 05:41:56 PM »

Goldwater winning probably requires no Kennedy assassination AND a major Kennedy scandal in 1964 leading to him losing.

I just don't think there's any way for LBJ to lose to Goldwater with the bloody shirt of the martyred Kennedy at his side.
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