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AH Cooperative Lists Thread

Republican Nominees for President:

1968: James A. Rhodes [1]

1972: John Connolly [2]

1976: John Connolly

1980:

1984:

1988:

1992:

1996:

2000:

2004:

2008:

2012:

2016:

[1] 'Where were you when Dick Nixon was shot?'

The old veep might not have been the most tragic death in the awful 'Year of Lead,' but he was one of the most consequential- certainly far closer to the nomination than Bobby Kennedy had been. The disarray of the GOP convention and five awful ballots was probably the reason that they didn't take the easy prize of the White House that year. Still, something had changed in the party, and Ohio's favored son revealed himself to be a much tougher, more severe candidate than many of the media had guessed.

[2] 'John Bowden Connolly lies awaiting in the grass, John Bowden Connolly will beat your rotten goddamn ass'

Robert Kennedy's problem was that he tried to be everything to all men. A scrappy populists who understood the issues of the working man worried about interfering bureaucrats, moochers and blacks. A Martin Luther King reborn to a black electorate that didn't intend to take it lying down anymore. A conciliatory insider for the men who'd been standing by the trough since the days of Eisenhower. A reformer and man peace for the activists who backed him to remove the grotesque monstrosity that was Lyndon Johnson. John Connolly on the other hand knew exactly who his friends (business, conservatives in both parties), potential friend (moderates, the less radical unions) and enemies (liberals, hippies, blacks) were. He might have lost the debates from a rhetorical perspective, but as for as a majority of the electorate was concerned there was one man on that screen who represented the real American people, and one who didn't. They rewarded the former appropriately.
 
Republican Nominees for President:

1968: James A. Rhodes [1]

1972: John Connally [2]

1976: John Connally [3]

1980: Peter Brennan

1984:

1988:

1992:

1996:

2000:

2004:

2008:

2012:

2016:

[1] 'Where were you when Dick Nixon was shot?'

The old veep might not have been the most tragic death in the awful 'Year of Lead,' but he was one of the most consequential- certainly far closer to the nomination than Bobby Kennedy had been. The disarray of the GOP convention and five awful ballots was probably the reason that they didn't take the easy prize of the White House that year. Still, something had changed in the party, and Ohio's favored son revealed himself to be a much tougher, more severe candidate than many of the media had guessed.

[2] 'John Bowden Connally lies awaiting in the grass, John Bowden Connally will beat your rotten goddamn ass'

Robert Kennedy's problem was that he tried to be everything to all men. A scrappy populists who understood the issues of the working man worried about interfering bureaucrats, moochers and blacks. A Martin Luther King reborn to a black electorate that didn't intend to take it lying down anymore. A conciliatory insider for the men who'd been standing by the trough since the days of Eisenhower. A reformer and man peace for the activists who backed him to remove the grotesque monstrosity that was Lyndon Johnson. John Connolly on the other hand knew exactly who his friends (business, conservatives in both parties), potential friend (moderates, the less radical unions) and enemies (liberals, hippies, blacks) were. He might have lost the debates from a rhetorical perspective, but as for as a majority of the electorate was concerned there was one man on that screen who represented the real American people, and one who didn't. They rewarded the former appropriately.

[3] 'All the way, USA! All the way, USA!'

The redefinition of the Republican coalition under Connolly was one of the most major realignments in American political history. The new "Northern Strategy", as it was termed, was focused on prying away blue-collar support for the Democrats by combining a broadly populist economic policy with chest-beating patriotism and an appeal to "American traditional values". While Republican poll numbers went up across the country--even in areas of the Deep South--the triumph of a Republican Michigan was what sealed the deal on the new strategy. Defeated, Walter Reuther slinked out of politics forever (some say, assassinated by the CIA), and Connolly went on to redefine his nation and new party.
 
Republican Nominees for President:

1968: James A. Rhodes [1]

1972: John Connally [2]

1976: John Connally [3]

1980: Peter Brennan [4]

1984: Peter Brennan

1988:

1992:

1996:

2000:

2004:

2008:

2012:

2016:

[1] 'Where were you when Dick Nixon was shot?'

The old veep might not have been the most tragic death in the awful 'Year of Lead,' but he was one of the most consequential- certainly far closer to the nomination than Bobby Kennedy had been. The disarray of the GOP convention and five awful ballots was probably the reason that they didn't take the easy prize of the White House that year. Still, something had changed in the party, and Ohio's favored son revealed himself to be a much tougher, more severe candidate than many of the media had guessed.

[2] 'John Bowden Connally lies awaiting in the grass, John Bowden Connally will beat your rotten goddamn ass'

Robert Kennedy's problem was that he tried to be everything to all men. A scrappy populists who understood the issues of the working man worried about interfering bureaucrats, moochers and blacks. A Martin Luther King reborn to a black electorate that didn't intend to take it lying down anymore. A conciliatory insider for the men who'd been standing by the trough since the days of Eisenhower. A reformer and man peace for the activists who backed him to remove the grotesque monstrosity that was Lyndon Johnson. John Connolly on the other hand knew exactly who his friends (business, conservatives in both parties), potential friend (moderates, the less radical unions) and enemies (liberals, hippies, blacks) were. He might have lost the debates from a rhetorical perspective, but as for as a majority of the electorate was concerned there was one man on that screen who represented the real American people, and one who didn't. They rewarded the former appropriately.

[3] 'All the way, USA! All the way, USA!'

The redefinition of the Republican coalition under Connolly was one of the most major realignments in American political history. The new "Northern Strategy", as it was termed, was focused on prying away blue-collar support for the Democrats by combining a broadly populist economic policy with chest-beating patriotism and an appeal to "American traditional values". While Republican poll numbers went up across the country--even in areas of the Deep South--the triumph of a Republican Michigan was what sealed the deal on the new strategy. Defeated, Walter Reuther slinked out of politics forever (some say, assassinated by the CIA), and Connolly went on to redefine his nation and new party.

[4] 'Unions together for a new United States'

Peter Brennan as Secretary of Labor was a key component in growing Connolly's base amongst formally working class Democrats and as the President's second term was coming to an end seemed the ideal candidate to continue the Northern strategy. It wasn't a pick without controversy however as his previous support for affirmative action and moderate social views where unappealing to more traditionally minded Republican delegates, especially in the South. The primaries were somewhat divisive but Brennan was eventually secured as Connolly's successor candidate.

A strong economic situation and support from a majority of Unions (even some of the more Democrat leaning ones were bought off with promises of Labor protections) secured a fairly comprehensive victory for Brennan over Mondale. Brennan offered continuity Connolly-ism, but in a sop to more strident members of the party stepped back from some of his previous support for affirmative action and other programs to assist minority communities. He offset this with full throated populist support for "patriotic American workers", which was technically a colourblind program of economic support packages for traditional manufacturing areas. However it was noted that a majority of these industry were majority White and helped to solidify a notion of the Republican party as one solely for White America.

As his term neared its end the economy slowly contracted and the influence of hardliners in the Soviet Union necessitated a need for increased defence spending. Brennans economic policies had to be substantially reduced and a building grassroots ethnic equality movement began taking to the streets. It seemed like the 80s was building up to be another decade of strife for the USA.
 
Republican Nominees for President:

1968: James A. Rhodes [1]

1972: John Connally [2]

1976: John Connally [3]

1980: Peter Brennan [4]

1984: Peter Brennan [5]

1988: Phil Crane [6]

1992:

1996:

2000:

2004:

2008:

2012:

2016:

[1] 'Where were you when Dick Nixon was shot?'

The old veep might not have been the most tragic death in the awful 'Year of Lead,' but he was one of the most consequential- certainly far closer to the nomination than Bobby Kennedy had been. The disarray of the GOP convention and five awful ballots was probably the reason that they didn't take the easy prize of the White House that year. Still, something had changed in the party, and Ohio's favored son revealed himself to be a much tougher, more severe candidate than many of the media had guessed.

[2] 'John Bowden Connally lies awaiting in the grass, John Bowden Connally will beat your rotten goddamn ass'

Robert Kennedy's problem was that he tried to be everything to all men. A scrappy populists who understood the issues of the working man worried about interfering bureaucrats, moochers and blacks. A Martin Luther King reborn to a black electorate that didn't intend to take it lying down anymore. A conciliatory insider for the men who'd been standing by the trough since the days of Eisenhower. A reformer and man peace for the activists who backed him to remove the grotesque monstrosity that was Lyndon Johnson. John Connolly on the other hand knew exactly who his friends (business, conservatives in both parties), potential friend (moderates, the less radical unions) and enemies (liberals, hippies, blacks) were. He might have lost the debates from a rhetorical perspective, but as for as a majority of the electorate was concerned there was one man on that screen who represented the real American people, and one who didn't. They rewarded the former appropriately.

[3] 'All the way, USA! All the way, USA!'

The redefinition of the Republican coalition under Connolly was one of the most major realignments in American political history. The new "Northern Strategy", as it was termed, was focused on prying away blue-collar support for the Democrats by combining a broadly populist economic policy with chest-beating patriotism and an appeal to "American traditional values". While Republican poll numbers went up across the country--even in areas of the Deep South--the triumph of a Republican Michigan was what sealed the deal on the new strategy. Defeated, Walter Reuther slinked out of politics forever (some say, assassinated by the CIA), and Connolly went on to redefine his nation and new party.

[4] 'Unions together for a new United States'

Peter Brennan as Secretary of Labor was a key component in growing Connolly's base amongst formally working class Democrats and as the President's second term was coming to an end seemed the ideal candidate to continue the Northern strategy. It wasn't a pick without controversy however as his previous support for affirmative action and moderate social views where unappealing to more traditionally minded Republican delegates, especially in the South. The primaries were somewhat divisive but Brennan was eventually secured as Connolly's successor candidate.

A strong economic situation and support from a majority of Unions (even some of the more Democrat leaning ones were bought off with promises of Labor protections) secured a fairly comprehensive victory for Brennan over Mondale. Brennan offered continuity Connolly-ism, but in a sop to more strident members of the party stepped back from some of his previous support for affirmative action and other programs to assist minority communities. He offset this with full throated populist support for "patriotic American workers", which was technically a colourblind program of economic support packages for traditional manufacturing areas. However it was noted that a majority of these industry were majority White and helped to solidify a notion of the Republican party as one solely for White America.

As his term neared its end the economy slowly contracted and the influence of hardliners in the Soviet Union necessitated a need for increased defence spending. Brennans economic policies had to be substantially reduced and a building grassroots ethnic equality movement began taking to the streets. It seemed like the 80s was building up to be another decade of strife for the USA.


[5] 'United People, United States'

Disgruntled unions - particularly the smaller ones that didn't have patronage links with the Republicans - and marching racial & gay-rights activists would dominate the news, when that news wasn't about government debt or dead marines in Lebanon. Brennan was able to defeat his primary opponents by pointing to his record in office, but that record was starting to crumble as far as the average white American man was concerned. He was unfavourably compared to Jimmy Carter - a man with a folksy accent, a family businessman, a good ol' boy, a veteran (so was Brennan but the Democrats got their ads out first) - by a chunk of his base, who were willing to overlook his social liberalism. Brennan realised he was facing a challenge and prepared to fight Carter with everything he had, but the factions of his party who'd lost, particularly the growing evangelists, assumed he would lose and made it clear before the vote that he would lose for not being like them. While Brennan would most likely have lost, this Republican civil war cost them a few key seats in Congress as well.
 
EDIT: Just realized that Jimmy Carter's term here would have been 1985-1993. Thus, I had to make a few quick changes.

----

Republican Nominees for President:

1968: James A. Rhodes [1]

1972: John Connally [2]

1976: John Connally [3]

1980: Peter Brennan [4]

1984: Peter Brennan [5]

1988: Phil Crane [5.5]

1992: Edward J. King [6]

1996: Bob McEwen

2000:

2004:

2008:

2012:

2016:

[1] 'Where were you when Dick Nixon was shot?'

The old veep might not have been the most tragic death in the awful 'Year of Lead,' but he was one of the most consequential- certainly far closer to the nomination than Bobby Kennedy had been. The disarray of the GOP convention and five awful ballots was probably the reason that they didn't take the easy prize of the White House that year. Still, something had changed in the party, and Ohio's favored son revealed himself to be a much tougher, more severe candidate than many of the media had guessed.

[2] 'John Bowden Connally lies awaiting in the grass, John Bowden Connally will beat your rotten goddamn ass'

Robert Kennedy's problem was that he tried to be everything to all men. A scrappy populists who understood the issues of the working man worried about interfering bureaucrats, moochers and blacks. A Martin Luther King reborn to a black electorate that didn't intend to take it lying down anymore. A conciliatory insider for the men who'd been standing by the trough since the days of Eisenhower. A reformer and man peace for the activists who backed him to remove the grotesque monstrosity that was Lyndon Johnson. John Connolly on the other hand knew exactly who his friends (business, conservatives in both parties), potential friend (moderates, the less radical unions) and enemies (liberals, hippies, blacks) were. He might have lost the debates from a rhetorical perspective, but as for as a majority of the electorate was concerned there was one man on that screen who represented the real American people, and one who didn't. They rewarded the former appropriately.

[3] 'All the way, USA! All the way, USA!'

The redefinition of the Republican coalition under Connolly was one of the most major realignments in American political history. The new "Northern Strategy", as it was termed, was focused on prying away blue-collar support for the Democrats by combining a broadly populist economic policy with chest-beating patriotism and an appeal to "American traditional values". While Republican poll numbers went up across the country--even in areas of the Deep South--the triumph of a Republican Michigan was what sealed the deal on the new strategy. Defeated, Walter Reuther slinked out of politics forever (some say, assassinated by the CIA), and Connolly went on to redefine his nation and new party.

[4] 'Unions together for a new United States'

Peter Brennan as Secretary of Labor was a key component in growing Connolly's base amongst formally working class Democrats and as the President's second term was coming to an end seemed the ideal candidate to continue the Northern strategy. It wasn't a pick without controversy however as his previous support for affirmative action and moderate social views where unappealing to more traditionally minded Republican delegates, especially in the South. The primaries were somewhat divisive but Brennan was eventually secured as Connolly's successor candidate.

A strong economic situation and support from a majority of Unions (even some of the more Democrat leaning ones were bought off with promises of Labor protections) secured a fairly comprehensive victory for Brennan over Mondale. Brennan offered continuity Connolly-ism, but in a sop to more strident members of the party stepped back from some of his previous support for affirmative action and other programs to assist minority communities. He offset this with full throated populist support for "patriotic American workers", which was technically a colourblind program of economic support packages for traditional manufacturing areas. However it was noted that a majority of these industry were majority White and helped to solidify a notion of the Republican party as one solely for White America.

As his term neared its end the economy slowly contracted and the influence of hardliners in the Soviet Union necessitated a need for increased defence spending. Brennans economic policies had to be substantially reduced and a building grassroots ethnic equality movement began taking to the streets. It seemed like the 80s was building up to be another decade of strife for the USA.

[5] 'United People, United States'

Disgruntled unions - particularly the smaller ones that didn't have patronage links with the Republicans - and marching racial & gay-rights activists would dominate the news, when that news wasn't about government debt or dead marines in Lebanon. Brennan was able to defeat his primary opponents by pointing to his record in office, but that record was starting to crumble as far as the average white American man was concerned. He was unfavourably compared to Jimmy Carter - a man with a folksy accent, a family businessman, a good ol' boy, a veteran (so was Brennan but the Democrats got their ads out first) - by a chunk of his base, who were willing to overlook his social liberalism. Brennan realised he was facing a challenge and prepared to fight Carter with everything he had, but the factions of his party who'd lost, particularly the growing evangelists, assumed he would lose and made it clear before the vote that he would lose for not being like them. While Brennan would most likely have lost, this Republican civil war cost them a few key seats in Congress as well.

[5.5] 'The Scapegoat'

For a while, Phil Crane was the unchallenged, admired flagbearer of the Republican Party's conservative movement, and his rallies attracted outsized attention far beyond the Chicago area that he represented. After Brennan's defeat, it was unsurprising that Crane clinched the nomination with ease; however, after twelve years of Connallyite Conservatism people were not entranced by Crane's even more ancient brand, and the irascible, controversial, endlessly bitter congressman paled in comparison with the genial, largely successful President Carter. As Carter won a landslide, Crane fumed, his supporters wondered if his primary victory was little more than "shifting the blame", and faded away into the mist, eclipsed by both his colleagues in Congress and future Republican nominees.

[6] 'A Bout of Political Mud Wrestling'

While the 1992 presidential election wasn't entirely perceived as a Democratic blowout, the Republican Party's internal conflicts made it so. With the old-guard Goopers and the combative, increasingly chauvinist 'New Right' at each other's throats, the party didn't have a strong leader to coalesce around, instead having dozens of minor candidates sling mud at each other and run around the country until June, which saw a relatively obscure New England ex-governor emerge from the pile of pummeled candidates.

As a deeply Catholic, law-and-order politician and as a Governor whose tenure saw Massachusetts' economic conditions greatly improve, Edward J. King quickly became the candidate of the large, mostly blue-collar Northern Strategy electorate that saw in him a kindred spirit, and - as he went up against the likes of Fob James, Don Rumsfeld and Anthony Imperiale - the moderate wing of the party as well.

As the Democrats settled somewhat apprehensively behind Governor Tom Bradley (with a Southern running mate, predictably enough), the 1992 presidential election was shaping up to be competitive. As the War in Lebanon was superseded by the Japanese stock market crash and tensions in the post-Soviet republics, Edward J. King was able to strike the Carter administration over "fumbling" the Georgian Civil War, and generally performed well in the first presidential debates. By late October, as allegations of institutional corruption in the King administration became national news, the presidential race turned ballistic, with ads and campaign consultants accusing Bradley of being "soft on crime and urban terror" and King being "the candidate of cronyism". In the end, while Bradley secured a narrow victory over King, Republicans were able to make a few gains in Congress (largely concentrated in New England and the Midwest).
 
Last edited:
Republican Nominees for President:

1968: James A. Rhodes [1]

1972: John Connally [2]

1976: John Connally [3]

1980: Peter Brennan [4]

1984: Peter Brennan [5]

1988: Phil Crane [5.5]

1992: Edward J. King [6]

1996: Bob McEwen [7]

2000: Bob McEwen

2004:

2008:

2012:

2016:

[1] 'Where were you when Dick Nixon was shot?'

The old veep might not have been the most tragic death in the awful 'Year of Lead,' but he was one of the most consequential- certainly far closer to the nomination than Bobby Kennedy had been. The disarray of the GOP convention and five awful ballots was probably the reason that they didn't take the easy prize of the White House that year. Still, something had changed in the party, and Ohio's favored son revealed himself to be a much tougher, more severe candidate than many of the media had guessed.

[2] 'John Bowden Connally lies awaiting in the grass, John Bowden Connally will beat your rotten goddamn ass'

Robert Kennedy's problem was that he tried to be everything to all men. A scrappy populists who understood the issues of the working man worried about interfering bureaucrats, moochers and blacks. A Martin Luther King reborn to a black electorate that didn't intend to take it lying down anymore. A conciliatory insider for the men who'd been standing by the trough since the days of Eisenhower. A reformer and man peace for the activists who backed him to remove the grotesque monstrosity that was Lyndon Johnson. John Connolly on the other hand knew exactly who his friends (business, conservatives in both parties), potential friend (moderates, the less radical unions) and enemies (liberals, hippies, blacks) were. He might have lost the debates from a rhetorical perspective, but as for as a majority of the electorate was concerned there was one man on that screen who represented the real American people, and one who didn't. They rewarded the former appropriately.

[3] 'All the way, USA! All the way, USA!'

The redefinition of the Republican coalition under Connolly was one of the most major realignments in American political history. The new "Northern Strategy", as it was termed, was focused on prying away blue-collar support for the Democrats by combining a broadly populist economic policy with chest-beating patriotism and an appeal to "American traditional values". While Republican poll numbers went up across the country--even in areas of the Deep South--the triumph of a Republican Michigan was what sealed the deal on the new strategy. Defeated, Walter Reuther slinked out of politics forever (some say, assassinated by the CIA), and Connolly went on to redefine his nation and new party.

[4] 'Unions together for a new United States'

Peter Brennan as Secretary of Labor was a key component in growing Connolly's base amongst formally working class Democrats and as the President's second term was coming to an end seemed the ideal candidate to continue the Northern strategy. It wasn't a pick without controversy however as his previous support for affirmative action and moderate social views where unappealing to more traditionally minded Republican delegates, especially in the South. The primaries were somewhat divisive but Brennan was eventually secured as Connolly's successor candidate.

A strong economic situation and support from a majority of Unions (even some of the more Democrat leaning ones were bought off with promises of Labor protections) secured a fairly comprehensive victory for Brennan over Mondale. Brennan offered continuity Connolly-ism, but in a sop to more strident members of the party stepped back from some of his previous support for affirmative action and other programs to assist minority communities. He offset this with full throated populist support for "patriotic American workers", which was technically a colourblind program of economic support packages for traditional manufacturing areas. However it was noted that a majority of these industry were majority White and helped to solidify a notion of the Republican party as one solely for White America.

As his term neared its end the economy slowly contracted and the influence of hardliners in the Soviet Union necessitated a need for increased defence spending. Brennans economic policies had to be substantially reduced and a building grassroots ethnic equality movement began taking to the streets. It seemed like the 80s was building up to be another decade of strife for the USA.

[5] 'United People, United States'

Disgruntled unions - particularly the smaller ones that didn't have patronage links with the Republicans - and marching racial & gay-rights activists would dominate the news, when that news wasn't about government debt or dead marines in Lebanon. Brennan was able to defeat his primary opponents by pointing to his record in office, but that record was starting to crumble as far as the average white American man was concerned. He was unfavourably compared to Jimmy Carter - a man with a folksy accent, a family businessman, a good ol' boy, a veteran (so was Brennan but the Democrats got their ads out first) - by a chunk of his base, who were willing to overlook his social liberalism. Brennan realised he was facing a challenge and prepared to fight Carter with everything he had, but the factions of his party who'd lost, particularly the growing evangelists, assumed he would lose and made it clear before the vote that he would lose for not being like them. While Brennan would most likely have lost, this Republican civil war cost them a few key seats in Congress as well.

[5.5] 'The Scapegoat'

For a while, Phil Crane was the unchallenged, admired flagbearer of the Republican Party's conservative movement, and his rallies attracted outsized attention far beyond the Chicago area that he represented. After Brennan's defeat, it was unsurprising that Crane clinched the nomination with ease; however, after twelve years of Connallyite Conservatism people were not entranced by Crane's even more ancient brand, and the irascible, controversial, endlessly bitter congressman paled in comparison with the genial, largely successful President Carter. As Carter won a landslide, Crane fumed, his supporters wondered if his primary victory was little more than "shifting the blame", and faded away into the mist, eclipsed by both his colleagues in Congress and future Republican nominees.

[6] 'A Bout of Political Mud Wrestling'

While the 1992 presidential election wasn't entirely perceived as a Democratic blowout, the Republican Party's internal conflicts made it so. With the old-guard Goopers and the combative, increasingly chauvinist 'New Right' at each other's throats, the party didn't have a strong leader to coalesce around, instead having dozens of minor candidates sling mud at each other and run around the country until June, which saw a relatively obscure New England ex-governor emerge from the pile of pummeled candidates.

As a deeply Catholic, law-and-order politician and as a Governor whose tenure saw Massachusetts' economic conditions greatly improve, Edward J. King quickly became the candidate of the large, mostly blue-collar Northern Strategy electorate that saw in him a kindred spirit, and - as he went up against the likes of Fob James, Don Rumsfeld and Anthony Imperiale - the moderate wing of the party as well.

As the Democrats settled somewhat apprehensively behind Governor Tom Bradley (with a Southern running mate, predictably enough), the 1992 presidential election was shaping up to be competitive. As the War in Lebanon was superseded by the Japanese stock market crash and tensions in the post-Soviet republics, Edward J. King was able to strike the Carter administration over "fumbling" the Georgian Civil War, and generally performed well in the first presidential debates. By late October, as allegations of institutional corruption in the King administration became national news, the presidential race turned ballistic, with ads and campaign consultants accusing Bradley of being "soft on crime and urban terror" and King being "the candidate of cronyism". In the end, while Bradley secured a narrow victory over King, Republicans were able to make a few gains in Congress (largely concentrated in New England and the Midwest).

[7] 'He's the Man, for all seasons'

After the chaos of the 1992 primaries, the common line of thinking coming from the Republican benches was that the broadest house possible on Republican policies would get the them the clinch pin. The Bradley White House was coming apart at the seems, and his renomination as candidate was far from secure, therefore the Republicans needed to appear as stable and undivided as possible. The primaries of '96 became the contest over who could appear to be the charismatic and woo the most swing voters. Ultimately, Bob McEwen triumphed on account of his success as a profiteer of the Northern Strategy and how he managed to dominate the House, as Newt Gingrich would fire him like a torpedo at any of the President's legislation to smash it. With the nomination and a solid reputation of opposition to Bradley, McEwen managed to sweep up the Bible belt, Mid-West and the right portion of Eastern states.

But once McEwen was sworn in, his Administration began to immediately suffer from being too conservative for the Conservative Republicans, even on the Traditional Republican points. The tax cuts that were promised were not as large as many expected, which puzzled many of the Party's business backers given the GOP still controlled the House and Senate. It also hard suffered from a lethargic response in rolling back the Liberal legislation of Bradley and Carter: regulation of automatic firearms remained in place, as did the quotas for affirmative action, and despite McEwen's pounding of the drum for an increase in Abortion restrictions they too remained absent of any action or talk from the White House.

It wasn't even as though the President was distracted by his Foreign Policy. While his first year was dedicated to finally ending the War in Lebanon through mediation, there was little need for a strong American presence on the World Stage in the late 90s - the Georgian Civil War had fizzled out, and Eastern Europe was being shepherded to prosperity by their Western neighbours. As the next election cleared, there wasn't a real expectation for anyone to challenge McEwen, but many Republicans were impressing the need for him to become more radical in his agenda for the second term.
 
Republican Nominees for President:

1968: James A. Rhodes [1]

1972: John Connally [2]

1976: John Connally [3]

1980: Peter Brennan [4]

1984: Peter Brennan [5]

1988: Phil Crane [5.5]

1992: Edward J. King [6]

1996: Bob McEwen [7]

2000: Bob McEwen [8]

2004: Fred Thompson

2008:

2012:

2016:

[1] 'Where were you when Dick Nixon was shot?'

The old veep might not have been the most tragic death in the awful 'Year of Lead,' but he was one of the most consequential- certainly far closer to the nomination than Bobby Kennedy had been. The disarray of the GOP convention and five awful ballots was probably the reason that they didn't take the easy prize of the White House that year. Still, something had changed in the party, and Ohio's favored son revealed himself to be a much tougher, more severe candidate than many of the media had guessed.

[2] 'John Bowden Connally lies awaiting in the grass, John Bowden Connally will beat your rotten goddamn ass'

Robert Kennedy's problem was that he tried to be everything to all men. A scrappy populists who understood the issues of the working man worried about interfering bureaucrats, moochers and blacks. A Martin Luther King reborn to a black electorate that didn't intend to take it lying down anymore. A conciliatory insider for the men who'd been standing by the trough since the days of Eisenhower. A reformer and man peace for the activists who backed him to remove the grotesque monstrosity that was Lyndon Johnson. John Connolly on the other hand knew exactly who his friends (business, conservatives in both parties), potential friend (moderates, the less radical unions) and enemies (liberals, hippies, blacks) were. He might have lost the debates from a rhetorical perspective, but as for as a majority of the electorate was concerned there was one man on that screen who represented the real American people, and one who didn't. They rewarded the former appropriately.

[3] 'All the way, USA! All the way, USA!'

The redefinition of the Republican coalition under Connolly was one of the most major realignments in American political history. The new "Northern Strategy", as it was termed, was focused on prying away blue-collar support for the Democrats by combining a broadly populist economic policy with chest-beating patriotism and an appeal to "American traditional values". While Republican poll numbers went up across the country--even in areas of the Deep South--the triumph of a Republican Michigan was what sealed the deal on the new strategy. Defeated, Walter Reuther slinked out of politics forever (some say, assassinated by the CIA), and Connolly went on to redefine his nation and new party.

[4] 'Unions together for a new United States'

Peter Brennan as Secretary of Labor was a key component in growing Connolly's base amongst formally working class Democrats and as the President's second term was coming to an end seemed the ideal candidate to continue the Northern strategy. It wasn't a pick without controversy however as his previous support for affirmative action and moderate social views where unappealing to more traditionally minded Republican delegates, especially in the South. The primaries were somewhat divisive but Brennan was eventually secured as Connolly's successor candidate.

A strong economic situation and support from a majority of Unions (even some of the more Democrat leaning ones were bought off with promises of Labor protections) secured a fairly comprehensive victory for Brennan over Mondale. Brennan offered continuity Connolly-ism, but in a sop to more strident members of the party stepped back from some of his previous support for affirmative action and other programs to assist minority communities. He offset this with full throated populist support for "patriotic American workers", which was technically a colourblind program of economic support packages for traditional manufacturing areas. However it was noted that a majority of these industry were majority White and helped to solidify a notion of the Republican party as one solely for White America.

As his term neared its end the economy slowly contracted and the influence of hardliners in the Soviet Union necessitated a need for increased defence spending. Brennans economic policies had to be substantially reduced and a building grassroots ethnic equality movement began taking to the streets. It seemed like the 80s was building up to be another decade of strife for the USA.

[5] 'United People, United States'

Disgruntled unions - particularly the smaller ones that didn't have patronage links with the Republicans - and marching racial & gay-rights activists would dominate the news, when that news wasn't about government debt or dead marines in Lebanon. Brennan was able to defeat his primary opponents by pointing to his record in office, but that record was starting to crumble as far as the average white American man was concerned. He was unfavourably compared to Jimmy Carter - a man with a folksy accent, a family businessman, a good ol' boy, a veteran (so was Brennan but the Democrats got their ads out first) - by a chunk of his base, who were willing to overlook his social liberalism. Brennan realised he was facing a challenge and prepared to fight Carter with everything he had, but the factions of his party who'd lost, particularly the growing evangelists, assumed he would lose and made it clear before the vote that he would lose for not being like them. While Brennan would most likely have lost, this Republican civil war cost them a few key seats in Congress as well.

[5.5] 'The Scapegoat'

For a while, Phil Crane was the unchallenged, admired flagbearer of the Republican Party's conservative movement, and his rallies attracted outsized attention far beyond the Chicago area that he represented. After Brennan's defeat, it was unsurprising that Crane clinched the nomination with ease; however, after twelve years of Connallyite Conservatism people were not entranced by Crane's even more ancient brand, and the irascible, controversial, endlessly bitter congressman paled in comparison with the genial, largely successful President Carter. As Carter won a landslide, Crane fumed, his supporters wondered if his primary victory was little more than "shifting the blame", and faded away into the mist, eclipsed by both his colleagues in Congress and future Republican nominees.

[6] 'A Bout of Political Mud Wrestling'

While the 1992 presidential election wasn't entirely perceived as a Democratic blowout, the Republican Party's internal conflicts made it so. With the old-guard Goopers and the combative, increasingly chauvinist 'New Right' at each other's throats, the party didn't have a strong leader to coalesce around, instead having dozens of minor candidates sling mud at each other and run around the country until June, which saw a relatively obscure New England ex-governor emerge from the pile of pummeled candidates.

As a deeply Catholic, law-and-order politician and as a Governor whose tenure saw Massachusetts' economic conditions greatly improve, Edward J. King quickly became the candidate of the large, mostly blue-collar Northern Strategy electorate that saw in him a kindred spirit, and - as he went up against the likes of Fob James, Don Rumsfeld and Anthony Imperiale - the moderate wing of the party as well.

As the Democrats settled somewhat apprehensively behind Governor Tom Bradley (with a Southern running mate, predictably enough), the 1992 presidential election was shaping up to be competitive. As the War in Lebanon was superseded by the Japanese stock market crash and tensions in the post-Soviet republics, Edward J. King was able to strike the Carter administration over "fumbling" the Georgian Civil War, and generally performed well in the first presidential debates. By late October, as allegations of institutional corruption in the King administration became national news, the presidential race turned ballistic, with ads and campaign consultants accusing Bradley of being "soft on crime and urban terror" and King being "the candidate of cronyism". In the end, while Bradley secured a narrow victory over King, Republicans were able to make a few gains in Congress (largely concentrated in New England and the Midwest).

[7] 'He's the Man, for all seasons'

After the chaos of the 1992 primaries, the common line of thinking coming from the Republican benches was that the broadest house possible on Republican policies would get the them the clinch pin. The Bradley White House was coming apart at the seems, and his renomination as candidate was far from secure, therefore the Republicans needed to appear as stable and undivided as possible. The primaries of '96 became the contest over who could appear to be the charismatic and woo the most swing voters. Ultimately, Bob McEwen triumphed on account of his success as a profiteer of the Northern Strategy and how he managed to dominate the House, as Newt Gingrich would fire him like a torpedo at any of the President's legislation to smash it. With the nomination and a solid reputation of opposition to Bradley, McEwen managed to sweep up the Bible belt, Mid-West and the right portion of Eastern states.

But once McEwen was sworn in, his Administration began to immediately suffer from being too conservative for the Conservative Republicans, even on the Traditional Republican points. The tax cuts that were promised were not as large as many expected, which puzzled many of the Party's business backers given the GOP still controlled the House and Senate. It also hard suffered from a lethargic response in rolling back the Liberal legislation of Bradley and Carter: regulation of automatic firearms remained in place, as did the quotas for affirmative action, and despite McEwen's pounding of the drum for an increase in Abortion restrictions they too remained absent of any action or talk from the White House.

It wasn't even as though the President was distracted by his Foreign Policy. While his first year was dedicated to finally ending the War in Lebanon through mediation, there was little need for a strong American presence on the World Stage in the late 90s - the Georgian Civil War had fizzled out, and Eastern Europe was being shepherded to prosperity by their Western neighbours. As the next election cleared, there wasn't a real expectation for anyone to challenge McEwen, but many Republicans were impressing the need for him to become more radical in his agenda for the second term.

[8] 'A House divided against itself cannot stand"

McEwen had had a warning shot fired across his bows by party insiders and came out swinging promising a campaign against Social Liberalism, Socialism and Ethnic strife. That last phrase was a barely concealed dog whistle to the White Nationalist wing of the party, which had been a significant minority since the Connolly days and for some Conservatives remained a significant irritant. For one key Conservative they were a boil that had to be lanced, whatever the cost.

William F. Buckley's quixotic campaign as the Conservative Party nominee for President has been studied many times since 2000, was it a principled stand against White Nationalism, a damaging miscalculation to reign in McEwen's appeals to the bigot or personal ego trip for a conservative commentator past his prime. Buckley himself gave a reasoned explanation just before his death in 2008, that various ethnic and immigrant communities were at heart conservatives, mostly social conservatives and that the Republicans were throwing away a massive pool of voters by pandering to the basest instincts of the most extreme wing of the Right. He hoped to prove this by standing on a conservative platform that embraced all the ethnic groups of the USA and promising a proper conservative government and not the one supplied by the surprisingly low energy McEwen regime.

McEwen's advisors publicly and privately scoffed at Buckley's attempts at relevance and the bruising Democratic primaries did little to dampen their expectation of an easy victory. Bob Graham was the eventual Democratic nominee, solid but not a man to galvanize the nation. The early dynamism of McEwen's campaign slowly wilted and the President went about his duties with some sangfroid and a host of conservative soundbites. However something was beginning to happen on the campaign trail.

Buckley's media contacts were eager to have the loquacious nominee appearing on television and in newspapers, always good for a soundbite the Conservative candidate was more than happy to agree. By mid-May McEwen's campaign managers noted that polling was showing the Reform party impacting both the Democratic and Republican numbers, but primary the Republican ones. Even worse Bob Graham had apparently found his mojo on the campaign trail and his combination of populist economic rhetoric and a promised return to the "all in it together" days of Carter was beginning to find traction.

As November approached the McEwen administration began to fire as much muck as possible at both candiates, in one particularity distasteful episode elements of the White House press team leaked the insinuation that Buckley has cheated on his wife Pat and fathered a child with a black woman. This was seen as extremely crass and obviously untrue and helped feed the narrative that White Nationalism had totally infected the party. Buckleys searing riposte to McEwen that he was running "a bigoted, corrupt and bloated corpse of an Administration" was headline news. Even Graham got some good jabs in on the President but the polls still showed a victory, albeit a narrow one for McEwen.

In the end it all came down to 4,873 votes in Florida. Buckley secured 4.5% of the vote and winning a significant amount of conservative ethnic voters especially within Hispanic communites. While Graham and McEwen were basically neck and neck the Demorcats had managed to swing enough Working class voters and retained the African-American vote to do it. McEwen demanded a recount but the result stayed the same, Graham had won his home state and the election. McEwen had barely finished his concession phone-call to Graham when the recriminations began, Buckley was blamed for splitting the vote while Buckley pointed to his success with minority conservative communities to prove his thesis correct and that pandering to the bigots would lead to increasingly diminishing returns.

The post-mortem for the Republican party would last a long time and old wounds were reopened, but it was clear that one person was primarily to blame. Bob McEwen had been a do nothing President and a poor campaigner and on his shoulders rested the responsibility of defeat. One again the Republicans were cast into the wilderness for another 4 years.
 
Republican Nominees for President:

1968: James A. Rhodes [1]

1972: John Connally [2]

1976: John Connally [3]

1980: Peter Brennan [4]

1984: Peter Brennan [5]

1988: Phil Crane [5.5]

1992: Edward J. King [6]

1996: Bob McEwen [7]

2000: Bob McEwen [8]

2004: Fred Thompson [9]

2008: Jim Mattis

2012:

2016:

[1] 'Where were you when Dick Nixon was shot?'

The old veep might not have been the most tragic death in the awful 'Year of Lead,' but he was one of the most consequential- certainly far closer to the nomination than Bobby Kennedy had been. The disarray of the GOP convention and five awful ballots was probably the reason that they didn't take the easy prize of the White House that year. Still, something had changed in the party, and Ohio's favored son revealed himself to be a much tougher, more severe candidate than many of the media had guessed.

[2] 'John Bowden Connally lies awaiting in the grass, John Bowden Connally will beat your rotten goddamn ass'

Robert Kennedy's problem was that he tried to be everything to all men. A scrappy populists who understood the issues of the working man worried about interfering bureaucrats, moochers and blacks. A Martin Luther King reborn to a black electorate that didn't intend to take it lying down anymore. A conciliatory insider for the men who'd been standing by the trough since the days of Eisenhower. A reformer and man peace for the activists who backed him to remove the grotesque monstrosity that was Lyndon Johnson. John Connolly on the other hand knew exactly who his friends (business, conservatives in both parties), potential friend (moderates, the less radical unions) and enemies (liberals, hippies, blacks) were. He might have lost the debates from a rhetorical perspective, but as for as a majority of the electorate was concerned there was one man on that screen who represented the real American people, and one who didn't. They rewarded the former appropriately.

[3] 'All the way, USA! All the way, USA!'

The redefinition of the Republican coalition under Connolly was one of the most major realignments in American political history. The new "Northern Strategy", as it was termed, was focused on prying away blue-collar support for the Democrats by combining a broadly populist economic policy with chest-beating patriotism and an appeal to "American traditional values". While Republican poll numbers went up across the country--even in areas of the Deep South--the triumph of a Republican Michigan was what sealed the deal on the new strategy. Defeated, Walter Reuther slinked out of politics forever (some say, assassinated by the CIA), and Connolly went on to redefine his nation and new party.

[4] 'Unions together for a new United States'

Peter Brennan as Secretary of Labor was a key component in growing Connolly's base amongst formally working class Democrats and as the President's second term was coming to an end seemed the ideal candidate to continue the Northern strategy. It wasn't a pick without controversy however as his previous support for affirmative action and moderate social views where unappealing to more traditionally minded Republican delegates, especially in the South. The primaries were somewhat divisive but Brennan was eventually secured as Connolly's successor candidate.

A strong economic situation and support from a majority of Unions (even some of the more Democrat leaning ones were bought off with promises of Labor protections) secured a fairly comprehensive victory for Brennan over Mondale. Brennan offered continuity Connolly-ism, but in a sop to more strident members of the party stepped back from some of his previous support for affirmative action and other programs to assist minority communities. He offset this with full throated populist support for "patriotic American workers", which was technically a colourblind program of economic support packages for traditional manufacturing areas. However it was noted that a majority of these industry were majority White and helped to solidify a notion of the Republican party as one solely for White America.

As his term neared its end the economy slowly contracted and the influence of hardliners in the Soviet Union necessitated a need for increased defence spending. Brennans economic policies had to be substantially reduced and a building grassroots ethnic equality movement began taking to the streets. It seemed like the 80s was building up to be another decade of strife for the USA.

[5] 'United People, United States'

Disgruntled unions - particularly the smaller ones that didn't have patronage links with the Republicans - and marching racial & gay-rights activists would dominate the news, when that news wasn't about government debt or dead marines in Lebanon. Brennan was able to defeat his primary opponents by pointing to his record in office, but that record was starting to crumble as far as the average white American man was concerned. He was unfavourably compared to Jimmy Carter - a man with a folksy accent, a family businessman, a good ol' boy, a veteran (so was Brennan but the Democrats got their ads out first) - by a chunk of his base, who were willing to overlook his social liberalism. Brennan realised he was facing a challenge and prepared to fight Carter with everything he had, but the factions of his party who'd lost, particularly the growing evangelists, assumed he would lose and made it clear before the vote that he would lose for not being like them. While Brennan would most likely have lost, this Republican civil war cost them a few key seats in Congress as well.

[5.5] 'The Scapegoat'

For a while, Phil Crane was the unchallenged, admired flagbearer of the Republican Party's conservative movement, and his rallies attracted outsized attention far beyond the Chicago area that he represented. After Brennan's defeat, it was unsurprising that Crane clinched the nomination with ease; however, after twelve years of Connallyite Conservatism people were not entranced by Crane's even more ancient brand, and the irascible, controversial, endlessly bitter congressman paled in comparison with the genial, largely successful President Carter. As Carter won a landslide, Crane fumed, his supporters wondered if his primary victory was little more than "shifting the blame", and faded away into the mist, eclipsed by both his colleagues in Congress and future Republican nominees.

[6] 'A Bout of Political Mud Wrestling'

While the 1992 presidential election wasn't entirely perceived as a Democratic blowout, the Republican Party's internal conflicts made it so. With the old-guard Goopers and the combative, increasingly chauvinist 'New Right' at each other's throats, the party didn't have a strong leader to coalesce around, instead having dozens of minor candidates sling mud at each other and run around the country until June, which saw a relatively obscure New England ex-governor emerge from the pile of pummeled candidates.

As a deeply Catholic, law-and-order politician and as a Governor whose tenure saw Massachusetts' economic conditions greatly improve, Edward J. King quickly became the candidate of the large, mostly blue-collar Northern Strategy electorate that saw in him a kindred spirit, and - as he went up against the likes of Fob James, Don Rumsfeld and Anthony Imperiale - the moderate wing of the party as well.

As the Democrats settled somewhat apprehensively behind Governor Tom Bradley (with a Southern running mate, predictably enough), the 1992 presidential election was shaping up to be competitive. As the War in Lebanon was superseded by the Japanese stock market crash and tensions in the post-Soviet republics, Edward J. King was able to strike the Carter administration over "fumbling" the Georgian Civil War, and generally performed well in the first presidential debates. By late October, as allegations of institutional corruption in the King administration became national news, the presidential race turned ballistic, with ads and campaign consultants accusing Bradley of being "soft on crime and urban terror" and King being "the candidate of cronyism". In the end, while Bradley secured a narrow victory over King, Republicans were able to make a few gains in Congress (largely concentrated in New England and the Midwest).

[7] 'He's the Man, for all seasons'

After the chaos of the 1992 primaries, the common line of thinking coming from the Republican benches was that the broadest house possible on Republican policies would get the them the clinch pin. The Bradley White House was coming apart at the seems, and his renomination as candidate was far from secure, therefore the Republicans needed to appear as stable and undivided as possible. The primaries of '96 became the contest over who could appear to be the charismatic and woo the most swing voters. Ultimately, Bob McEwen triumphed on account of his success as a profiteer of the Northern Strategy and how he managed to dominate the House, as Newt Gingrich would fire him like a torpedo at any of the President's legislation to smash it. With the nomination and a solid reputation of opposition to Bradley, McEwen managed to sweep up the Bible belt, Mid-West and the right portion of Eastern states.

But once McEwen was sworn in, his Administration began to immediately suffer from being too conservative for the Conservative Republicans, even on the Traditional Republican points. The tax cuts that were promised were not as large as many expected, which puzzled many of the Party's business backers given the GOP still controlled the House and Senate. It also hard suffered from a lethargic response in rolling back the Liberal legislation of Bradley and Carter: regulation of automatic firearms remained in place, as did the quotas for affirmative action, and despite McEwen's pounding of the drum for an increase in Abortion restrictions they too remained absent of any action or talk from the White House.

It wasn't even as though the President was distracted by his Foreign Policy. While his first year was dedicated to finally ending the War in Lebanon through mediation, there was little need for a strong American presence on the World Stage in the late 90s - the Georgian Civil War had fizzled out, and Eastern Europe was being shepherded to prosperity by their Western neighbours. As the next election cleared, there wasn't a real expectation for anyone to challenge McEwen, but many Republicans were impressing the need for him to become more radical in his agenda for the second term.

[8] 'A House divided against itself cannot stand"

McEwen had had a warning shot fired across his bows by party insiders and came out swinging promising a campaign against Social Liberalism, Socialism and Ethnic strife. That last phrase was a barely concealed dog whistle to the White Nationalist wing of the party, which had been a significant minority since the Connolly days and for some Conservatives remained a significant irritant. For one key Conservative they were a boil that had to be lanced, whatever the cost.

William F. Buckley's quixotic campaign as the Conservative Party nominee for President has been studied many times since 2000, was it a principled stand against White Nationalism, a damaging miscalculation to reign in McEwen's appeals to the bigot or personal ego trip for a conservative commentator past his prime. Buckley himself gave a reasoned explanation just before his death in 2008, that various ethnic and immigrant communities were at heart conservatives, mostly social conservatives and that the Republicans were throwing away a massive pool of voters by pandering to the basest instincts of the most extreme wing of the Right. He hoped to prove this by standing on a conservative platform that embraced all the ethnic groups of the USA and promising a proper conservative government and not the one supplied by the surprisingly low energy McEwen regime.

McEwen's advisors publicly and privately scoffed at Buckley's attempts at relevance and the bruising Democratic primaries did little to dampen their expectation of an easy victory. Bob Graham was the eventual Democratic nominee, solid but not a man to galvanize the nation. The early dynamism of McEwen's campaign slowly wilted and the President went about his duties with some sangfroid and a host of conservative soundbites. However something was beginning to happen on the campaign trail.

Buckley's media contacts were eager to have the loquacious nominee appearing on television and in newspapers, always good for a soundbite the Conservative candidate was more than happy to agree. By mid-May McEwen's campaign managers noted that polling was showing the Reform party impacting both the Democratic and Republican numbers, but primary the Republican ones. Even worse Bob Graham had apparently found his mojo on the campaign trail and his combination of populist economic rhetoric and a promised return to the "all in it together" days of Carter was beginning to find traction.

As November approached the McEwen administration began to fire as much muck as possible at both candiates, in one particularity distasteful episode elements of the White House press team leaked the insinuation that Buckley has cheated on his wife Pat and fathered a child with a black woman. This was seen as extremely crass and obviously untrue and helped feed the narrative that White Nationalism had totally infected the party. Buckleys searing riposte to McEwen that he was running "a bigoted, corrupt and bloated corpse of an Administration" was headline news. Even Graham got some good jabs in on the President but the polls still showed a victory, albeit a narrow one for McEwen.

In the end it all came down to 4,873 votes in Florida. Buckley secured 4.5% of the vote and winning a significant amount of conservative ethnic voters especially within Hispanic communites. While Graham and McEwen were basically neck and neck the Demorcats had managed to swing enough Working class voters and retained the African-American vote to do it. McEwen demanded a recount but the result stayed the same, Graham had won his home state and the election. McEwen had barely finished his concession phone-call to Graham when the recriminations began, Buckley was blamed for splitting the vote while Buckley pointed to his success with minority conservative communities to prove his thesis correct and that pandering to the bigots would lead to increasingly diminishing returns.

The post-mortem for the Republican party would last a long time and old wounds were reopened, but it was clear that one person was primarily to blame. Bob McEwen had been a do nothing President and a poor campaigner and on his shoulders rested the responsibility of defeat. One again the Republicans were cast into the wilderness for another 4 years.

[9] 'America Stands Tall'

Actor, attorney, senator; a man who had pushed McEwen to go further right but had not been publicly tainted by claims of white nationalism; Thompson won a bitterly contested primary contest as the man who could WIN, whereas 'racially conservative' and the libertarians could not WIN. Graham was seen as vulnerable after America was bogged down in the UN Darfur mission and when his environmental policies were leaving Americans by seemingly-arbitrary changes. Graham ran on claims of liberal immigration reform after securing borders, a stance that a majority of the country agreed with, and the need for less Big Government (tied to Graham's top-down green policies) and "questions" about whether climate change, while clearly real, was actually man-made.

Thompson returned the Republicans to office and within a year, a massive hurricane had trashed the south. While his response was seen as competent, it meant the climate change debate was suddenly close to home: what if it was man-made and this would happen again, his voters wondered and activists said? The Republicans could reduce some federal powers to states, they could continue to oversee a sound economy (inherited from Graham), they could battle culture wars, but the climate hung over everything. Science became part of the culture wars. The issue weighed on Thompson and sparked fierce internal debates about how to proceed, but what made it worse is that Thompson was clearly fixated on the issue now - it was a challenge to his legitimacy and self - and not on whatever John Q Public cared more about. Hillary Clinton's campaign time picked on this as their angle, 'why is he not talking about THESE issues?', and enough Americans agreed that the Republicans were back out.
 
Republican Nominees for President:

1968: James A. Rhodes [1]

1972: John Connally [2]

1976: John Connally [3]

1980: Peter Brennan [4]

1984: Peter Brennan [5]

1988: Phil Crane [5.5]

1992: Edward J. King [6]

1996: Bob McEwen [7]

2000: Bob McEwen [8]

2004: Fred Thompson [9]

2008: Jim Mattis [10]

2012: Newt Gingrich

2016:

[1] 'Where were you when Dick Nixon was shot?'

The old veep might not have been the most tragic death in the awful 'Year of Lead,' but he was one of the most consequential- certainly far closer to the nomination than Bobby Kennedy had been. The disarray of the GOP convention and five awful ballots was probably the reason that they didn't take the easy prize of the White House that year. Still, something had changed in the party, and Ohio's favored son revealed himself to be a much tougher, more severe candidate than many of the media had guessed.

[2] 'John Bowden Connally lies awaiting in the grass, John Bowden Connally will beat your rotten goddamn ass'

Robert Kennedy's problem was that he tried to be everything to all men. A scrappy populists who understood the issues of the working man worried about interfering bureaucrats, moochers and blacks. A Martin Luther King reborn to a black electorate that didn't intend to take it lying down anymore. A conciliatory insider for the men who'd been standing by the trough since the days of Eisenhower. A reformer and man peace for the activists who backed him to remove the grotesque monstrosity that was Lyndon Johnson. John Connolly on the other hand knew exactly who his friends (business, conservatives in both parties), potential friend (moderates, the less radical unions) and enemies (liberals, hippies, blacks) were. He might have lost the debates from a rhetorical perspective, but as for as a majority of the electorate was concerned there was one man on that screen who represented the real American people, and one who didn't. They rewarded the former appropriately.

[3] 'All the way, USA! All the way, USA!'

The redefinition of the Republican coalition under Connolly was one of the most major realignments in American political history. The new "Northern Strategy", as it was termed, was focused on prying away blue-collar support for the Democrats by combining a broadly populist economic policy with chest-beating patriotism and an appeal to "American traditional values". While Republican poll numbers went up across the country--even in areas of the Deep South--the triumph of a Republican Michigan was what sealed the deal on the new strategy. Defeated, Walter Reuther slinked out of politics forever (some say, assassinated by the CIA), and Connolly went on to redefine his nation and new party.

[4] 'Unions together for a new United States'

Peter Brennan as Secretary of Labor was a key component in growing Connolly's base amongst formally working class Democrats and as the President's second term was coming to an end seemed the ideal candidate to continue the Northern strategy. It wasn't a pick without controversy however as his previous support for affirmative action and moderate social views where unappealing to more traditionally minded Republican delegates, especially in the South. The primaries were somewhat divisive but Brennan was eventually secured as Connolly's successor candidate.

A strong economic situation and support from a majority of Unions (even some of the more Democrat leaning ones were bought off with promises of Labor protections) secured a fairly comprehensive victory for Brennan over Mondale. Brennan offered continuity Connolly-ism, but in a sop to more strident members of the party stepped back from some of his previous support for affirmative action and other programs to assist minority communities. He offset this with full throated populist support for "patriotic American workers", which was technically a colourblind program of economic support packages for traditional manufacturing areas. However it was noted that a majority of these industry were majority White and helped to solidify a notion of the Republican party as one solely for White America.

As his term neared its end the economy slowly contracted and the influence of hardliners in the Soviet Union necessitated a need for increased defence spending. Brennans economic policies had to be substantially reduced and a building grassroots ethnic equality movement began taking to the streets. It seemed like the 80s was building up to be another decade of strife for the USA.

[5] 'United People, United States'

Disgruntled unions - particularly the smaller ones that didn't have patronage links with the Republicans - and marching racial & gay-rights activists would dominate the news, when that news wasn't about government debt or dead marines in Lebanon. Brennan was able to defeat his primary opponents by pointing to his record in office, but that record was starting to crumble as far as the average white American man was concerned. He was unfavourably compared to Jimmy Carter - a man with a folksy accent, a family businessman, a good ol' boy, a veteran (so was Brennan but the Democrats got their ads out first) - by a chunk of his base, who were willing to overlook his social liberalism. Brennan realised he was facing a challenge and prepared to fight Carter with everything he had, but the factions of his party who'd lost, particularly the growing evangelists, assumed he would lose and made it clear before the vote that he would lose for not being like them. While Brennan would most likely have lost, this Republican civil war cost them a few key seats in Congress as well.

[5.5] 'The Scapegoat'

For a while, Phil Crane was the unchallenged, admired flagbearer of the Republican Party's conservative movement, and his rallies attracted outsized attention far beyond the Chicago area that he represented. After Brennan's defeat, it was unsurprising that Crane clinched the nomination with ease; however, after twelve years of Connallyite Conservatism people were not entranced by Crane's even more ancient brand, and the irascible, controversial, endlessly bitter congressman paled in comparison with the genial, largely successful President Carter. As Carter won a landslide, Crane fumed, his supporters wondered if his primary victory was little more than "shifting the blame", and faded away into the mist, eclipsed by both his colleagues in Congress and future Republican nominees.

[6] 'A Bout of Political Mud Wrestling'

While the 1992 presidential election wasn't entirely perceived as a Democratic blowout, the Republican Party's internal conflicts made it so. With the old-guard Goopers and the combative, increasingly chauvinist 'New Right' at each other's throats, the party didn't have a strong leader to coalesce around, instead having dozens of minor candidates sling mud at each other and run around the country until June, which saw a relatively obscure New England ex-governor emerge from the pile of pummeled candidates.

As a deeply Catholic, law-and-order politician and as a Governor whose tenure saw Massachusetts' economic conditions greatly improve, Edward J. King quickly became the candidate of the large, mostly blue-collar Northern Strategy electorate that saw in him a kindred spirit, and - as he went up against the likes of Fob James, Don Rumsfeld and Anthony Imperiale - the moderate wing of the party as well.

As the Democrats settled somewhat apprehensively behind Governor Tom Bradley (with a Southern running mate, predictably enough), the 1992 presidential election was shaping up to be competitive. As the War in Lebanon was superseded by the Japanese stock market crash and tensions in the post-Soviet republics, Edward J. King was able to strike the Carter administration over "fumbling" the Georgian Civil War, and generally performed well in the first presidential debates. By late October, as allegations of institutional corruption in the King administration became national news, the presidential race turned ballistic, with ads and campaign consultants accusing Bradley of being "soft on crime and urban terror" and King being "the candidate of cronyism". In the end, while Bradley secured a narrow victory over King, Republicans were able to make a few gains in Congress (largely concentrated in New England and the Midwest).

[7] 'He's the Man, for all seasons'

After the chaos of the 1992 primaries, the common line of thinking coming from the Republican benches was that the broadest house possible on Republican policies would get the them the clinch pin. The Bradley White House was coming apart at the seems, and his renomination as candidate was far from secure, therefore the Republicans needed to appear as stable and undivided as possible. The primaries of '96 became the contest over who could appear to be the charismatic and woo the most swing voters. Ultimately, Bob McEwen triumphed on account of his success as a profiteer of the Northern Strategy and how he managed to dominate the House, as Newt Gingrich would fire him like a torpedo at any of the President's legislation to smash it. With the nomination and a solid reputation of opposition to Bradley, McEwen managed to sweep up the Bible belt, Mid-West and the right portion of Eastern states.

But once McEwen was sworn in, his Administration began to immediately suffer from being too conservative for the Conservative Republicans, even on the Traditional Republican points. The tax cuts that were promised were not as large as many expected, which puzzled many of the Party's business backers given the GOP still controlled the House and Senate. It also hard suffered from a lethargic response in rolling back the Liberal legislation of Bradley and Carter: regulation of automatic firearms remained in place, as did the quotas for affirmative action, and despite McEwen's pounding of the drum for an increase in Abortion restrictions they too remained absent of any action or talk from the White House.

It wasn't even as though the President was distracted by his Foreign Policy. While his first year was dedicated to finally ending the War in Lebanon through mediation, there was little need for a strong American presence on the World Stage in the late 90s - the Georgian Civil War had fizzled out, and Eastern Europe was being shepherded to prosperity by their Western neighbours. As the next election cleared, there wasn't a real expectation for anyone to challenge McEwen, but many Republicans were impressing the need for him to become more radical in his agenda for the second term.

[8] 'A House divided against itself cannot stand"

McEwen had had a warning shot fired across his bows by party insiders and came out swinging promising a campaign against Social Liberalism, Socialism and Ethnic strife. That last phrase was a barely concealed dog whistle to the White Nationalist wing of the party, which had been a significant minority since the Connolly days and for some Conservatives remained a significant irritant. For one key Conservative they were a boil that had to be lanced, whatever the cost.

William F. Buckley's quixotic campaign as the Conservative Party nominee for President has been studied many times since 2000, was it a principled stand against White Nationalism, a damaging miscalculation to reign in McEwen's appeals to the bigot or personal ego trip for a conservative commentator past his prime. Buckley himself gave a reasoned explanation just before his death in 2008, that various ethnic and immigrant communities were at heart conservatives, mostly social conservatives and that the Republicans were throwing away a massive pool of voters by pandering to the basest instincts of the most extreme wing of the Right. He hoped to prove this by standing on a conservative platform that embraced all the ethnic groups of the USA and promising a proper conservative government and not the one supplied by the surprisingly low energy McEwen regime.

McEwen's advisors publicly and privately scoffed at Buckley's attempts at relevance and the bruising Democratic primaries did little to dampen their expectation of an easy victory. Bob Graham was the eventual Democratic nominee, solid but not a man to galvanize the nation. The early dynamism of McEwen's campaign slowly wilted and the President went about his duties with some sangfroid and a host of conservative soundbites. However something was beginning to happen on the campaign trail.

Buckley's media contacts were eager to have the loquacious nominee appearing on television and in newspapers, always good for a soundbite the Conservative candidate was more than happy to agree. By mid-May McEwen's campaign managers noted that polling was showing the Reform party impacting both the Democratic and Republican numbers, but primary the Republican ones. Even worse Bob Graham had apparently found his mojo on the campaign trail and his combination of populist economic rhetoric and a promised return to the "all in it together" days of Carter was beginning to find traction.

As November approached the McEwen administration began to fire as much muck as possible at both candiates, in one particularity distasteful episode elements of the White House press team leaked the insinuation that Buckley has cheated on his wife Pat and fathered a child with a black woman. This was seen as extremely crass and obviously untrue and helped feed the narrative that White Nationalism had totally infected the party. Buckleys searing riposte to McEwen that he was running "a bigoted, corrupt and bloated corpse of an Administration" was headline news. Even Graham got some good jabs in on the President but the polls still showed a victory, albeit a narrow one for McEwen.

In the end it all came down to 4,873 votes in Florida. Buckley secured 4.5% of the vote and winning a significant amount of conservative ethnic voters especially within Hispanic communites. While Graham and McEwen were basically neck and neck the Demorcats had managed to swing enough Working class voters and retained the African-American vote to do it. McEwen demanded a recount but the result stayed the same, Graham had won his home state and the election. McEwen had barely finished his concession phone-call to Graham when the recriminations began, Buckley was blamed for splitting the vote while Buckley pointed to his success with minority conservative communities to prove his thesis correct and that pandering to the bigots would lead to increasingly diminishing returns.

The post-mortem for the Republican party would last a long time and old wounds were reopened, but it was clear that one person was primarily to blame. Bob McEwen had been a do nothing President and a poor campaigner and on his shoulders rested the responsibility of defeat. One again the Republicans were cast into the wilderness for another 4 years.

[9] 'America Stands Tall'

Actor, attorney, senator; a man who had pushed McEwen to go further right but had not been publicly tainted by claims of white nationalism; Thompson won a bitterly contested primary contest as the man who could WIN, whereas 'racially conservative' and the libertarians could not WIN. Graham was seen as vulnerable after America was bogged down in the UN Darfur mission and when his environmental policies were leaving Americans by seemingly-arbitrary changes. Graham ran on claims of liberal immigration reform after securing borders, a stance that a majority of the country agreed with, and the need for less Big Government (tied to Graham's top-down green policies) and "questions" about whether climate change, while clearly real, was actually man-made.

Thompson returned the Republicans to office and within a year, a massive hurricane had trashed the south. While his response was seen as competent, it meant the climate change debate was suddenly close to home: what if it was man-made and this would happen again, his voters wondered and activists said? The Republicans could reduce some federal powers to states, they could continue to oversee a sound economy (inherited from Graham), they could battle culture wars, but the climate hung over everything. Science became part of the culture wars. The issue weighed on Thompson and sparked fierce internal debates about how to proceed, but what made it worse is that Thompson was clearly fixated on the issue now - it was a challenge to his legitimacy and self - and not on whatever John Q Public cared more about. Hillary Clinton's campaign time picked on this as their angle, 'why is he not talking about THESE issues?', and enough Americans agreed that the Republicans were back out.

[10] 'Peace in our Time'

As Thompson's position continued to weaken amidst a united Democratic party under Clinton, challenges within his own party began springing up like leaks. Eventually they coalesced around former Marine general, Jim Mattis. His campaign became a runaway train within the GOP and ultimately stole the nomination from him: this would prove disastrous for their hopes of retaining the Presidency. As Clinton's campaign focused on the environment, economic and social affairs, Mattis built on his military background and focus on Foreign Policy and Military affairs which was all the more curious given the peaceful state of the world in 2008.

While November and election day approached, Mattis only dug himself into a deeper hole and began to draw out the old Republican-Churchillian rhetoric, which bounced off the Clinton campaign with no effect. The culmination, and many argue the final nail the Mattis coffin, was during the televised debates as Mattis accused Clinton of 'wanting Peace in our Time' - a Munich referenced which was lost on the average American, and actually sounded more like an endorsement of Clinton than a slander. The morning after the debates, Clinton had flipped the table on foreign policy debates. She was now the woman looking to maintain the peace, while Mattis just looked like another General in search of another war. Thompson meanwhile sat back shrugging his shoulders, as the Republicans wondered what might have been.
 
Republican Nominees for President:

1968: James A. Rhodes [1]

1972: John Connally [2]

1976: John Connally [3]

1980: Peter Brennan [4]

1984: Peter Brennan [5]

1988: Phil Crane [5.5]

1992: Edward J. King [6]

1996: Bob McEwen [7]

2000: Bob McEwen [8]

2004: Fred Thompson [9]

2008: Jim Mattis [10]

2012: Newt Gingrich [11]

2016: Newt Gingrich

[1] 'Where were you when Dick Nixon was shot?'

The old veep might not have been the most tragic death in the awful 'Year of Lead,' but he was one of the most consequential- certainly far closer to the nomination than Bobby Kennedy had been. The disarray of the GOP convention and five awful ballots was probably the reason that they didn't take the easy prize of the White House that year. Still, something had changed in the party, and Ohio's favored son revealed himself to be a much tougher, more severe candidate than many of the media had guessed.

[2] 'John Bowden Connally lies awaiting in the grass, John Bowden Connally will beat your rotten goddamn ass'

Robert Kennedy's problem was that he tried to be everything to all men. A scrappy populists who understood the issues of the working man worried about interfering bureaucrats, moochers and blacks. A Martin Luther King reborn to a black electorate that didn't intend to take it lying down anymore. A conciliatory insider for the men who'd been standing by the trough since the days of Eisenhower. A reformer and man peace for the activists who backed him to remove the grotesque monstrosity that was Lyndon Johnson. John Connolly on the other hand knew exactly who his friends (business, conservatives in both parties), potential friend (moderates, the less radical unions) and enemies (liberals, hippies, blacks) were. He might have lost the debates from a rhetorical perspective, but as for as a majority of the electorate was concerned there was one man on that screen who represented the real American people, and one who didn't. They rewarded the former appropriately.

[3] 'All the way, USA! All the way, USA!'

The redefinition of the Republican coalition under Connolly was one of the most major realignments in American political history. The new "Northern Strategy", as it was termed, was focused on prying away blue-collar support for the Democrats by combining a broadly populist economic policy with chest-beating patriotism and an appeal to "American traditional values". While Republican poll numbers went up across the country--even in areas of the Deep South--the triumph of a Republican Michigan was what sealed the deal on the new strategy. Defeated, Walter Reuther slinked out of politics forever (some say, assassinated by the CIA), and Connolly went on to redefine his nation and new party.

[4] 'Unions together for a new United States'

Peter Brennan as Secretary of Labor was a key component in growing Connolly's base amongst formally working class Democrats and as the President's second term was coming to an end seemed the ideal candidate to continue the Northern strategy. It wasn't a pick without controversy however as his previous support for affirmative action and moderate social views where unappealing to more traditionally minded Republican delegates, especially in the South. The primaries were somewhat divisive but Brennan was eventually secured as Connolly's successor candidate.

A strong economic situation and support from a majority of Unions (even some of the more Democrat leaning ones were bought off with promises of Labor protections) secured a fairly comprehensive victory for Brennan over Mondale. Brennan offered continuity Connolly-ism, but in a sop to more strident members of the party stepped back from some of his previous support for affirmative action and other programs to assist minority communities. He offset this with full throated populist support for "patriotic American workers", which was technically a colourblind program of economic support packages for traditional manufacturing areas. However it was noted that a majority of these industry were majority White and helped to solidify a notion of the Republican party as one solely for White America.

As his term neared its end the economy slowly contracted and the influence of hardliners in the Soviet Union necessitated a need for increased defence spending. Brennans economic policies had to be substantially reduced and a building grassroots ethnic equality movement began taking to the streets. It seemed like the 80s was building up to be another decade of strife for the USA.

[5] 'United People, United States'

Disgruntled unions - particularly the smaller ones that didn't have patronage links with the Republicans - and marching racial & gay-rights activists would dominate the news, when that news wasn't about government debt or dead marines in Lebanon. Brennan was able to defeat his primary opponents by pointing to his record in office, but that record was starting to crumble as far as the average white American man was concerned. He was unfavourably compared to Jimmy Carter - a man with a folksy accent, a family businessman, a good ol' boy, a veteran (so was Brennan but the Democrats got their ads out first) - by a chunk of his base, who were willing to overlook his social liberalism. Brennan realised he was facing a challenge and prepared to fight Carter with everything he had, but the factions of his party who'd lost, particularly the growing evangelists, assumed he would lose and made it clear before the vote that he would lose for not being like them. While Brennan would most likely have lost, this Republican civil war cost them a few key seats in Congress as well.

[5.5] 'The Scapegoat'

For a while, Phil Crane was the unchallenged, admired flagbearer of the Republican Party's conservative movement, and his rallies attracted outsized attention far beyond the Chicago area that he represented. After Brennan's defeat, it was unsurprising that Crane clinched the nomination with ease; however, after twelve years of Connallyite Conservatism people were not entranced by Crane's even more ancient brand, and the irascible, controversial, endlessly bitter congressman paled in comparison with the genial, largely successful President Carter. As Carter won a landslide, Crane fumed, his supporters wondered if his primary victory was little more than "shifting the blame", and faded away into the mist, eclipsed by both his colleagues in Congress and future Republican nominees.

[6] 'A Bout of Political Mud Wrestling'

While the 1992 presidential election wasn't entirely perceived as a Democratic blowout, the Republican Party's internal conflicts made it so. With the old-guard Goopers and the combative, increasingly chauvinist 'New Right' at each other's throats, the party didn't have a strong leader to coalesce around, instead having dozens of minor candidates sling mud at each other and run around the country until June, which saw a relatively obscure New England ex-governor emerge from the pile of pummeled candidates.

As a deeply Catholic, law-and-order politician and as a Governor whose tenure saw Massachusetts' economic conditions greatly improve, Edward J. King quickly became the candidate of the large, mostly blue-collar Northern Strategy electorate that saw in him a kindred spirit, and - as he went up against the likes of Fob James, Don Rumsfeld and Anthony Imperiale - the moderate wing of the party as well.

As the Democrats settled somewhat apprehensively behind Governor Tom Bradley (with a Southern running mate, predictably enough), the 1992 presidential election was shaping up to be competitive. As the War in Lebanon was superseded by the Japanese stock market crash and tensions in the post-Soviet republics, Edward J. King was able to strike the Carter administration over "fumbling" the Georgian Civil War, and generally performed well in the first presidential debates. By late October, as allegations of institutional corruption in the King administration became national news, the presidential race turned ballistic, with ads and campaign consultants accusing Bradley of being "soft on crime and urban terror" and King being "the candidate of cronyism". In the end, while Bradley secured a narrow victory over King, Republicans were able to make a few gains in Congress (largely concentrated in New England and the Midwest).

[7] 'He's the Man, for all seasons'

After the chaos of the 1992 primaries, the common line of thinking coming from the Republican benches was that the broadest house possible on Republican policies would get the them the clinch pin. The Bradley White House was coming apart at the seems, and his renomination as candidate was far from secure, therefore the Republicans needed to appear as stable and undivided as possible. The primaries of '96 became the contest over who could appear to be the charismatic and woo the most swing voters. Ultimately, Bob McEwen triumphed on account of his success as a profiteer of the Northern Strategy and how he managed to dominate the House, as Newt Gingrich would fire him like a torpedo at any of the President's legislation to smash it. With the nomination and a solid reputation of opposition to Bradley, McEwen managed to sweep up the Bible belt, Mid-West and the right portion of Eastern states.

But once McEwen was sworn in, his Administration began to immediately suffer from being too conservative for the Conservative Republicans, even on the Traditional Republican points. The tax cuts that were promised were not as large as many expected, which puzzled many of the Party's business backers given the GOP still controlled the House and Senate. It also hard suffered from a lethargic response in rolling back the Liberal legislation of Bradley and Carter: regulation of automatic firearms remained in place, as did the quotas for affirmative action, and despite McEwen's pounding of the drum for an increase in Abortion restrictions they too remained absent of any action or talk from the White House.

It wasn't even as though the President was distracted by his Foreign Policy. While his first year was dedicated to finally ending the War in Lebanon through mediation, there was little need for a strong American presence on the World Stage in the late 90s - the Georgian Civil War had fizzled out, and Eastern Europe was being shepherded to prosperity by their Western neighbours. As the next election cleared, there wasn't a real expectation for anyone to challenge McEwen, but many Republicans were impressing the need for him to become more radical in his agenda for the second term.

[8] 'A House divided against itself cannot stand"

McEwen had had a warning shot fired across his bows by party insiders and came out swinging promising a campaign against Social Liberalism, Socialism and Ethnic strife. That last phrase was a barely concealed dog whistle to the White Nationalist wing of the party, which had been a significant minority since the Connolly days and for some Conservatives remained a significant irritant. For one key Conservative they were a boil that had to be lanced, whatever the cost.

William F. Buckley's quixotic campaign as the Conservative Party nominee for President has been studied many times since 2000, was it a principled stand against White Nationalism, a damaging miscalculation to reign in McEwen's appeals to the bigot or personal ego trip for a conservative commentator past his prime. Buckley himself gave a reasoned explanation just before his death in 2008, that various ethnic and immigrant communities were at heart conservatives, mostly social conservatives and that the Republicans were throwing away a massive pool of voters by pandering to the basest instincts of the most extreme wing of the Right. He hoped to prove this by standing on a conservative platform that embraced all the ethnic groups of the USA and promising a proper conservative government and not the one supplied by the surprisingly low energy McEwen regime.

McEwen's advisors publicly and privately scoffed at Buckley's attempts at relevance and the bruising Democratic primaries did little to dampen their expectation of an easy victory. Bob Graham was the eventual Democratic nominee, solid but not a man to galvanize the nation. The early dynamism of McEwen's campaign slowly wilted and the President went about his duties with some sangfroid and a host of conservative soundbites. However something was beginning to happen on the campaign trail.

Buckley's media contacts were eager to have the loquacious nominee appearing on television and in newspapers, always good for a soundbite the Conservative candidate was more than happy to agree. By mid-May McEwen's campaign managers noted that polling was showing the Reform party impacting both the Democratic and Republican numbers, but primary the Republican ones. Even worse Bob Graham had apparently found his mojo on the campaign trail and his combination of populist economic rhetoric and a promised return to the "all in it together" days of Carter was beginning to find traction.

As November approached the McEwen administration began to fire as much muck as possible at both candiates, in one particularity distasteful episode elements of the White House press team leaked the insinuation that Buckley has cheated on his wife Pat and fathered a child with a black woman. This was seen as extremely crass and obviously untrue and helped feed the narrative that White Nationalism had totally infected the party. Buckleys searing riposte to McEwen that he was running "a bigoted, corrupt and bloated corpse of an Administration" was headline news. Even Graham got some good jabs in on the President but the polls still showed a victory, albeit a narrow one for McEwen.

In the end it all came down to 4,873 votes in Florida. Buckley secured 4.5% of the vote and winning a significant amount of conservative ethnic voters especially within Hispanic communites. While Graham and McEwen were basically neck and neck the Demorcats had managed to swing enough Working class voters and retained the African-American vote to do it. McEwen demanded a recount but the result stayed the same, Graham had won his home state and the election. McEwen had barely finished his concession phone-call to Graham when the recriminations began, Buckley was blamed for splitting the vote while Buckley pointed to his success with minority conservative communities to prove his thesis correct and that pandering to the bigots would lead to increasingly diminishing returns.

The post-mortem for the Republican party would last a long time and old wounds were reopened, but it was clear that one person was primarily to blame. Bob McEwen had been a do nothing President and a poor campaigner and on his shoulders rested the responsibility of defeat. One again the Republicans were cast into the wilderness for another 4 years.

[9] 'America Stands Tall'

Actor, attorney, senator; a man who had pushed McEwen to go further right but had not been publicly tainted by claims of white nationalism; Thompson won a bitterly contested primary contest as the man who could WIN, whereas 'racially conservative' and the libertarians could not WIN. Graham was seen as vulnerable after America was bogged down in the UN Darfur mission and when his environmental policies were leaving Americans by seemingly-arbitrary changes. Graham ran on claims of liberal immigration reform after securing borders, a stance that a majority of the country agreed with, and the need for less Big Government (tied to Graham's top-down green policies) and "questions" about whether climate change, while clearly real, was actually man-made.

Thompson returned the Republicans to office and within a year, a massive hurricane had trashed the south. While his response was seen as competent, it meant the climate change debate was suddenly close to home: what if it was man-made and this would happen again, his voters wondered and activists said? The Republicans could reduce some federal powers to states, they could continue to oversee a sound economy (inherited from Graham), they could battle culture wars, but the climate hung over everything. Science became part of the culture wars. The issue weighed on Thompson and sparked fierce internal debates about how to proceed, but what made it worse is that Thompson was clearly fixated on the issue now - it was a challenge to his legitimacy and self - and not on whatever John Q Public cared more about. Hillary Clinton's campaign time picked on this as their angle, 'why is he not talking about THESE issues?', and enough Americans agreed that the Republicans were back out.

[10] 'Peace in our Time'

As Thompson's position continued to weaken amidst a united Democratic party under Clinton, challenges within his own party began springing up like leaks. Eventually they coalesced around former Marine general, Jim Mattis. His campaign became a runaway train within the GOP and ultimately stole the nomination from him: this would prove disastrous for their hopes of retaining the Presidency. As Clinton's campaign focused on the environment, economic and social affairs, Mattis built on his military background and focus on Foreign Policy and Military affairs which was all the more curious given the peaceful state of the world in 2008.

While November and election day approached, Mattis only dug himself into a deeper hole and began to draw out the old Republican-Churchillian rhetoric, which bounced off the Clinton campaign with no effect. The culmination, and many argue the final nail the Mattis coffin, was during the televised debates as Mattis accused Clinton of 'wanting Peace in our Time' - a Munich referenced which was lost on the average American, and actually sounded more like an endorsement of Clinton than a slander. The morning after the debates, Clinton had flipped the table on foreign policy debates. She was now the woman looking to maintain the peace, while Mattis just looked like another General in search of another war. Thompson meanwhile sat back shrugging his shoulders, as the Republicans wondered what might have been.


[11] 'Weak Economy, Weak Country'

Clinton's term got America back on track environmentally but was undone halfway through by a global economic slump - the first big downturn in America's history for a long while, happening at a time when China and a revived Japan were growing economic powers, and Venezuela a regional one. The Republicans went for the economy as their vote-winner: the Democrats had spent too much, the taxes and red tape were strangling business, and the US was weak against growing economic rivals. Gingrich was one of the most famous economic minds, and fiscal hawks, of the party and had departed Congress to be an economic pundit, and so was free of any ties to boorish congressional argy-bargy about civil liberties or the environment.

He won the presidency but the Democrats still had Congress, restraining Gingrich's initial impulses. In the midterms, he successfully presented this as holding back a recovery (there was actually a gradual one but it went unnoticed in the press) and between this and the party's focus on downballot action, he was able to win a 'red' majority. The next two years would see a full unleaded Gingrich... and that meant a bonfire of taxes, red tape, and large chunks of welfare and other state spending. Disruption and pain across America was "shock therapy", he said, clearing out the weaknesses so the country could be stronger. And part of that, he decided, was a privatisation of social security.

A bruising congressional battle saw the Social Security Restructing Act pass, but would not fully take effect until, potentially, the next president came in. That meant the Democrats had time to potentially reverse it. But would America revolt against the Republicans or accept "shock therapy" as a necessity, when they could see Japan, China, the EU, and Venezuela all collectively parking tanks on the lawn?
 
Republican Nominees for President:

1968: James A. Rhodes [1]

1972: John Connally [2]

1976: John Connally [3]

1980: Peter Brennan [4]

1984: Peter Brennan [5]

1988: Phil Crane [5.5]

1992: Edward J. King [6]

1996: Bob McEwen [7]

2000: Bob McEwen [8]

2004: Fred Thompson [9]

2008: Jim Mattis [10]

2012: Newt Gingrich [11]

2016: Newt Gingrich [12]

[1] 'Where were you when Dick Nixon was shot?'

The old veep might not have been the most tragic death in the awful 'Year of Lead,' but he was one of the most consequential- certainly far closer to the nomination than Bobby Kennedy had been. The disarray of the GOP convention and five awful ballots was probably the reason that they didn't take the easy prize of the White House that year. Still, something had changed in the party, and Ohio's favored son revealed himself to be a much tougher, more severe candidate than many of the media had guessed.

[2] 'John Bowden Connally lies awaiting in the grass, John Bowden Connally will beat your rotten goddamn ass'

Robert Kennedy's problem was that he tried to be everything to all men. A scrappy populists who understood the issues of the working man worried about interfering bureaucrats, moochers and blacks. A Martin Luther King reborn to a black electorate that didn't intend to take it lying down anymore. A conciliatory insider for the men who'd been standing by the trough since the days of Eisenhower. A reformer and man peace for the activists who backed him to remove the grotesque monstrosity that was Lyndon Johnson. John Connolly on the other hand knew exactly who his friends (business, conservatives in both parties), potential friend (moderates, the less radical unions) and enemies (liberals, hippies, blacks) were. He might have lost the debates from a rhetorical perspective, but as for as a majority of the electorate was concerned there was one man on that screen who represented the real American people, and one who didn't. They rewarded the former appropriately.

[3] 'All the way, USA! All the way, USA!'

The redefinition of the Republican coalition under Connolly was one of the most major realignments in American political history. The new "Northern Strategy", as it was termed, was focused on prying away blue-collar support for the Democrats by combining a broadly populist economic policy with chest-beating patriotism and an appeal to "American traditional values". While Republican poll numbers went up across the country--even in areas of the Deep South--the triumph of a Republican Michigan was what sealed the deal on the new strategy. Defeated, Walter Reuther slinked out of politics forever (some say, assassinated by the CIA), and Connolly went on to redefine his nation and new party.

[4] 'Unions together for a new United States'

Peter Brennan as Secretary of Labor was a key component in growing Connolly's base amongst formally working class Democrats and as the President's second term was coming to an end seemed the ideal candidate to continue the Northern strategy. It wasn't a pick without controversy however as his previous support for affirmative action and moderate social views where unappealing to more traditionally minded Republican delegates, especially in the South. The primaries were somewhat divisive but Brennan was eventually secured as Connolly's successor candidate.

A strong economic situation and support from a majority of Unions (even some of the more Democrat leaning ones were bought off with promises of Labor protections) secured a fairly comprehensive victory for Brennan over Mondale. Brennan offered continuity Connolly-ism, but in a sop to more strident members of the party stepped back from some of his previous support for affirmative action and other programs to assist minority communities. He offset this with full throated populist support for "patriotic American workers", which was technically a colourblind program of economic support packages for traditional manufacturing areas. However it was noted that a majority of these industry were majority White and helped to solidify a notion of the Republican party as one solely for White America.

As his term neared its end the economy slowly contracted and the influence of hardliners in the Soviet Union necessitated a need for increased defence spending. Brennans economic policies had to be substantially reduced and a building grassroots ethnic equality movement began taking to the streets. It seemed like the 80s was building up to be another decade of strife for the USA.

[5] 'United People, United States'

Disgruntled unions - particularly the smaller ones that didn't have patronage links with the Republicans - and marching racial & gay-rights activists would dominate the news, when that news wasn't about government debt or dead marines in Lebanon. Brennan was able to defeat his primary opponents by pointing to his record in office, but that record was starting to crumble as far as the average white American man was concerned. He was unfavourably compared to Jimmy Carter - a man with a folksy accent, a family businessman, a good ol' boy, a veteran (so was Brennan but the Democrats got their ads out first) - by a chunk of his base, who were willing to overlook his social liberalism. Brennan realised he was facing a challenge and prepared to fight Carter with everything he had, but the factions of his party who'd lost, particularly the growing evangelists, assumed he would lose and made it clear before the vote that he would lose for not being like them. While Brennan would most likely have lost, this Republican civil war cost them a few key seats in Congress as well.

[5.5] 'The Scapegoat'

For a while, Phil Crane was the unchallenged, admired flagbearer of the Republican Party's conservative movement, and his rallies attracted outsized attention far beyond the Chicago area that he represented. After Brennan's defeat, it was unsurprising that Crane clinched the nomination with ease; however, after twelve years of Connallyite Conservatism people were not entranced by Crane's even more ancient brand, and the irascible, controversial, endlessly bitter congressman paled in comparison with the genial, largely successful President Carter. As Carter won a landslide, Crane fumed, his supporters wondered if his primary victory was little more than "shifting the blame", and faded away into the mist, eclipsed by both his colleagues in Congress and future Republican nominees.

[6] 'A Bout of Political Mud Wrestling'

While the 1992 presidential election wasn't entirely perceived as a Democratic blowout, the Republican Party's internal conflicts made it so. With the old-guard Goopers and the combative, increasingly chauvinist 'New Right' at each other's throats, the party didn't have a strong leader to coalesce around, instead having dozens of minor candidates sling mud at each other and run around the country until June, which saw a relatively obscure New England ex-governor emerge from the pile of pummeled candidates.

As a deeply Catholic, law-and-order politician and as a Governor whose tenure saw Massachusetts' economic conditions greatly improve, Edward J. King quickly became the candidate of the large, mostly blue-collar Northern Strategy electorate that saw in him a kindred spirit, and - as he went up against the likes of Fob James, Don Rumsfeld and Anthony Imperiale - the moderate wing of the party as well.

As the Democrats settled somewhat apprehensively behind Governor Tom Bradley (with a Southern running mate, predictably enough), the 1992 presidential election was shaping up to be competitive. As the War in Lebanon was superseded by the Japanese stock market crash and tensions in the post-Soviet republics, Edward J. King was able to strike the Carter administration over "fumbling" the Georgian Civil War, and generally performed well in the first presidential debates. By late October, as allegations of institutional corruption in the King administration became national news, the presidential race turned ballistic, with ads and campaign consultants accusing Bradley of being "soft on crime and urban terror" and King being "the candidate of cronyism". In the end, while Bradley secured a narrow victory over King, Republicans were able to make a few gains in Congress (largely concentrated in New England and the Midwest).

[7] 'He's the Man, for all seasons'

After the chaos of the 1992 primaries, the common line of thinking coming from the Republican benches was that the broadest house possible on Republican policies would get the them the clinch pin. The Bradley White House was coming apart at the seems, and his renomination as candidate was far from secure, therefore the Republicans needed to appear as stable and undivided as possible. The primaries of '96 became the contest over who could appear to be the charismatic and woo the most swing voters. Ultimately, Bob McEwen triumphed on account of his success as a profiteer of the Northern Strategy and how he managed to dominate the House, as Newt Gingrich would fire him like a torpedo at any of the President's legislation to smash it. With the nomination and a solid reputation of opposition to Bradley, McEwen managed to sweep up the Bible belt, Mid-West and the right portion of Eastern states.

But once McEwen was sworn in, his Administration began to immediately suffer from being too conservative for the Conservative Republicans, even on the Traditional Republican points. The tax cuts that were promised were not as large as many expected, which puzzled many of the Party's business backers given the GOP still controlled the House and Senate. It also hard suffered from a lethargic response in rolling back the Liberal legislation of Bradley and Carter: regulation of automatic firearms remained in place, as did the quotas for affirmative action, and despite McEwen's pounding of the drum for an increase in Abortion restrictions they too remained absent of any action or talk from the White House.

It wasn't even as though the President was distracted by his Foreign Policy. While his first year was dedicated to finally ending the War in Lebanon through mediation, there was little need for a strong American presence on the World Stage in the late 90s - the Georgian Civil War had fizzled out, and Eastern Europe was being shepherded to prosperity by their Western neighbours. As the next election cleared, there wasn't a real expectation for anyone to challenge McEwen, but many Republicans were impressing the need for him to become more radical in his agenda for the second term.

[8] 'A House divided against itself cannot stand"

McEwen had had a warning shot fired across his bows by party insiders and came out swinging promising a campaign against Social Liberalism, Socialism and Ethnic strife. That last phrase was a barely concealed dog whistle to the White Nationalist wing of the party, which had been a significant minority since the Connolly days and for some Conservatives remained a significant irritant. For one key Conservative they were a boil that had to be lanced, whatever the cost.

William F. Buckley's quixotic campaign as the Conservative Party nominee for President has been studied many times since 2000, was it a principled stand against White Nationalism, a damaging miscalculation to reign in McEwen's appeals to the bigot or personal ego trip for a conservative commentator past his prime. Buckley himself gave a reasoned explanation just before his death in 2008, that various ethnic and immigrant communities were at heart conservatives, mostly social conservatives and that the Republicans were throwing away a massive pool of voters by pandering to the basest instincts of the most extreme wing of the Right. He hoped to prove this by standing on a conservative platform that embraced all the ethnic groups of the USA and promising a proper conservative government and not the one supplied by the surprisingly low energy McEwen regime.

McEwen's advisors publicly and privately scoffed at Buckley's attempts at relevance and the bruising Democratic primaries did little to dampen their expectation of an easy victory. Bob Graham was the eventual Democratic nominee, solid but not a man to galvanize the nation. The early dynamism of McEwen's campaign slowly wilted and the President went about his duties with some sangfroid and a host of conservative soundbites. However something was beginning to happen on the campaign trail.

Buckley's media contacts were eager to have the loquacious nominee appearing on television and in newspapers, always good for a soundbite the Conservative candidate was more than happy to agree. By mid-May McEwen's campaign managers noted that polling was showing the Reform party impacting both the Democratic and Republican numbers, but primary the Republican ones. Even worse Bob Graham had apparently found his mojo on the campaign trail and his combination of populist economic rhetoric and a promised return to the "all in it together" days of Carter was beginning to find traction.

As November approached the McEwen administration began to fire as much muck as possible at both candiates, in one particularity distasteful episode elements of the White House press team leaked the insinuation that Buckley has cheated on his wife Pat and fathered a child with a black woman. This was seen as extremely crass and obviously untrue and helped feed the narrative that White Nationalism had totally infected the party. Buckleys searing riposte to McEwen that he was running "a bigoted, corrupt and bloated corpse of an Administration" was headline news. Even Graham got some good jabs in on the President but the polls still showed a victory, albeit a narrow one for McEwen.

In the end it all came down to 4,873 votes in Florida. Buckley secured 4.5% of the vote and winning a significant amount of conservative ethnic voters especially within Hispanic communites. While Graham and McEwen were basically neck and neck the Demorcats had managed to swing enough Working class voters and retained the African-American vote to do it. McEwen demanded a recount but the result stayed the same, Graham had won his home state and the election. McEwen had barely finished his concession phone-call to Graham when the recriminations began, Buckley was blamed for splitting the vote while Buckley pointed to his success with minority conservative communities to prove his thesis correct and that pandering to the bigots would lead to increasingly diminishing returns.

The post-mortem for the Republican party would last a long time and old wounds were reopened, but it was clear that one person was primarily to blame. Bob McEwen had been a do nothing President and a poor campaigner and on his shoulders rested the responsibility of defeat. One again the Republicans were cast into the wilderness for another 4 years.

[9] 'America Stands Tall'

Actor, attorney, senator; a man who had pushed McEwen to go further right but had not been publicly tainted by claims of white nationalism; Thompson won a bitterly contested primary contest as the man who could WIN, whereas 'racially conservative' and the libertarians could not WIN. Graham was seen as vulnerable after America was bogged down in the UN Darfur mission and when his environmental policies were leaving Americans by seemingly-arbitrary changes. Graham ran on claims of liberal immigration reform after securing borders, a stance that a majority of the country agreed with, and the need for less Big Government (tied to Graham's top-down green policies) and "questions" about whether climate change, while clearly real, was actually man-made.

Thompson returned the Republicans to office and within a year, a massive hurricane had trashed the south. While his response was seen as competent, it meant the climate change debate was suddenly close to home: what if it was man-made and this would happen again, his voters wondered and activists said? The Republicans could reduce some federal powers to states, they could continue to oversee a sound economy (inherited from Graham), they could battle culture wars, but the climate hung over everything. Science became part of the culture wars. The issue weighed on Thompson and sparked fierce internal debates about how to proceed, but what made it worse is that Thompson was clearly fixated on the issue now - it was a challenge to his legitimacy and self - and not on whatever John Q Public cared more about. Hillary Clinton's campaign time picked on this as their angle, 'why is he not talking about THESE issues?', and enough Americans agreed that the Republicans were back out.

[10] 'Peace in our Time'

As Thompson's position continued to weaken amidst a united Democratic party under Clinton, challenges within his own party began springing up like leaks. Eventually they coalesced around former Marine general, Jim Mattis. His campaign became a runaway train within the GOP and ultimately stole the nomination from him: this would prove disastrous for their hopes of retaining the Presidency. As Clinton's campaign focused on the environment, economic and social affairs, Mattis built on his military background and focus on Foreign Policy and Military affairs which was all the more curious given the peaceful state of the world in 2008.

While November and election day approached, Mattis only dug himself into a deeper hole and began to draw out the old Republican-Churchillian rhetoric, which bounced off the Clinton campaign with no effect. The culmination, and many argue the final nail the Mattis coffin, was during the televised debates as Mattis accused Clinton of 'wanting Peace in our Time' - a Munich referenced which was lost on the average American, and actually sounded more like an endorsement of Clinton than a slander. The morning after the debates, Clinton had flipped the table on foreign policy debates. She was now the woman looking to maintain the peace, while Mattis just looked like another General in search of another war. Thompson meanwhile sat back shrugging his shoulders, as the Republicans wondered what might have been.


[11] 'Weak Economy, Weak Country'

Clinton's term got America back on track environmentally but was undone halfway through by a global economic slump - the first big downturn in America's history for a long while, happening at a time when China and a revived Japan were growing economic powers, and Venezuela a regional one. The Republicans went for the economy as their vote-winner: the Democrats had spent too much, the taxes and red tape were strangling business, and the US was weak against growing economic rivals. Gingrich was one of the most famous economic minds, and fiscal hawks, of the party and had departed Congress to be an economic pundit, and so was free of any ties to boorish congressional argy-bargy about civil liberties or the environment.

He won the presidency but the Democrats still had Congress, restraining Gingrich's initial impulses. In the midterms, he successfully presented this as holding back a recovery (there was actually a gradual one but it went unnoticed in the press) and between this and the party's focus on downballot action, he was able to win a 'red' majority. The next two years would see a full unleaded Gingrich... and that meant a bonfire of taxes, red tape, and large chunks of welfare and other state spending. Disruption and pain across America was "shock therapy", he said, clearing out the weaknesses so the country could be stronger. And part of that, he decided, was a privatisation of social security.

A bruising congressional battle saw the Social Security Restructing Act pass, but would not fully take effect until, potentially, the next president came in. That meant the Democrats had time to potentially reverse it. But would America revolt against the Republicans or accept "shock therapy" as a necessity, when they could see Japan, China, the EU, and Venezuela all collectively parking tanks on the lawn?

[12] 'Stay The Course'

And if they did choose to revolt, would they be able to unite behind a single alternative?

The 2016 election saw Gingrich practically cruise to renomination despite a rather desultory challenge by former Texas Governor Jeb Bush, the fifth choice of a motley coalition of moderates who wanted to maintain some kind of welfare state and business conservatives who didn't care much but wanted to prevent electoral or physical revolt. Meanwhile, the Democratic nomination collapsed into rancor between a handful of moderate Governors and longtime liberal lion Paul Wellstone. Wellstone barely - just barely - pulled off the nomination, and promptly had a firehose of scaremongering about his MS and his "socialism" turned on against him. Even though the combined vote for Wellstone and "Democratic Moderate" candidate Representative Tulsi Gabbard was higher than that for Gingrich, Gingrich won the electoral college.

Still, his narrow victory belied a lack of strong popular support, and even as he raged about "welfare cheats" and "fiscal irresponsibility", in Congress he pushed for a compromise, eventually pulling it off in the Social Program Modernization and Cost Control Act of 2018. Though public arguments over the soul of the Democratic Party had been covered up by the widespread mourning for Senator Wellstone after his death in 2018, the fact that the Republicans were united and the Democrats fundamentally weren't helped prevent the 2018 midterms from being a bloodbath.

Despite Gingrich's hopes that his last two years could be taken up by big dreams like deregulating guns, scaling down affirmative action, and going to the Moon, so far, the last years of his presidency have been taken up by foreign policy. A slackening Mexican economy led to a massive uptick in migration, both authorized and not, and a public debate with sporadic outbreaks of violence over whether southern states ill-served by PAN hegemony should join the Central American Union, greater industrialization in Global South states like Indonesia and Biafra was beginning to undercut American manufacturing, and political tensions between India and China were threatening to spiral into all-out war. With the 2020 Republican nomination still yet to be decided, who knows what the future will hold?

---

Class Schedule, Student #1125531 [Kendra McCormick], University of California at Los Angeles Department of History [PhD Program in History, concentration in the Modern World], Fall 2020

Monday 11:45-12:45:
Prof. Andrea Bondarenko / Colloquium
Students will attend lectures on various topics in history every other week and write short papers on the topics discussed; periods with no lectures will be used for individual instruction on student skills like writing and research. Mandatory for first-semester graduate students.

Monday 17:30-19:30:

Tuesday 13:00-15:00:

Wednesday 9:30-11:30:

Wednesday 15:15-17:15:
 
Class Schedule, Student #1125531 [Kendra McCormick], University of California at Los Angeles Department of History [PhD Program in History, concentration in the Modern World], Fall 2020

Monday 11:45-12:45:
Prof. Andrea Bondarenko / Colloquium
Students will attend lectures on various topics in history every other week and write short papers on the topics discussed; periods with no lectures will be used for individual instruction on student skills like writing and research. Mandatory for first-semester graduate students.

Monday 17:30-19:30:
Prof. Wilf Strauss / The Anarcho-Syndicalist revolt in Italy and it's legacy.

Students will study the factors leading to the Syndicalist revolt following the Italian defeats in the African wars of expansion, the weeks of 'Red Rome' and the eventual intervention of the French and Austrian empires to suppress the revolt. Students will also study the legacy of the Anarcho-Syndicalist revolt and it's impact on Socialist and Fascist movements in the modern era. Short papers will be issued throughout the semester with one final longform paper and exam at year end.

Tuesday 13:00-15:00:

Wednesday 9:30-11:30:

Wednesday 15:15-17:15:
 
Class Schedule, Student #1125531 [Kendra McCormick], University of California at Los Angeles Department of History [PhD Program in History, concentration in the Modern World], Fall 2020

Monday 11:45-12:45:
Prof. Andrea Bondarenko / Colloquium
Students will attend lectures on various topics in history every other week and write short papers on the topics discussed; periods with no lectures will be used for individual instruction on student skills like writing and research. Mandatory for first-semester graduate students.

Monday 17:30-19:30:
Prof. Wilf Strauss / The Anarcho-Syndicalist revolt in Italy and it's legacy.

Students will study the factors leading to the Syndicalist revolt following the Italian defeats in the African wars of expansion, the weeks of 'Red Rome' and the eventual intervention of the French and Austrian empires to suppress the revolt. Students will also study the legacy of the Anarcho-Syndicalist revolt and it's impact on Socialist and Fascist movements in the modern era. Short papers will be issued throughout the semester with one final longform paper and exam at year end.

Tuesday 13:00-15:00:
Prof. Clarence Teller / Dreadnoughts and Sea Power: in Theory and Practice

Students shall assess the changes in geopolitics caused by the advent of Dreadnought battleships between 1910 and 1940. How caused the three naval rivalries changed and bled into other affairs of the Great Powers, namely the Anglo-American naval race, the balance of power between Austria and France in the Mediterranean and Russo-Japanese dreadnought race. Finally, whether or not the leadership in the Great Atlantic War could or should have known before hand, whether the Dreadnought had by the outbreak of war in 1940 been superseded by the Aircraft Carrier and the Submarine. There will be one long paper issued halfway through the semester and an exam at the end of the year.

Wednesday 9:30-11:30:

Wednesday 15:15-17:15:
 
Class Schedule, Student #1125531 [Kendra McCormick], University of California at Los Angeles Department of History [PhD Program in History, concentration in the Modern World], Fall 2020

Monday 11:45-12:45:
Prof. Andrea Bondarenko / Colloquium
Students will attend lectures on various topics in history every other week and write short papers on the topics discussed; periods with no lectures will be used for individual instruction on student skills like writing and research. Mandatory for first-semester graduate students.

Monday 17:30-19:30:
Prof. Wilf Strauss / The Anarcho-Syndicalist revolt in Italy and it's legacy.

Students will study the factors leading to the Syndicalist revolt following the Italian defeats in the African wars of expansion, the weeks of 'Red Rome' and the eventual intervention of the French and Austrian empires to suppress the revolt. Students will also study the legacy of the Anarcho-Syndicalist revolt and it's impact on Socialist and Fascist movements in the modern era. Short papers will be issued throughout the semester with one final longform paper and exam at year end.

Tuesday 13:00-15:00:
Prof. Clarence Teller / Dreadnoughts and Sea Power: in Theory and Practice

Students shall assess the changes in geopolitics caused by the advent of Dreadnought battleships between 1910 and 1940. How caused the three naval rivalries changed and bled into other affairs of the Great Powers, namely the Anglo-American naval race, the balance of power between Austria and France in the Mediterranean and Russo-Japanese dreadnought race. Finally, whether or not the leadership in the Great Atlantic War could or should have known before hand, whether the Dreadnought had by the outbreak of war in 1940 been superseded by the Aircraft Carrier and the Submarine. There will be one long paper issued halfway through the semester and an exam at the end of the year.

Wednesday 9:30-11:30:
Prof. Haile Kidane / 'Black Rome': Examining the height of Ethiopian power

Students will study Ethiopia's rise to influential regional power in the mid-20th century, as well as the after-effects of the failed occupation of Uganda. Students will be asked to examine and question to which extent this was due to the aftermath of the Great Atlantic War versus specific attributes for Ethiopia, and how Ethiopia managed to cause a 'brain drain' from the newly independent African nations.

Wednesday 15:15-17:15:[/QUOTE]
 
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