Ronald Reagan out of the equation?

[The Lone Centurion]

If Reagan is not available in 1976 to primary Ford or in 1980 to become President, who takes his place as the figurehead of the pushback against the liberalism of the sixties and seventies?

 

[Elektronaut]

I don't even want to get into an alternate 1976 and how that would effect 1980 because I'm not a morning person.

If Reagan falls off his horse in 1978/79 however then the answer is almost certainly no-one. There's not the time for someone on the right to emerge with his stature. The vote there will be fragmented between Crane, Connolly and other lower-grade gadfly candidates. It's the predictable answer but it's most likely Bush who is the nominee in 1980. He had a strong campaign, particularly in Iowa, at a time in the early life of the primary/caucus system when strong campaigns or even competent ones weren't a given. (Look at how disastrous Dole's was) He wasn't gifted the runner-up status as people usually assume either, Howard Baker probably had more establishment support.

 

[The Lone Centurion]

it's fairly easy to get Ford to win a squeaker against Carter and 1980 will be uphill for the GOP as a result of 12 years of Republican rule and the crises in the late seventies so it's likely there is no President Reagan in the Ford World.

So what happens to the Republican Party going forward into the eighties? I don't see any one else plausible who can offer "the hard right with a human face" that Reagan was able to.

I don't even want to get into an alternate 1976 and how that would effect 1980 because I'm not a morning person.

If Reagan falls off his horse in 1978/79 however then the answer is almost certainly no-one. There's not the time for someone on the right to emerge with his stature. The vote there will be fragmented between Crane, Connolly and other lower-grade gadfly candidates. It's the predictable answer but it's most likely Bush who is the nominee in 1980. He had a strong campaign, particularly in Iowa, at a time in the early life of the primary/caucus system when strong campaigns or even competent ones weren't a given. (Look at how disastrous Dole's was) He wasn't gifted the runner-up status as people usually assume either, Howard Baker probably had more establishment support.

 

[Elektronaut]

it's fairly easy to get Ford to win a squeaker against Carter and 1980 will be uphill for the GOP as a result of 12 years of Republican rule and the crises in the late seventies so it's likely there is no President Reagan in the Ford World.

So what happens to the Republican Party going forward into the eighties? I don't see any one else plausible who can offer "the hard right with a human face" that Reagan was able to.

Reagan had some gifts that are far from common among the right of the Repbulican Party but in a Democratic 1980 after Ford others would naturally emerge who we either didn't see IOTL or who fizzled at the margins. Just off the top of my head it's quite likely a Republican wins the NY governorship in 82, for example, and that could be via Kemp or it could be through OTL's candidate Lewis Lerhman. (Who very nearly beat Mario Cuomo in a bad year for Republicans IOTL) In either case they would become strong candidates for 1988 from the right of the party.