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Charles Lindbergh challenges FDR

W.I. Lindbergh was the 1940 Republican nominee?

For all that it's an AH trope, I think Lindbergh would lose harder than Willkie IOTL. The 1940 election was fought on foreign policy, and while that's often couched as 'interventionist Democrats v isolationist Republicans', it was more complicated than that.

Lindbergh's hardline isolationist position would hardly appeal to more people than Willkie's softer one, and I think his existing association with the Axis could easily be used by the Roosevelt campaign.
 
For all that it's an AH trope, I think Lindbergh would lose harder than Willkie IOTL. The 1940 election was fought on foreign policy, and while that's often couched as 'interventionist Democrats v isolationist Republicans', it was more complicated than that.

Lindbergh's hardline isolationist position would hardly appeal to more people than Willkie's softer one, and I think his existing association with the Axis could easily be used by the Roosevelt campaign.

Since the only states that Willkie won by a lot were Vermont and the Dakotas, having Lindbergh fall back on only those means FDR does almost as good as he did in 1936. His opponent would get three states and eleven electoral votes instead of two and eight, but that's a very tiny improvement.
 
For all that it's an AH trope, I think Lindbergh would lose harder than Willkie IOTL. The 1940 election was fought on foreign policy, and while that's often couched as 'interventionist Democrats v isolationist Republicans', it was more complicated than that.

Lindbergh's hardline isolationist position would hardly appeal to more people than Willkie's softer one, and I think his existing association with the Axis could easily be used by the Roosevelt campaign.

I would say even calling Willkie's position soft isolationism is wrong. In the Republican convention, he was the internationalist candidate against the isolationists Taft, Vandenberg and Dewey. It's true, though, that towards the end of the presidential race, he did try to paint himself as the peace candidate.
 
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