Quote:
Originally Posted by maineguy8888
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Nixon wasn't forced to resign and finished out his second term. Reagan beat Vice President Ford in the primary (being VP doesn't have as much cachet as being incumbent Prez).
Could Reagan have beaten Carter in 1976? If not, he likely would never have been President.
Perhaps Nixons resigning was a very good thing for Republicans and conservatives!
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Well, Watergate is the big IF of your post.
We kind of forget that Nixon was a pretty adroit foreign policy president. His outreach to China and Russia, his disengagement from the Vietnam War, et al, were popular moves in the United States.
We also forget that the electoral vote was a near-run thing for Carter. So when the 1976 election was said and done, 11,000 votes in Ohio and 7,000 votes in Hawaii made the difference between Carter or Ford taking the oath of office. And that's WITH Ford carrying the handicap of Watergate and the Nixon pardon.
So if Watergate didn't occur, I'm betting that Ford beats Carter. I also believe that, under the same scenario, Reagan actually loses to Carter. After all Reagan was far more hawkish than Carter. Remember that Afghanistan and some other aggressive Soviet moves were in the future. People thought that the Cold War was pretty much behind them, so a candidate vowing to get tough with Brezhnev would have been the wrong message for the wrong time.
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