Civil War II

[Colin]

A Kennedy and the far-right John Bircher Schmitz in the same party together? That'll take a lot of work to hold that conglomeration together for more than two elections.

[Colin]

Well besides some things being implausible for this period of time I ahve one major quarrel with this timeline and that is the inclusion of Schmitz. Schmitz was, in 1960, 30 years old, ie he was not actually old enough to meet the age requirements set in the Constitution for the Vice Presidency. Also according to Wikipedia, gotta love Wikipedia, in 1960 John Schmitz was serving in the United States Marine Corps as a jet fighter and helocopter pilot with the rank of Lieutenent Colonel. Even if you somehow butterflied this away it still would not make him old enough to serve as Vice President of the United States of America.

So you may want to get another person to fill Schmitz's shoes if you actually want this story to be somewhat in line with key facts.

[Colin]

Well besides some things being implausible for this period of time I ahve one major quarrel with this timeline and that is the inclusion of Schmitz. Schmitz was, in 1960, 30 years old, ie he was not actually old enough to meet the age requirements set in the Constitution for the Vice Presidency. Also according to Wikipedia, gotta love Wikipedia, in 1960 John Schmitz was serving in the United States Marine Corps as a jet fighter and helocopter pilot with the rank of Lieutenent Colonel. Even if you somehow butterflied this away it still would not make him old enough to serve as Vice President of the United States of America.

So you may want to get another person to fill Schmitz's shoes if you actually want this story to be somewhat in line with key facts.

Yeah.  I did write down his age when he was running for the Chairmanship, but I forgot to look it up for this.  Hold on, I'm going to change that.  Changed to Goldwater.  What else don't you find plaudible?  I mean, I realize a lot of things would never happen, but domestically, what do you find implausible?

Well just two things first. A flat tax in the 1950's? The flat tax as a modern idea really did not take off until the 70's and early 80's with Milton Friedman and his Chicago Boys and even then it did not take off as a viable idea until it was first implemented in the Baltic countries in the mid 90's. Having a system like this come around in the 1950's, when it had not even been around as an economic idea yet, is just proposterous in my mind.

Also the amendment lowering the age for all federal office to 18 seems just as preposterous in my mind since I can never see anything like that brought up before the congress, and considering the debate that was occuring on the vote and conscription age at that time I would seriously doubt it would pass.

Thirdly I highly, highly, doubt that this Independent Reformer Party would go from a conglomeration of a bunch of independents to the White House in what seems like less than two years just seems very implausible to me, even with a unpopular President and a segregationist running on the Democratic side. You must remember that, unless you are basically going to make these Independent Reformers the new second party in a two party system, like the Republicans supplanting the Whigs, you have to keep them small. I could see a third party winning 40-60 seats in the House and maybe a 100 electoral votes at the very highest but a brand new party coming in a landsliding the two major parties is kind of insane.

I'm probably being overly critical but then again I think their are some serious flaws in the TL itself as I stated above. It's interesting, I'll give you that, but somethings seem out of place or just plain implausible.

My advice is to keep the IRP small for some time. Work on implementing some sort of electoral reform, such as proportional representation, so that then you can have some third party action.

[Colin]

Well besides some things being implausible for this period of time I ahve one major quarrel with this timeline and that is the inclusion of Schmitz. Schmitz was, in 1960, 30 years old, ie he was not actually old enough to meet the age requirements set in the Constitution for the Vice Presidency. Also according to Wikipedia, gotta love Wikipedia, in 1960 John Schmitz was serving in the United States Marine Corps as a jet fighter and helocopter pilot with the rank of Lieutenent Colonel. Even if you somehow butterflied this away it still would not make him old enough to serve as Vice President of the United States of America.

So you may want to get another person to fill Schmitz's shoes if you actually want this story to be somewhat in line with key facts.

Yeah.  I did write down his age when he was running for the Chairmanship, but I forgot to look it up for this.  Hold on, I'm going to change that.  Changed to Goldwater.  What else don't you find plaudible?  I mean, I realize a lot of things would never happen, but domestically, what do you find implausible?

Well just two things first. A flat tax in the 1950's? The flat tax as a modern idea really did not take off until the 70's and early 80's with Milton Friedman and his Chicago Boys and even then it did not take off as a viable idea until it was first implemented in the Baltic countries in the mid 90's. Having a system like this come around in the 1950's, when it had not even been around as an economic idea yet, is just proposterous in my mind.

Also the amendment lowering the age for all federal office to 18 seems just as preposterous in my mind since I can never see anything like that brought up before the congress, and considering the debate that was occuring on the vote and conscription age at that time I would seriously doubt it would pass.

Thirdly I highly, highly, doubt that this Independent Reformer Party would go from a conglomeration of a bunch of independents to the White House in what seems like less than two years just seems very implausible to me, even with a unpopular President and a segregationist running on the Democratic side. You must remember that, unless you are basically going to make these Independent Reformers the new second party in a two party system, like the Republicans supplanting the Whigs, you have to keep them small. I could see a third party winning 40-60 seats in the House and maybe a 100 electoral votes at the very highest but a brand new party coming in a landsliding the two major parties is kind of insane.

I'm probably being overly critical but then again I think their are some serious flaws in the TL itself as I stated above. It's interesting, I'll give you that, but somethings seem out of place or just plain implausible.

My advice is to keep the IRP small for some time. Work on implementing some sort of electoral reform, such as proportional representation, so that then you can have some third party action.

Well, something might happen to one of the other parties.

Also, with the amendment, the main point is to lower the voting age, but the part about lowering federal office is just an attempt by the Independent Reformers to get the youth vote.

Which at that time almost didn't exist. You have to remember that political pandering of the sort in which you have the IRP participating in really didn't become a factor until the late '60s. Plus the youth vote was even around during the '50s or earlier for that matter. A high voting age plus general apathy did, as now, turn away young voters.