ive been really bad at keeping up with this blog lol.... sorry xP. we left off talking about the era and "hanoi" hank. the era would get passed by the senate early in the year and ratified by about 20 of the required 38 states by the end of june, and was on its way to a relatively uncontroversial passage. as for hank sorensen, he would find himself in quite the quagmire during the entire ordeal with the fall of saigon. opposition to the president was strong of course from the gop, with senate majority leader dane blocking any nominations to fill the two supreme court vacancies left by the deaths of hugo black and john marshall harlan ii as well as house republicans beginning an impeachment proceeding where they accused the president of everything up to and including treason, and though they didn't have the votes to actually impeach the president, the whole ordeal worked wonders for what it really was: a campaign strategy. but more than that, there was a decent amount of opposition to the president from his own party. making use of the same precedent that let sorensen into the white house in the first place, governor george wallace of segregationist (in)fame would attempt to primary the president, and would have a shocking amount of support, with some polls even having him higher than hank. luckily for hank then, wallace would be shot dead in mid-may by crazed gunman arthur bremer. many speculations would abound about the president's involvement, though it would eventually be revealed that the gunman just wanted fame and indeed had wanted to shoot the president, but settled for the governor. it was under these circumstances that hank sorensen would be renominated by his party, undoubtedly with some backroom deals to keep the party together after the chaos of the primary season.
a penny for your thoughts
as for the elephant in the room, the republican primaries were littered with upstarts nobodies and hasbeens, but most support coalesced around three candidates: the hardliner meridian, who made his fame by being a republican with the heart of a dixiecrat; benson the business backed candidate, who had just won the backing of the rich and famous by orchestrating the slow death of organized labor; and finally the moderate cartnell, the wonderboy budget hawk who was credited by his supporters for saving the country from economic collapse. meridian's campaign would burn bright with white rage, but he wasn't quite able to corrall in the conservative wing of the party, being seen as too radical for even the goldwaters and the atlees in the party. benson for his part, despite having the backing of capital behind him, was a curious ideologue, many saying he embodied the type of greed talked about in the bible. cartnell had strong support from the establishment of the party, but was seen as too soft on certain issues by the more rabid conservative wing of the party
so then, why did cartnell beat out the other two? well beyond how radical meridian was percieved, benson would get exposed by some powerful union boss he pissed off for gross violations of labor law before he became mayor, leading to an investigation that crashed and burned his political career. in addition to the weakness of his opponents, cartnell would also be helped by the liberal wing of the party organizing more officially in response to their weakening influence in the party. all this in addition to his long list of achievements would lead the pennsylvania governor turned senator to win handily, even fighting off a last minute challenge by fellow senator george bush. at the convention cartnell would choose governor wally hickel of alaska as his running mate, hoping to geographically balance the ticket, as well as find someone who he could work with well. and so the republicans would run their budget genius against hanoi hank. as for wallace's old party, they ran some rando named schultz. see you guys next time for the main election!!! hopefully it wont be too long from now LOL
