I was thinking Taft might have been dead. So he runs in 52 and dies in 53. Unreal.
But anybody but Lodge. What a stupid choice. George Romney, Alice Longworth Roosevelt. Anyone. Goldwater, yes. Anyone.
Nixon was between a rock and a hard place. Even Rocky would have been better political strategy than Lodge, but he was hated in his own party.
Still, the Rockefeller wing wouldn’t support anyone too conservative (i.e., Goldwater or the like) and the Goldwater wing was not about to support Rocky. So you pick someone inoffensive.
Nixon faced the same challege in 1968. That’s how he wound up with Agnew.