Rockefeller Republican
Rockefeller Republicans were most common in the Northeast and the industrial Midwestern states (with their larger moderate-to-liberal constituencies), while they were rare in the South and the West.
At a point before the California primary, political operative Stuart Spencer called on Rockefeller to "summon that fabled nexus of money, influence, and condescension known as the Eastern Establishment".
[10] Michael Lind contends that the ascendancy of the more conservative fusionist wing of the Republican Party,[11] beginning in the 1960s with Goldwater and culminating in the Reagan Revolution in 1980, prevented the establishment of a Disraelian one-nation conservatism in the United States.
"[15] On a national level, the last significant candidate for president from the liberal wing of the party was John B. Anderson, who ran as an independent in 1980 and garnered 6.6% of the popular vote.
Despite their national decline, moderate Republican officeholders continue to win local elections, particularly in the Northeast, into the 21st century; examples include governors Bill Weld and Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, Phil Scott of Vermont, and Larry Hogan of Maryland.
[3] They espoused government and private investments in environmentalism, healthcare, and higher education as necessities for a better society and economic growth in the tradition of Rockefeller.
[16] They were strong supporters of state colleges, trade schools, and universities with low tuition and large research budgets, and also favored investments in infrastructure such as highway projects.
[5] Many supported the idea of a national health insurance program,[17] with Nelson Rockefeller himself describing healthcare as "a basic human right".
Also welcoming an increased public role for engineers, doctors, scientists, economists, and businesspeople over politicians in crafting policies and programs.
As a result, many Rockefeller Republicans were major figures in business, such as auto executive George W. Romney and investment banker C. Douglas Dillon.
[26] This transformation played into the hands of the more conservative Republicans, who did not want to collaborate with labor unions in the first place and now no longer needed to do so to carry statewide elections.
Geoffrey Kabaservice states that the form of conservatism which is now equated to the Republican party did not even exist until the 1950s, and remained a minority faction for many years afterward.
However, Taft did not oppose what he perceived as essential government intervention, including federal support for education and a minimum income for individuals and families.
After Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller, the Governor of New York, emerged as the leader of the moderate wing of the Republican Party, running for President in 1960, 1964 and 1968.
[33] Although Nixon ran against Rockefeller from the right in the 1968 primaries and was widely identified with the cultural right of the time, he adopted several Rockefeller Republican policies during his time as President, such as setting up the Environmental Protection Agency (despite also vetoing the Clean Water Act, which was ultimately implemented through a Congressional override), tolerating the panoply of post-Great Society welfare programs (amid his administration's failed attempts to implement "creative and innovative social legislation"[34] by dismantling the Office of Economic Opportunity and implementing the Daniel Patrick Moynihan-designed Family Assistance Plan, which would have supplanted the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program), imposing wage and price controls and notably announcing his adherence to Keynesian economics in 1971.
[35] The men had previously reached the so-called Treaty of Fifth Avenue during the presidential primaries of 1960, whereby Nixon and Rockefeller agreed to support certain policies for inclusion in the 1960 Republican Party Platform.
[36] The term Rockefeller Republican was never appreciated from the conservative wing of the party, and as the voices of the Reagan right grew in the 1970s and eventually captured the presidency in 1980, it was looked down upon even more as a pejorative.
After Vice President Rockefeller left the national stage in 1976, this faction of the party was more often called "moderate Republicans" or Nixonians in contrast to the conservatives who rallied to Ronald Reagan.
[citation needed] During the 1980s, Barry Goldwater, a leading conservative, partly aligned with the liberal side of the GOP due to his libertarian views on abortion and gay rights.
As time went on, the local Republican parties in the Northeast tended to nominate Catholic candidates who appealed to middle class social values-laden concerns, such as George Pataki, Rudy Giuliani, Al D'Amato, Rick Lazio, Tom Ridge, Chris Christie and others, who in many cases represented the party's diversity more on the basis of religion and were often otherwise like their Protestant conservative counterparts on policy.
Michael Lind contends that by the mid-1990s the liberalism of President Bill Clinton and the New Democrats were in many ways to the right of Eisenhower, Rockefeller, and John Lindsay, the Republican mayor of New York City in the late 1960s.
[45] However, by middle of the century's second decade, only Senator Susan Collins of Maine remained as a moderately liberal Republican representing New England at the federal level.
In Alaska, Senator Lisa Murkowski, the ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, lost her GOP primary to conservative Tea Party challenger Joe Miller.
[48] An op-ed of The Washington Post made the assertion that Castle's loss marked the end of the party legacy of Nelson Rockefeller.
[53] In 2014, socially liberal, fiscally conservative Republicans in the Rockefeller tradition were elected governor of Maryland (Larry Hogan) and Massachusetts (Charlie Baker).
[63] Lloyd Blankfein, Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, who is a registered Democrat, referred to himself as a "Rockefeller Republican" in a CNBC interview in April 2012.
