Nelson Rockefeller, governor of New York from January 1959 to December 1973 and former vice president of the United States under President Gerald Ford (1974–1977), emerged as the most prominent leader in the moderate to liberal wing of the Republican Party in the late 1950s and throughout the decade of the 1960s. He was particularly visible during the 1964 presidential campaign, representing, along with fellow moderate William Scranton of Pennsylvania, an alternative to conservative Republican Barry Goldwater, a senator from Arizona, who eventually earned the nomination.
Rockefeller Republicans are often characterized as being fiscally conservative and socially liberal; however, such a definition might be oversimplified. Historically, Rockefeller Republicans have been comparatively liberal both on social issues and on economic issues. Indeed, Nelson Rockefeller himself was influenced by the old “Eastern Establishment” of moderate Republicans who were associated with former presidential candidate Thomas Dewey, and what we have called Rockefeller Republicans have exhibited policy preferences similar to those of President Eisenhower, a political centrist known for his frustration with the party’s right. Rockefeller aligned himself as a moderate to liberal on both fiscal and social policy issues, and thus he set himself at odds with limited-government conservatives like Sen. Goldwater, who opposed the expansion of the federal government and bucked against the legacy of the New Deal. Rockefeller, a committed philanthropist who believed in the public value of private charity and the responsible use of one’s wealth for social and cultural improvement, nevertheless also viewed active government as a source of positive political and social change. In many ways Nelson Rockefeller epitomized the kind of moderate, pragmatic politics found at the center of both parties in the 1960s and 1970s.
Even though Gov. Rockefeller could not draw the level of support within his party enjoyed by conservatives Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, he nonetheless serves as an archetype for a Republican voice that was particularly influential, at least until the election of Richard Nixon to the White House in 1968. With the Nixon-crafted “southern strategy” that enticed conservative Southern Democrats into the Republican Party, followed by the ascent of the Reagan right in 1976 and its eventual triumph in the election of 1980, the moderate Rockefeller Republican as a political force began to wane. As both major parties continue to become more homogenized and increasingly polarized, the moderating effects of the liberal Republican have been diluted. While the term “Rockefeller Republican” has always been uttered with a degree of derision from the party’s right, it is now even more likely to be used as a pejorative in the Republican Party, one aimed at those Republicans who question the more conservative attitudes, policies, and rhetoric that have shaped the party’s ideological development since the mid-1970s. From the perspective of the party’s right wing, RINOs—“Republicans in name only”—are today’s Rockefeller Republicans.
Even though the liberal Republican is a rare breed at the national level, there are some who fit that description, at least in part, who are closer to the legacy of Nelson Rockefeller than to today’s conservative wing. Christine Todd Whitman (former governor of New Jersey), Olympia Snow (former congresswoman from Maine), and Senator Susan Collins (also of Maine) serve as examples of the more moderate Republican, and prior to his defection to the Democratic Party, Lincoln Chafee, who is currently running for president as a Democrat, could also be described as a Rockefeller moderate, although no longer a Republican one. At one time former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, at least prior to his 2012 campaign for president, in which he exhibited a willingness to steer toward the right, would have been included among the more moderate faction, a living model of the Rockefeller Republican, and the same might be said of Sen. John McCain prior to his 2008 campaign for president. Romney’s roots go back to the moderate/liberal Republican of the 1960s, for his father, George Romney, a contemporary of Rockefeller’s and governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969, was known for his liberal positions and policies. During the 2012 campaign, perhaps the best example of a moderate in the race was Utah governor John Huntsman Jr., and in the current campaign for president leading into 2016, New York governor George Pataki’s moderate record may best approximate the Rockefeller model.
While it is tempting to declare the moderate Republican extinct, there are those in the party who do not identify with the more stridently conservative ideology and polemics of the right. Upon reflection, this must be the case; even in the current climate that at least rhetorically speaks to ideological purists, the Republican Party has yet to nominate a truly conservative ideologue. While it is true that formerly moderate candidates like McCain and Romney have adjusted their positions in response to the influence of the right, enough of a moderating influence is still present in the party to frustrate the more conservatively pure candidate. Perhaps this is where we find the legacy of Nelson Rockefeller still evident, however faint.
See also Campaign of 1964; Campaign of 1968; Goldwater Conservative
Gould, Lewis L. The Republicans: A History of the Grand Old Party. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Kabaservice, Geoffrey. Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party. Studies in Postwar American Political Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Richardson, Heather Cox. To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party. New York: Basic Books, 2014.