I’m old enough to remember the 1960s. Back then, there were still liberal Republicans to be found in Northeastern states. Anybody remember Jacob Javits, Edward Brooke, John Lindsay … ? I’m not sure if Nelson Rockefeller was counted among their number.
Nowadays the liberal Republican has become a totally extinct subspecies. The Republican powers-that-be have made damn sure that only right-wingers need apply. The more rabidly reactionary and the more Southern, the better.
Sometimes Christine Todd Whitman is mentioned as an exception to the rule, but she’s a centrist and not liberal. That she is the farthest left it gets tells you something. Why did they do this? How was it decided?
There are still quite a few of them. Or have you forgotten that, just to give one example, five Republican senators broke ranks with the party to oppose Bill Clinton’s removal from office?
The reason you don’t hear much about them is that Democrats prefer to demonize Republicans than to work with Republicans whom they might somewhat agree with, since they have their work cut out for them regaining their majority in Congress.
So every Republican, no matter how many ways he might break ranks with the right wing, gets blasted as a “Newt Gingrich clone.”
Lindsay and Javits at least were from New York City, which is far from representative of even the region. The Democratic Party there was Tammany Hall and all that it symbolized. The Republicans were the less corrupt outsiders. By the time Lindsay was no longer mayor, he had become a Democrat.
Short story, I think much of it could be explained by the pecularities of local politics. I don’t know of any Republicans who held national office that were true liberals. Also, weren’t both parties more to the left during the sixties?
In any event, I don’t see the Democrats crossing over onto the conservative side of the spectrum either. They both seem to have a centrist branch and an extreme branch.
Yeah, but when they’re dominated by the likes of Trent Lott and Tom Delay, that tends to give an extremist right-wing impression of the whole party.
Besides, I wasn’t asking about actual moderates about whom there’s no question they exist (however few). I was asking about actual liberals who, as far as I can tell, are extinct in the GOP.
(Not long ago, someone published an article saying that Nixon was “the last liberal president”!)
Everett Dirksen was another prominent member of that camp. And in a day concerned with character issues, we could use him. He certainly was a character …
I think it happened following Watergate. The Republicans indulged in some sort of ritual cleansing, and in the process embraced the Christian right we associate with them today.
Note that “conservative” is not the right label to associate with the extreme wing of the Republican party either - Barry Goldwater was a conservative, an honourable conservative generally respected even by the liberals who disagreed with him.
Remember that the Democrats also used to have right wing “Dixiecrat” membership. Strom Thurmon still exists as a sort of fossilized reminder placed on a senate seat. Remember Lester Maddox?
(One thing that REALLY annoys me about them is that they called themselves “State’s Rights” Democrats, as a euphemism for “racist bigot”. It would be very useful to be able to argue to uphold the 10th ammendment without being suspected as a secret member of the KKK)
Thurmond has been a proud Republican for some decades now. I’ll agree he’s a fossilized relic, but of the conservative white Southern branch of politics. That breed used to be staunch Democrats, from Reconstruction until having the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and related changes shoved in their faces. A serious recruiting drive for the religious (i.e. Southern Baptist) wing, as part of Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”, changed that group to Republicans. There are still a few conservative Southerners calling themselves Democrats these days, but they seem to feel as out of place as moderate-liberal Northeastern Republicans.
**Waterj{/b}, I don’t understand your comment that you don’t see conservative Democrats changing to Republicans. There are numerous examples of “turncoats” in Congress alone, in both the South and West.
Ishmintingas, you’re right about the leaders influencing the national impression of the whole party, but who do you think picks the leaders?
It’s pretty complex. The Republicans started wooing the far right in the Nixon days, and by 1980 and Reagan, that wing was in charge of the party. Liberal Republicans were pretty much squeezed out, partly on their own choice, and partly because ultraconservative dogma did not allow for any dissention (see William Weld).
At the same time, the right wing Democrats in the South moved toward the Republican party (part of Nixon’s “southern strategy”). Some, like Strom Thurmond, even changed parties.
There were some liberal Republicans who gained national prominance, including Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney, and William Scranton. They were governors, but back when they were elected, governors still had more political prestige than a mere senator.
There are still quite a few out there. In the Senate alone are:
Arlen Specter, PA
Olympia Snowe, ME
Susan Collins, ME
Jim Jeffords, VT
and possibly others
Others include Gen. Colin Powell, the recently deceased Senator Chaffee of Rhode Island, and several congressmen from the northeast.
There are still a lot of conservative Democrats too, especially in the Southeast, even though conservative southerners are more and more likely to be Republicans now.
You’re right. I should have made it clear that I was speaking of him as a historical “Dixiecrat” still in office, not a current Democrat. The fact that he switched parties actually underlines my point - the right wing of the Democratic party disappeared.
Powell declared himself to be a Republican, but not until after his “retirement” from the military (and possibly from sheer opportunism). Both parties were wooing him before then. Whatever you think of him, you can’t say his party affiliation runs deep.
In Massachusetts, one of the most Democratic-dominated states, several Republicans have won the governorship and a Senate seat in recent decades. However, it has seemed to me that they’ve done so with mainstream (by local standards) policies and the ability to successfully “play the game” with the Legislature. Using the GOP as a “flag of convenience” to get past primary elections is an accepted tactic, and Weld is just one who has used it. But an actual conservative gets little sympathy here.
A lot of the party shift has to do with single issues which have changed over time. For example, a lot of moderates were Republicans simply because of defense issues. Republicans tended to favor a stronger defense, and in days of the cold war that one issue often overshadowed anything else.
The south used to be overwhelmingly Democrat (The “Solid South”). I think it was Reagan that broke that.
Basically, both parties have moved towards each other, on the right. The Republicans have gotten slightly more Liberal, but the Democrats have moved WAY to the right. Clinton may be on the left on some swing issues like health care, but in general this is a guy who gives speeches saying that government can’t do everything, that it should be smaller and more efficient, and that people should get tax cuts. Twenty years ago, that would be a conservative speech for even a Republican.
Elvis, Kennedy and Kerry have been the senators from Massachusetts for quite some time now. And before Kerry was Tsongas, I believe. No Republicans for quite a while. Weld was very moderate, but by no means a liberal. The Republican Party really can’t be considered a “flag of convenience” due to the large number of partisan Democrats in the state.
May I comment on one man who has been a staunch liberal Republican in Congress for quite a few years now? Sherwood Boehlert represents the Congressional district centered on Utica, NY, and is the man the GOP turns to whenever the House needs to consider an environmental issue. He has a lot of other interesting virtues – including being a devoted minor league baseball fan, and not for the mingle-with-the-voters effect but because he and his wife really love the team – see Roger Kahn’s Good Enough to Dream for background on this.
I knew him very casually when I worked for the state – the area my agency served overlapped part of his district. And he’s one politician I have immense respect for.
Ed Brooke was the last Republican Senator from Massachusetts. Weld was indeed moderate by local standards, and he got elected by being more moderate than that arrogant ass Silber (who doesn’t count as a conservative Northern Democrat, because he’s really from Texas).
I referred to the GOP as a “flag of convenience” because so many of its candidates seem to be Democrats at heart, even actual turncoats, who want to bypass the primaries. I know a couple myself.
So you think that’s a uniquely Democratic behavior? Surely you’re not that naive. Republicans demonize Democrats just as often or more so, using Ted Kennedy as the bogeyman in place of Newt Gingrich.
Why, just recently in Georgia our beloved Democratic former governor, Zell Miller (he left office in 1998 with an 85% approval rating) ran for the Senate seat he’d already been appointed to to replace the late Paul Coverdell.
Miller is a moderate- to right-leaning Democrat by any fair standard, but that didn’t matter to his opponent, Republican empty suit Mack Mattingly: his campaign ads played portentous music and showed two juxtaposed portraits of Miller and Kennedy, and ranted about the Clinton/Gore/Kennedy/Miller “record.” It would be ridiculous on its face even if Miller hadn’t been in office for only a few months.