Keep Rockefeller Republicans Post-Reagan

Have the 1986 immigration reform legislation which was signed by Reagan and which honest to gosh I think had an amnesty component, be both more successful and more widely acknowledged as one of the Gipper’s main achievements.

Just like only Nixon could go to China, Reagan could go places that another conservative could not! :)

I don't think there was a clear partisan divide on immigration yet the way there is today.

Reagan even in 1980 was talking about the idea of open borders with Mexico. He'd be kicked out of the GOP for that today.,

The problem is even before Reagan came along, the Rockefeller Republicans were rapidly losing power. Compare 1960 where Rockefeller likely would of won the nomination without Nixon, and was essentially able to get a favourable VP candidate and force Nixon to adopt a Liberal Stance on Civil Rights (arguably costing Nixon the election).

By 1976, the Rockefeller Republicans couldn't even get Ford to keep their nominal leader as the vice president candidate, despite the fact that he was already the incumbent VP.

We should keep in mind that there is a difference between Rockefeller Republicans such as Rockefeller and Jacob Javits and the Moderate Republicans like Gerald Ford and Howard Baker.

The issue is, Rockefeller as VP didn't want to be confined to VP. From what I've heard, even as VP he was pitching ideas to Ford about Rocky running in 1976 rather than Ford.
 
...but rather about critical social issues: abortion, guns, and race. The odds were, and are, dim that "Rockefeller" republicanism ever had a chance of surviving...
With evangelicals, I can understand about “not promoting the homosexual lifestyle” by Hollywood, the media, “liberals,” etc, hopefully distinct from being against gay people. And on the positive side, I understand that equal employment rights is something even many people on the fence can agree with, at least in the abstract. So yes, some religious persons can struggle with LGBTQ equality,

but race ?

in this day and age ? ?

Well, the fact is that human brings across a wide range of cultures do label and stereotype other human beings on the basis of race. Sadly and ironically, it’s almost a shared human trait!

And not helped by the fact that in the United States and many other advanced economies we’ve had a net loss of middle-class jobs since the late ‘70s, maybe earlier. And not that conservatives or anyone else has gotten stupider. But on the subject of politics and esp. what we might do to help the less fortunate, people get pissed off quicker and do seem to have less frustration tolerance for thinking through a problem.
 
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Marc

Donor
The GOP became almost exclusively the party of European-Americans starting in early 70's, i.e. Whites. And that fact both informs and fuels their positions on a host of issues ranging from crime to civil rights, to immigration.
Race has always mattered in the United States, followed closely by religion. Both tragically so...
 
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The GOP became almost exclusively the party of European-Americans starting in early 70's, i.e. Whites. And that fact both informs and fuels their positions on a host of issues ranging from crime to civil rights, to immigration.
Race has always mattered in the United States, followed closely by religion. Both tragically so...
If the GOP was "exclusively the party of european americans", you wouldn't have seen continual GOP-led increases in immigration, support for free trade or support for freer markets. A party that'd be implicitly or explicitly white would look more like a mix of George Wallace's democrats+the less liberal elements of the new deal coalition and not like OTL's republicans.
 

Marc

Donor
If the GOP was "exclusively the party of european americans", you wouldn't have seen continual GOP-led increases in immigration, support for free trade or support for freer markets. A party that'd be implicitly or explicitly white would look more like a mix of George Wallace's democrats+the less liberal elements of the new deal coalition and not like OTL's republicans.

Ah, look up party registration by race and ethnicity, and voting patterns by same. My remarks aren't merely a supposition, but based on historical facts.
Bit confused by your free trade reference - race, in and of itself, has little to nothing to do with import/export ratios from the 1950's on.
 
Well, the fact is that human brings across a wide range of cultures do label and stereotype other human beings on the basis of race. Sadly and ironically, it’s almost a shared human trait!

We'll, true, not just in the US but in my Philippines as well. When I talked about open borders with my friend, he said he was concerned that it would "the Philippines lose its identity."

And he's a Gen-Z person like me, so even in younger generations, racism and xenophobia still exist. Sadt.

Afterwards, I opined that I think a foreigner that had been naturalized in the Philippines regardless of race or nationality can be as much as a Filipino as we Malay Filipinos are. And as the old trope goes, "immigration makes our country stronger". So if we accept more immigrants through open borders, our cultures are strengthened instead and our national identities are reinforced.
 
We'll, true, not just in the US but in my Philippines as well. When I talked about open borders with my friend, he said he was concerned that it would "the Philippines lose its identity."

And he's a Gen-Z person like me, so even in younger generations, racism and xenophobia still exist. Sadt.

Afterwards, I opined that I think a foreigner that had been naturalized in the Philippines regardless of race or nationality can be as much as a Filipino as we Malay Filipinos are. And as the old trope goes, "immigration makes our country stronger". So if we accept more immigrants through open borders, our cultures are strengthened instead and our national identities are reinforced.

Though I believe that friend of mine, if educated, would be in favor of open borders.
 
If the GOP was "exclusively the party of european americans", you wouldn't have seen continual GOP-led increases in immigration, support for free trade or support for freer markets. A party that'd be implicitly or explicitly white would look more like a mix of George Wallace's democrats+the less liberal elements of the new deal coalition and not like OTL's republicans.

They (The GOP leadership since the 70's) through dog-whistling convinced large swaths of (racist) voters that they were that for political benefit. Really, Trump is the expression of those dog whistle votes that are deeply dissatisfied that the GOP did not in practice behave as the party "exclusively for European Americans". I believe it is trending that way, and if it stays on said coarse, they shall make the political wilderness the Democrats had in much of the fourth party system look like peanuts.

Btw, not saying all Trump voters are racists (far from it), but certainly the racist vote cultivated by the GOP in the 70's and throughout for political benefit has come back to haunt them through Trump.
 
Free trade is relevant because protecting the jobs of mostly white factory workers.

I agree free trade is relevant to a certain extent, but the argument could have also been made that labor unions were not "conservative" on race and therefore the GOP should not fight for them. Also, the bastion of white supremacy in America is the rural South, also a traditional bastion of free trade.
 

Marc

Donor
As I wrote earlier, the three big social issues, that doom what most would label moderate Republicism is abortion, and guns, and along with race. Since the Roe vs Wade decision in 1973, the right to have a choice in regards to abortion has become the litmus test in American politics, a core definition between the parties, and a required position within them - against choice for Republicans, for choice for Democrats. This issue alone ended up finishing off the progressive wing of the Republican party, and the old conservative one of the Democratic.
In a sense, it resonates with how slavery became the moral divider during the mid-19th century in the West. There really is no honest middle-ground.
 
All you need is to change a few evangelical leaders' minds in the late 70s, say by making Francis Schaeffer's documentary on abortion somehow be a complete mess instead of one that convinces protestants to pick the anti-abortion line. RTL would stay a catholic issue, making it something only republicans in the north would ever bring up. The midwest-intermountain west-dixie core of the GOP wouldn't.
 
As I wrote earlier, the three big social issues, that doom what most would label moderate Republicism is abortion, and guns, and along with race. Since the Roe vs Wade decision in 1973, the right to have a choice in regards to abortion has become the litmus test in American politics, a core definition between the parties, and a required position within them - against choice for Republicans, for choice for Democrats. This issue alone ended up finishing off the progressive wing of the Republican party, and the old conservative one of the Democratic.
In a sense, it resonates with how slavery became the moral divider during the mid-19th century in the West. There really is no honest middle-ground.

But I wonder if this was the obvious evolution? If the GOP had been dominated by a more progressive wing that championed civil rights and the larger notion of individual freedoms while the Democrats were more dominated by social conservatism, gaining its only strong support in the north with Catholic voters, the issue might flip the parties. The GOP might lose conservative voters and Catholic voters for whom the issue is front and center but it gains the African-American vote plus attracting the progressive voters in both South, West and North. The challenge might be to have the Catholic voter align Democratic, otherwise they may be a minority in the GOP like the Moral Majority only a decade or more earlier? In other words, do the Southern Democrats push out the Irish, Italian and German voters, many of whom are Catholic and/or not WASP?
 
Free trade is relevant because protecting the jobs of mostly white factory workers.

One can argue that the GOP was led by an elite who owned big industry, they are inclined to pursue advantageous trade relationships and be against organized labor. Free trade tends to benefit the banking establishment and those who can export as well as tend to import, especially luxuries. Thus our notions about pro-business GOP versus pro-labor Democrats. If one looks back at the progressive era Presidency of TR, the distinctions may be more fluid. In theory the agricultural South favors free trade because it is an exporter. Given increasing government subsidies, a thing this GOP might oppose, might shift the South and get it deeper into protectionism at odds with Northern interests. Overtime the blue collar sector is shrinking, the expanding middle class might also make issues of trade less relevant in this time to a North/Midwest electorate. As you point out, race may remain more relevant and in that the Dixie Democrats might be more vulnerable to a "liberal" GOP than worth courting. White Southern factory workers here are not as valuable as the growing Southern middle class and liberals when added to the "black" vote. The question becomes if this openly pro-civil rights GOP alienates white voters enough?
 
Step one might be to make Reagan as President more like what he was as Governor, where he leaned to the left on social values, or at least pushed that "they should be the state's issues".

This keeps the moral majority and social conservatism from becoming so dominant. You still get a conservatism, but it's one more mild in abortion, pro-LGBT, and leans libertarian on drugs.

That would go a long way towards both making conservatism more moderate, and keeping the evangelicals from dominating the GOP.

Don't forget that the insane draconian anti-drug laws were known as Rockefeller laws.

The Rockefeller Republicans are now establishment Democrats, thanks to the full blown D sellout to Wall Street and megabanks. And that's really a more natural home for Wall Street types. Wall Street literally worships a golden calf, so secular progressives are a more natural ally than evangelical types.
 

CalBear

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We'll, true, not just in the US but in my Philippines as well. When I talked about open borders with my friend, he said he was concerned that it would "the Philippines lose its identity."

And he's a Gen-Z person like me, so even in younger generations, racism and xenophobia still exist. Sadt.

Afterwards, I opined that I think a foreigner that had been naturalized in the Philippines regardless of race or nationality can be as much as a Filipino as we Malay Filipinos are. And as the old trope goes, "immigration makes our country stronger". So if we accept more immigrants through open borders, our cultures are strengthened instead and our national identities are reinforced.
Please keep current politics out of ALL forum except Chat.

Thanks.
 
As I wrote earlier, the three big social issues, that doom what most would label moderate Republicism is abortion, and guns, and along with race. Since the Roe vs Wade decision in 1973, the right to have a choice in regards to abortion has become the litmus test in American politics, a core definition between the parties, and a required position within them - against choice for Republicans, for choice for Democrats. This issue alone ended up finishing off the progressive wing of the Republican party, and the old conservative one of the Democratic.
In a sense, it resonates with how slavery became the moral divider during the mid-19th century in the West. There really is no honest middle-ground.

This is a very good point, but one can imagine a different evolution. The birth control movement was traditionally an elite thing. Even today the right you hear the right deploy populist conspiracy theories about population control and attempts by the elites to "murder the underclass" (or often more racially-charged accusations).

There must be a period in history where you can get the GOP to own birth control as the alternative to abortion. That way, even if filtering by this issue does still happen, you give them a more moderate alternative argument than just abstinence and personal responsibility. It doesn't remove the issue from the board, but maybe it pulls it back from its position as the one and only litmus test that matters.
 
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