No Pew Brothers? (Think Koch Bros, but mid-century)

[Electric Monk]

With the caveat that there were plenty doing similar work, what does the removal of the Pew Brothers change in the Republican Party and America? It’s a ton of money and organization applied during key times to shift the Republican Party that’s now gone… you’ve got Goldwater and the religious right suffering major blows, less politically put together independent oil, Rockefeller benefits from a major foe gone. Some interesting things to play with anyway.

The POD probably has to be early, the brothers fail or die or whatever.

The Other Brother Duo That Brought Us the Modern GOP
By Darren Dochuk / Politico Magazine

The Pews also poured money into media with intent to turn their lobbying into a popular movement. They bought newspapers, sponsored the Three Star Extra radio program on the NBC network, extended their leadership in business associations, and through these and other channels transmitted anti-Roosevelt doctrine into the average American home. In their quest to spread animus against the New Deal there were few more determined or well-to-do crusaders than the Pews, and while they would realize few immediate political payoffs, their efforts would help set the stage—and provide the institutional structure—for the GOP’s reconstitution in the post-World War II period.

He found another way to push back by funding pastors, seminaries and lobbies associated with “new evangelicalism,” the loosely coordinated movement that would lay the groundwork for the religious right. In one respect, new evangelicals sought simply to continue a fight against liberal “modernist” trends in American Protestantism and society that self-identified “fundamentalists” had waged in the previous half century. Thanks to the unmatched financial support of independent oilmen Lyman and Milton Stewart, the brother tandem at the helm of Union Oil Company of California (whose own hatred of the Rockefellers knew no bounds), fundamentalists had proved highly successful at constructing an alternative infrastructure of churches, missionary agencies and schools that resisted progressivism’s pull. Yet new evangelicals, unlike fundamentalists, wanted to engage rather than recoil from mainstream society—they sought to redeem it rather than run from it. The number of institutions within the new evangelical orb that would benefit from Pew’s millions would be spectacularly large, including illustrious representatives such as Christianity Today, the National Association of Evangelicals and evangelist Billy Graham. Graham and his friends were known to lean on the “big boys” of southwestern oil for financing, among them the super-rich Sid Richardson and Hugh Roy Cullen. But J. Howard Pew was the biggest backer among them.

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

Modern socon GOP never happens. More moderates on social/economic issues, a party generally moderately pro-choice on abortion, party gains a populist wing due to less money freezing out nixon/wallace/trump types.

Without Pew's ralllying the right, you don't see democrats feeling a need to counter pew astroturfing by finding activist blocs of their ownBoth the New left/Mcgovernite takeover plus the later side effects/backlash of that such as soccer mom types in the 90s, prudish DLC "centrists" in 90s/00s and current "Woke" types never happen in democrats. Democrats do gain a social democratic wing in the 60s to 80s plus some types concerned about environmental issues but the particular array of identity politics/feminism/certain environmental issues/liberal business types that is OTL's progressive coalition doesn't happen.