Who exactly were the "LBJ Republicans"?

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Probably Republicans who supported LBJ in 1964 because of their opposition to Goldwater and the conservative wing of the GOP.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

The modern Democratic Party.

Will you stop with this BS narrative?  "LBJ Republicans" were GOPers who weren't going to support an extremist.  If Rick Santorum gets the nomination, I'll be a Hillary Clinton Republican in the same fashion.  Honestly, I would not have supported any nominee that year who voted against a Civil Rights Act that got near unanimous support from our party...

I probably wouldn't have either, except that Goldwater opposed it on constitutional grounds, not racial ones.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

The modern Democratic Party.

Will you stop with this BS narrative?  "LBJ Republicans" were GOPers who weren't going to support an extremist.  If Rick Santorum gets the nomination, I'll be a Hillary Clinton Republican in the same fashion.  Honestly, I would not have supported any nominee that year who voted against a Civil Rights Act that got near unanimous support from our party...

I suppose the current Democratic near-domination of New England (especially on the presidential level) just "appeared" out of nowhere. Who do you think a Governor of Nelson Rockefeller's accomplishments would be associated with in today's political climate? The only thing he seems to match up with the GOP on is his stance on crime, which itself is opposed by a number of newer additions to the party. While your political matrix score seems to be one associated with moderate libertarianism, the only libertarian thing Rockefeller did was legalize abortion in NY. Do you seriously think that the fact that ah number of former liberal Republicans endorsed Kerry in 2004 is no indication that some of the liberals in Goldwater's party opposed to him eventually left? Lowell Weicker and Pete McCloskey are two members of the GOP's left wing that would eventually oppose the Bush presidency. As well, Clinton was the first Democrat to win all of New England not once, but twice, and since then, regardless of victory or defeat, no Republican candidate for President has gained a majority in even one state from that area. The type of Republicans that championed Planned Parenthood and the legalization of birth control, etc. would have little place in the modern Republican Party. Prescott Bush, beyond even social issues, has a quote on his Wikipedia profile that, as I recall, claims he supported any taxation required to close the deficit, which is both a serious rebuttal of modern-day Republican economics and also seems to disregard the idea of private property, indicating that as long as the federal government failed to make ends meet, they could grab up as much as they wanted from the populace to do so. In 1976, Ford won not only a majority of the New England states, but also Michigan and Illinois. Even disregarding his support on the West Coast, that is a serious indicator of the migration of the GOP's primary voting base Hell, the GOP hadn't won without Illinois until George W. Bush--based on my memory. The same could go for any number of states you might choose to list. The fact stands that the type of Republican that viscerally opposed Goldwater's nomination in 1964 would likely be a Democrat today.

That "fact" stands?  Yeah, okay.  And has the GOP gotten more conservative as the Dems have gotten more liberal?  Sure.  But that doesn't translate into a corny "old Republicans were liberals and would be Democrats today" generalization.  Go check out the latest post in the inconvenient history thread.  New England is a very, very different place today than it was in the '60s; for much of its history, it was pretty conservative, and it has only very recently the economic populism of Democrats.

True.  New England has a history of fiscal conservatism and independence, but yet Democrat dominance has destroyed this and given us Taxachusetts and other overtaxed New Englanders.