It is telling that the Wikipedia article for Rockefeller Republican is in past tense.
Do you think that the Eastern Establishment laid the seeds of their own destruction through their WASPishness and elitism? I think that the GOP could regain a form of moderation, but the idea that a future moderate Republican party would resemble the Rockefellers of old seem naive.
Indeed.
There is a reason why old school Republicanism has been thoroughly discredited. I'll just briefly say that it was not anything close to the idyllic view that many on this forum seem to hold on it. "Pro Civil Rights"? Maybe. But other than that there was very little "good" about it outside of a few naive leftists who thought it was still 1856.
I say "Pro Civil Rights" because until about the middle of the 20th century the Yankee idea of "Civil Rights" was actually very hypocritical. Don't believe me? Then read up on employment and education discrimination in New England in the 19th-early 20th century, something even conservatives like Ann Coulter admits happened. Of course guys like Rockefeller GOP belong more to the mid 20th century brand of moderate Republicanism (though a bit more fiscally moderate), but even he would admit that brand was more driven by triangulating around the New Deal than it was with actual ideology (though as I've outlined elsewhere, those types were generally seen as more pro-Civil Rights than many Democrats who had to tiptoe on the issue due to anti-black voters in certain areas).
But I do agree with the man's assertion that many of you really do need to read your history books. Civil Rights as an issue was by no means as black and white (metaphorically and literally) or as clean cut as it is sometimes portrayed as.
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