How did we lose the moderate Republicans, the Nelson Rockefellers and George Romneys?

Blowing Smoke. Chapter 13.

Wouldn't it be cool if we could do a write-in campaign with George in a third party slot against Mitt and Barack? Wouldn't it be even cooler if the dead guy won? Now, wouldn't that send a message or two to D.C.?

Yes, thinking it's time to give a Republican administration a try.

The last one gave us some good times, and some bad times. Like the worst terror attack on US soil in history, two failed wars, one that they lied us into, torture, the anthrax attacks and the PATRIOT Act. They also gave us the real estate bubble and the economic collapse, in the second term. I am trying to think of the good times and all I come up with is ..... saving stem cells, and Dubya telling us to go to the mall. Could Romney be any worse? Possibly as he has a lot of the same neo-con advisors. I wouldn't be surprised if Mitt's first year has us on edge, a new war is almost certain, to establish his tough guy Republican credentials. If it all goes bad, we could, we will likely have to, vote the Democrats back in again to clean up the mess.

Awesome piece, Peracles.  Genghis has the practical answer (how did the Republican party evolve and whodunnit) but I'll add some less substantiated cultural criticism.

The Rockefeller voice is till around.  David Brooks thinks he has it.  George HW Bush might lay some claim to it with his collaborative foreign policy and willingness to tick off the right on taxes.  Bob Dole just recently told Mitt Romney that he needs to stand up to his party's right wing, though it seems Mitt has other ideas altogether.

The thing is, all of these guys are dinosaurs whose time as past.  Because the whole Rockefeller thing has a patrician air about it that no longer plays well.  The idea that the wealthy owe something to society tends to fall on deaf ears.  Why is that?  One reason might be that as a society, we do not see the wealthy as our patrons or protectors.  We think it's nice if Jamie Dimon wants to build the wing of a hospital or if Henry Kravis wants to support the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but we do not look to these people as the culture's leaders.  On the left and the right, we make our own way.  We pick our own music, we pick our own art, we pick our own entertainments and we make our own morals.

The type of Republican you're talking about is really the tycoon-statesman.  These are people who anointed themselves as responsible for the character of American society.  That idea is no longer acceptable, at least not so overtly.  These days, that kind of patronage seems, well, patronizing.

You catch guys like David Brooks arguing in favor of its return fairly frequently.  He even recently argued that the country was better off with the old WASP leadership, even though many of them were anti-Semites, anti-women's rights and unlikely to hold polite views about minorities.  But, you know, one of the very good things that diminished the cultural power of those people (even if it left their economic and political power largely intact) is that society started to solicit the opinions of minorities, women and Jewish people like David Brooks.  This is a very good thing, isn't it?

In a lot of ways, with the perspective of decades, George HW Bush doesn't seem like such a bad guy.  He seems well meaning.  And maybe it was a good thing to have a well educated, hyper-connected internationalist at the helm during the chaos of the Cold War's end.  But I doubt that, say, Public Enemy would write so rosy a summary of the Bush years and you can't judge him, or his type, without that perspective, too.

Social conservatism comes in many forms.  But the old patricians (and not all of them were or even are Republicans, some Democrats do this too) do tend towards social conservatism.  Whether those values emanate from the revival tend, the assembly line, the loading docks or the country club, I can't support them.  Which is why I'd never vote for George Romney for anything, even if he's otherwise a heckuvaguy.

Broad brush...post WWII and up until around 1970, liberalism and the new reality ushered in by the New Deal were ascendant.

Aside from Barry Goldwater, Republicans bent in the direction of liberalism whilst holding onto their reputation for being more "fiscally sound," or more concerned with being so.

So Republicans, in general, were a bit like "liberalism light." At this point, the corporate class had not yet become politically active the way they are now; they weren't concerned with it. They had, in essence, accepted the new liberal reality.

Within this trend, George Romney strikes me as a very decent guy. And there were others, like Dirksen and perhaps Javits.

Today, the opposite trend still dominates, so Democrats appear to be "conservatism light." The two sides aren't symmetrical, but I this analogy has some merit.

I think we can hope for another "George Romney" when the tide turns, if it ever does. Taking George Romney out of his time is a bit like taking a fish out of water (IMO), but I wouldn't be surprised, either, if George Today weren't more like Mitt Today.

Mitt's biggest problem is that he's swimming upstream in a party where he doesn't really fit. So he's trying VERY hard to fit because it's the only way to fulfill his personal ambitions. So more and more he gives in to the dominant current, e.g., the Ryan pick.

Another good book to check out--not as good as Blowing Smoke, but still good--is Invisible Hands, by Fein.

Really lays out the whole emergence of the conservative resurgence from the 1940s through to "today."