Rockefeller Republicans Redux: Political Moderates on the Right in New York State

Abstract

While ideological consistency is often prized by academic scholars, many citizens adopt odd mixtures of political views. These amalgams sometimes become recognizable brands, such as the “Rockefeller Republicans” of the mid-20 th century. However, Rockefeller-like policy moderates on the right portion of the political spectrum appear to be relatively scarce in contemporary America. More specifically, and in a highly polarized era with combative partisans at the extremes, the conventional wisdom is that Republicans are monolithically conservative in their ideology and policy views. As part of an investigation of uniformity within the major political parties in America, statewide surveys from New York state reveal a surprising degree of diversity within the subset of respondents who identify as Republicans. Many modern-day Republicans in New York hold moderate or liberal views across dozens of public policy and attitudinal questions. Consistent with scholarship that questions the depth of conservative ideology in America (e.g., “conflicted conservatives,” “conservative egalitarians,” or “operational liberals”), policy moderates in the Republican party are plentiful and, many times, are largely in agreement with moderate Democrats on economic and social policy issues. These results extend to other surveys of Americans and even to Blue Dog Democrats on the middle-to-left part of the political landscape. Considered as a whole, the empirical results provide a counterintuitive perspective on the extent of mass political polarization in the United States.