Rockefeller Republicans

[Senator Incitatus]

Without reading the dozens of paragraphs above, I need to chime in to remind everyone that "Rockefeller Republicans" had some of the most brutal views on crime, urbanism, and race in the history of the country. The movement is literally named after the governor best remembered for his response to the Attica prison riots. They were not suburban intellectuals; they were the last political movement appealing to the concerns of a now politically extinct class: upper-class urban whites. Their "moderate" views on abortion and gun control largely stem from paranoia regarding black crime, and the common view of them as broadly "liberal" is misguided, as is liberal nostalgia for them.

P.S. Having written this out, I did go back and see that Al and NCY largely hit the mark.

I'll tack on that the narrow WASPishness (at least in public reputation) of the Rockefeller set prevented them from appealing to ethnic minorities, which would have preserved their power another decade or so. And the acceleration of Northern white fears after 1964 pushed voters past what even the Republicans were offering. Instead, ethnic  voters went for Wallace (before later abandoning the cities) while wealthier voters abandoned the cities as soon as possible for Rye, Greenwich, Orange County, etc., forming the basis for the Reaganism of the 1980s.

And none of this is to say that there weren't "liberal Republicans" as there are today. But they were never a coherent enough movement appealing to enough voters to, say, elect a President. Or even a Governor of New York.