Rockefeller Republicanism, which today is called Compassionate Conservatism  has it’s roots in Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive Republicanism and has been the dominant faction of the GOP over the last century. Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George HW Bush and George W Bush were Rockefeller Republicans. Failed candidate, John McCain, also comes from this wing of the GOP. Bob Dole, who lost to Bill Clinton in 1996, was not of this wing, He was an old school Bob Taft Conservative Republican. The only modern/Goldwater Conservative Republican to have won the nomination and win the Presidency was Ronald Reagan.

The Rockefeller Republicans have maintained their control over the GOP despite the Conservative nature of its base. Their favorite tactic is to use red meat social issues to whip up the base. Then once in power, they don’t do anything about these social issues. Instead they push a Liberal to Progressive economic agenda. They cut deals with Democrats and throw Conservatives under the bus. They look down on the base as wolves, whom they give red meat to keep them in line. For the record, I have no gripe with people who are concerned with social issues, even if I feel that economic/fiscal issues are the priority. My gripe is with Rockefeller Republicans who use these issues to get Social Con votes and then discard them after the election.

Now in the battle for the 2012 election, the representative of the Rockefeller Wing is Mitt Romney. The GOP elites are flocking to him to stop Rick Perry, who comes from the Goldwater/Reagan wing of the GOP. In typical fashion, Romney is trying to use a red meat issue, illegal immigration, to whip up the base against Perry. This coming from a man who hired illegal Guatemalan house keepers and did nothing about illegal Irish in Boston. The reality is that Romney is just using a playbook written by Nelson Rockefeller. Throw red meat to pursue a Liberal agenda.

“Despite my affiliation with the Republican Party, I don’t think of myself as highly partisan.”
— Mitt Romney in his book No Apology 

[…]

In the world of politics it was Nelson Rockefeller who had the misfortune to have all the political assets one could possibly imagine — looks, charm, brains, energy and literally all the money he could use. Yet with all of this Rockefeller was totally unable — if not stubbornly unwilling — to understand the significance of the conservative revolution that was swirling around him as his own career unfolded. And in not understanding, much less not leading that conservative revolution Rockefeller not only failed spectacularly as a presidential candidate but made himself into a defiant symbol of resistance. He transformed himself into a man so stubbornly enamored of the liberal status quo and its supporting Establishment that his very name attached to that of his party became not simply a descriptive to conservatives but an epithet:

“The Rockefeller Republican.”

It was — and in some quarters remains to this day — a short-hand, derisive description for Republicans now labeled as a “RINO” — Republican In Name Only. The Rockefeller Republican became immutably identified as someone whose philosophical moorings and political instincts lay not in the Constitution but rather with the American progressive movement and the liberal Establishment that movement had become. Or, as Rockefeller’s longtime intra-party rival Ronald Reagan once described the problem to Time magazine:

“I think the division of the Republican Party grew from pragmatism on the part of some, the Republicans who said, ‘Look what the Democrats are doing and they’re staying in power. The only way for us, if we want to have any impact at all, is somehow to copy them.’ This was where the split began to grow, because there were other people saying, ‘Wait a minute. There is great danger in following this path toward Government intervention.'”

Reagan never left any doubt as to the fact that in his use of the word “some” he was decidedly including Nelson Rockefeller.

So as the 2012 Republican campaign to take the presidential chair begins, the obvious question that more and more conservatives are asking, however they phrase it, is this:

Is Mitt Romney the new Nelson Rockefeller?

[…]

ROCKEFELLER WAS IN OFFICE only a matter of days before a pattern was established. There was Rockefeller rhetoric — and Rockefeller in action as chief executive.

His rhetoric (and this at the height of the Cold War) would be, today, considered almost Reaganesque. There were the stark flourishes about living in “a fatal testing time for free men and freedom itself — everywhere.” Americans, he said, “have seen the tyrant — first Fascist, then Communist — strike down free nations, shackle free peoples, and dare free men everywhere to prove they can survive.” He waxed philosophical, defining the challenges in America as a struggle “between those who believe in the essential equality of peoples of all nations and races and creeds — and those whose only creed is their own ruthless race for power.” To hear Nelson Rockefeller, the grandson of one of the century’s most famous oil entrepreneurs, talk about what conservatives today would call “economic growth” would bring tears to the eyes of budding entrepreneurs and small businessmen and women everywhere.

The problem came — and it came in abundance — with his actions. 

Nelson Rockefeller was not just a follower of the Establishment line — as a Rockefeller he was a card carrying member of that Establishment. His hand was literally no sooner off the swearing-in bible than he was enthusing about the need for this long range planning group and that future-oriented commission. He wanted to pour endless amounts of money into education. Life in New York was at peril if the state didn’t immediately expand all manner of state institutions while creating new ones. There had to be a state-funded arts council, studies of this problem and that problem and, well, a list of problems that was almost endless. And sometimes was.

Read the rest: Is Mitt Romney the New Nelson Rockefeller?

Make no mistake about it, although Romney would be slightly better than Obama as President, he would be a one termer if he can even beat Obama to begin with. Both Economic and Social Conservatives are tired of this dog and pony show by the Rockefeller Republicans. The American public are tired of fraudsters who say one thing and do another. They already have that in President Hussein, why would they want it in a President Romney? They don’t.

Romney’s flip flops, his actions at Bain Capital and with Romneycare show he is a typical elitist who is out for himself and doesn’t care about the consequences. The GOP elites want a Romney-Pawlenty ticket because they don’t want a Southerner (Perry) running the show. In no way am I saying Perry is perfect, but he understands what is going in in America. Romney doesn’t. He has a tin ear and thinks that by feeding red meat he will trick Conservatives into supporting him. He has no intention of fixing the US economy. He just wants to be President so the GOP elites can have power.

In 2012, Conservatives must unite and defeat Mitt Romney and the GOP elites. It’s time they take a back seat and let us run the show. A Rick Perry-Marco Rubio ticket would be the death knell to Progressive control of the Republican Party. It would also be a formidable ticket against the Democratic Party and could realign the Hispanic vote to the GOP. The Rockefeller Republicans know this and will do all they can to stop it. They will even use “Conservative” surrogates to sabotage the GOP in 2012, unless Romney is at the top of the ticket.

Let’s make this 1980 all over again. I want a Conservative Republican victory!