RE: HRC being a "blue blooded Rockefeller Republican"...

[book_worm]

Here are a few "Rockefeller Republicans" as I'm sure you probably didn't realize it--so I think she is in good company:

Jacob Javits:

Throughout his years in Congress, Javits seldom enjoyed favor with his party's inner circle. His liberalism was a vestige of a Republican party of an earlier era, and though he hung tenaciously to his liberal precepts, his influence was more subtle than obvious. Few pieces of legislation bear his name, yet he was especially proud of his work in creating the National Endowment for the Arts, of his sponsorship of the ERISA Act, which regulated defined-benefit private pensions, and of his leadership in the passage of the 1973 War Powers Act.

Javits used his office to advance ideas that furthered the policies even of Democratic presidents. In the fall of 1962 he proposed to a group of NATO parliamentarians that multinational corporations jointly create a new kind of investment vehicle to promote private investment throughout Latin America. He intended his idea to complement President John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress. Two years later some 50 multinational corporations formed the Adela Investment Company much as Javits had proposed.[7]

Javits was generally considered a liberal Republican, and was supportive of labor unions and movements for civil rights. In an essay published in 1958 in the magazine Esquire, he predicted the election of the first African-American president by the year 2000. In 1964, Javits refused to support his party's presidential nominee, his conservative colleague, Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona.

Senator Javits sponsored the first African-American Senate page in 1965 and the first female page in 1971. His liberalism was such that he tended to receive support from traditionally Democratic voters, with many Republicans defecting to support the Conservative Party of New York.

Charles Mathias

Mathias was frequently at odds with his conservative colleagues in the Senate and the Richard Nixon administration. In June 1969, Mathias joined with fellow liberal Republican Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania in threatening a "rebellion" unless the Nixon administration worked harder to protect African American civil rights.[18] He also warned against Republicans using the "Southern strategy" of attracting conservative George Wallace voters at the expense of moderate or liberal voters.[15] Mathias voted against two controversial Nixon Supreme Court nominees, Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell, neither of whom was confirmed. Mathias was also an early advocate for setting a timetable for withdrawal of troops from Vietnam, and was against the bombing campaigns Nixon launched into Laos.[15] In October 1972, Mathias became the first Republican on Ted Kennedy's Judiciary subcommittee and one of only a few in the nation to support investigation of the Watergate Scandal, which was still in its early stages

In early 1974, the group Americans for Democratic Action rated Mathias the most liberal member of the GOP in the Senate based on twenty key votes in the 1973 legislative session. At 90 percent, his score was higher than most Democrats in the Senate, and was fourth highest amongst all members

Lowell Weicker

Weicker was a liberal voice in an increasingly conservative Republican Party. "In its 1986 rankings, the venerable Americans for Democratic Action rated Weicker the most liberal Republican in the Senate, by far—and 20 percentage points more liberal than his fellow Connecticut senator, a Democrat named Chris Dodd."

Edward Brooke

By his second year in the Senate, Brooke had taken his place as a leading advocate against discrimination in housing and on behalf of affordable housing.[17] With Walter Mondale, a Minnesota Democrat and fellow member of the Senate Banking Committee, he co-authored the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination in housing. The Act also created HUD's Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity as the primary enforcer of the law.[17] President Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act into law on April 11, one week after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.. Dissatisfied with the weakened enforcement provisions that emerged from the legislative process, Brooke repeatedly proposed stronger provisions during his Senate career. In 1969, Congress enacted the "Brooke Amendment" to the federal publicly assisted housing program which limited the tenants' out-of-pocket rent expenditure to 25 percent of his or her income.[17]

During the Nixon presidency, Brooke opposed repeated Administration attempts to close down the Job Corps and the Office of Economic Opportunity and to weaken the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission—all foundational elements of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.


BTW, Some of the "FDR Democrats" that supported FDR for all four of his elections include most, if not all, the Southern racists. FDR didn't have a very good record on Civil Rights--Strom Thurmond said that FDR said a lot of things that Truman did, replied, "Yeah, but Truman means them." (not that FDR wasn't a great Democrat--but to say that Bernie is a FDR Democrat and Hillary is a "Rockefeller Republican" isn't really the worse thing in the world. I would say HRC is a Kennedy-Obama Democrat and I'm proud to support her.