Conservatism would be in trouble, Norquist added, if the top candidates were saying, ‘I’m not where Reagan is, and I don’t want to be.” 

“There’s no Rockefeller wing of the party left,” he observed. ~The Politico

Well, that’s just ridiculous.  Of course there is a “Rockefeller wing” or its equivalent, or else Giuliani wouldn’t even be Republican.  The whole “metro Republican” idea reflects a new ascendancy of people who are culturally and politically far more attuned to the spirit of Rockefeller.  Having co-opted the exurbs, suburbs and countryside to its cause, Red Republicanism can now burst forth once more in all its dreadful urbanite, Yankee corruption.  

What a stupid thing it is to say that there is no more Rockefeller wing, and how perfect that the oblivious Norquist would be the one to say it.  What were/are the defining features of Rockefeller Republicanism?  Social liberalism or, more accurately, indifference to social issues, a willingness to coexist with a large, centralised welfare state, which they wanted to more “efficiently” manage , an embrace of high levels of taxation (mighty budget-balancers were they) and reliable support for the interests of Big Business.  Immigration was not as much of a burning issue in the ’70s, but when it became a burning issue later these were people who could be relied upon to support mass immigration in all its forms, again because Big Business wanted it that way.  Regionally, they were often the Republicans of the Northeast.  Weirdly, even though everyone has been crying about how the GOP has been routed from the Northeast, we are being forced to endure a presidential field where two of the top three “major” contenders are Northeasterners by birth or by choice and whose careers certainly match up with the cultural and political leanings of Rockefeller Republicans much better than they do with Sunbelt conservatives.  The Rockefeller wing has not only survived–it has in most respects triumphed within the GOP and increasingly within the movement itself.  For much of the transformation of the latter you can thank FDR-admiring neocons and appeasers of the welfare state such as Newt Gingrich. 

In other words, the policies embraced by neoconservatives domestically and championed by “moderate” Republicans such as McCain and Giuliani are almost exactly the policies of the Rockefeller Republicans.  It is McCain’s Rockefellerism that makes him so unpopular with conservatives and which makes him a laughable successor to Goldwater; Giuliani is a more pure embodiment of the policies, if not exactly the social background, of the old Republican left.  To the extent that “mainstream” Republicanism differs from the bad old days of Rockefellerism at all, it is mainly only in tax policy and the occasional obligatory, usually meaningless nod to the concerns of social conservatives.  Not only has the Rockefeller wing never disappeared, but it has actually managed to grow and dominate more and more of the conservative movement itself.  The difference now is that the Rockefeller Republicans have the good sense to pretend that they respect and admire Reagan and pretend that they are good conservatives (or work steadily at redefining what conservative means so that it includes them), while continuing all of the same policies that conservatives used to oppose and still should oppose if they don’t actually oppose them right now.  The conservatives, meanwhile, in what I suppose must be a desperate attempt to convince themselves that they have accomplished something lasting in the last ten years, tell themselves that they have vanquished the spirit of Rockefeller, when all they have done is made it obligatory for the Rockefeller Republicans to pay homage to Reagan and then go about opposing everything the conservative movement used to stand for (and which some parts of it still do stand for most of the time).  That one of the big-name players in the movement does not see this or cannot publicly acknowledge it without destroying the credibility of the entire project tells you how bad things are.