The Once and Future Coalition: Evincing the Ideological Diversity of 1960s Conservatism in America

...........................................................................................3 Chapter 1...........................................................................................5 Chapter 2...........................................................................................30 Chapter 3...........................................................................................47 Chapter 4...........................................................................................64 Conclusions and Implications..................................................................77


Introduction
American political scientists and historians have long fought over the core principles and beliefs that unite conservatives in America, and have tended to hone in on the 1960s as a pivotal period in the creation of conservative ideological coherency and belief. Historians and political scientists alike have pinpointed the tumultuous time of Nixon and Wallace, Vietnam and Woodstock, and MLK and RFK as the fiery torch that welded together various demographic and ideological factions into the modern conservative coalition. As Joseph Crespino noted in his insightful Strom Thurmond's America, "The signal events of the 1960s helped precipitate the conservative takeover of the GOP, one consolidated by Ronald Reagan." 1 Therefore, this thesis will concentrate on the political alignment and realignment that occurred during the 1960s as a tool for, ultimately, examining the ideological origins of American conservatism. I find that there existed numerous "crossover voting blocs" within the conservative coalition in the 1960s, and that these blocs held divergent and varied views on both economic and civil rights issues. This demonstrates that the narrative of American conservatism as a particularly cohesive group, at least in the 1960s, is essentially false; American conservatism, at its modern genesis in the 1960s, was marked by ideological conflict. Finally, this thesis will examine the modern day homogeneity of the parties, and note that although both parties 2 are currently stable ideological groups, the possibility of fissure is greater for Republicans than for Democrats.

What is a Conservative?
In this thesis, I use the term "conservative," in the first two chapters, to apply to politicians who are commonly understood to have been "conservative" by historians, by their political peers, and by themselves. I use no ideological litmus test to define conservatism, since this thesis begins with the premise that a certain group of politicians were, indeed, conservative, and proceeds from this foundation towards an understanding of conservatism as an ideology.
Throughout this thesis, I also use the term "conservative" as an adjective to describe views on civil rights and economics. For instance, I frequently refer to views held by Southern Democrats as "racially conservative." I do this not to imply that this was the de facto conservative position, but simply because this is often the term used to describe such racial views. It is certainly possible for someone to be "conservative" (or, perhaps better put, to be a member of the conservative coalition) and not hold conservative views on civil rights or economics.
In chapter four of this thesis, I note that conservatism has, in contemporary understanding, come to be seen as indistinguishable from the Republican Party.

The Ideological Makeup of 1960s Conservatism: A Literature Review
In this literature review, I will offer an overview of three schools of thought that describe the intellectual foundations of 1960s-era conservatism. The schools emphasize conservatism as racial conservatism, conservatism as racial conservatism plus fiscal conservatism, and conservatism as a color-blind ethos. As I will later demonstrate, the first two claims stand in stark opposition to the claim put forth by this thesis, namely, that conservatism in the 1960s was marked by ideological heterogeneity, and that conservatism contained strong and clear elements of civil rights liberalism and even economic liberalism.

Conservatism as Racial Conservatism
Accounts of American political realignment in the 1960s and 1970s tend to be characterized by the weight that they grant racial animus in forging the conservative political coalition. Many accounts consider racial conservatism to be the primary factor uniting American conservatives in the 1960s. Political scientist Eric Schickler, author of Racial Realignment, sees race as essential to the formation of both the modern liberal and conservative coalitions. Schickler essentially argues that the transformation of political parties in the 1960s was inevitable because of grassroots shifts uniting economic liberalism (i.e. the belief that government ought to play an active role in economic regulation and wealth redistribution) and racial liberalism (i.e. the belief that government ought to ameliorate racial inequalities and dismantle Jim Crow). These issues became intertwined as early as the 1930s, Schickler writes, as Democratic Party actors-in particular labor unions-"worked to undermine the supposed bargain between northern liberals and southern racists ." 3 These actors pushed the Democrats to create a platform based both on entitlement programs and civil rights bills. This reading flies in the face of traditional historiographical accounts which depict the New Deal coalition as one in which "Northern Democrats agreed to avoid addressing civil rights policy in return for southern Democrats' cooperation in building the New Deal welfare state." 4 But the traditional reading, according to Schickler, fails to grasp that political actors were indeed pushing to include civil rights reform in the Democratic Party platform-something that presaged and paved the way for later Democratic liberalism on civil rights issues. Indeed, by 1948, "support for civil rights had become a litmus test for liberalism," 5 and Schickler notes that Southern Democrats were essentially the albatrosses of their party, with their eventual move towards the Republican side of the aisle all but preordained. As he writes in the book's conclusion, "The civil rights realignment was rooted in changes in the constituency base of the Democratic Party that took place during the 1930s." 6 Schickler writes that economic conservatives increasingly found that their political arguments, which emphasized self-sufficiency and individual autonomy, possessed an easy appeal to supporters of Jim Crow segregation. He notes that, "starting in the late 1940s, Republican advocates of a coalition with the South emphasized the fit between their antistatist, limited government attacks on the New Deal and southerners' interest in defending Jim Crow." 7 He writes that Republican rhetoric emphasizing "states' rights" was essentially code for defending what he identifies as the twin pillars of conservatism: laissez-faire economics and support for segregation. These appeals resonated in the South. Schickler writes that, "Political entrepreneurs…saw the coalition opportunity created by southern opposition to the labor-infused direction of the New Deal and articulated a conservative vision…well suited to appeal in the South." 8 However, such racial animus was apparently not restricted to the South; Schickler notes that, "In the North, economically conservative Republican voters had long shown skepticism towards civil rights initiatives." 9 Schickler portrays this unification of racial and economic conservatism as an outgrowth of the Democrats' shift towards linking economic liberalism with racial liberalism, but he seems to imply that many conservatives were ready to see racial policy linked with economic policy.
Other accounts of political realignment go even further than Schickler's, and suggest that economic issues hardly mattered a whit in forging the conservative coalition, but that conservative political rhetoric focusing on economic policy was de facto code language that communicated racial conservatism or outright racial prejudice. Historian Kevin Kruse seems to tack this line in his work, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism.
In this well-received account of the changing demographic patterns of the metro Atlanta area, Kruse writes that conservatives were forced to speak in a new language in order to propagate the segregation (in this case, residential segregation) that they desired. Kruse writes that such coded language was a direct response to the Civil Rights Movement, which he says made overt racial appeals politically untenable: "Because of their confrontation with the civil rights movement, white southern conservatives were forced to abandon their traditional, populist, and often starkly racist demagoguery and instead craft a new conservatism predicated on a language of rights, freedoms, and individualism." 10 In fact, Kruse quite literally links the rise of white suburbia to white supremacist movements, on the apparent basis of their mutual economic views aimed at racial segregation. "To be sure," Kruse writes, "white suburbia looked little like the world of white supremacy. But these worlds had much in commonfrom remarkably similar levels of racial, social, and political hegemony to their shared 9 Ibid., 241 10 Kruse, Kevin M. White flight: Atlanta and the making of modern conservatism. Princeton University Press, 2013, p. 6 ideologies that stressed individual rights over communal responsibilities, privatization over public welfare, and 'free enterprise' above all else ." 11 The thrust of Kruse's argument centers on the idea that segregationist resistance prompted the formation of new conservative causes, primarily tax breaks and privatizations allegedly aimed at buttressing white pocketbooks and restricting black advancement. Chief among such policies were "homeowner rights" policies, which gave residents of certain communities wide latitude in determining who was permitted to buy property in the community. "Homeowner rights" policies, defended on the basis of individual freedoms and the protections of private property, effectually barred blacks from purchasing property in select neighborhoods and municipalities. Kruse writes that other institutions tried this tactic, too. For instance, he notes that Atlanta's prestigious Lovett School barred black children from attending on the basis of the school's "right to freedom of association." 12 Kruse also writes that growing anger over both taxes and social services programs, hallmarks of modern conservatism, took on a decidedly racial appeal in Atlanta in the late 1960s. Writing of white Atlantans, he states, "As they saw it, whites paid the vast majority…of taxes in the city…this supposed disparity between the tax burden of whites and blacks took on a strongly racist tone as whites charged that they unfairly bore the financial burden for a welfare system that catered to blacks." 13 Thus, Kruse essentially argues that economic conservatism became a rhetorical front for prevailing racial animus in the South and in the conservative movement in general.
Accounts of race-based political realignment tend to emphasize a handful of flippant and off-the-cuff remarks by politicians in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement. For instance, Kruse notes that, after signing the Civil Rights Act eliminating segregation in businesses and public accommodations, Lyndon Baines Johnson apocryphally declared, "We just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a generation." 14 This, Kruse seems to imply, is evidence that Southerners are regarded to have voted solely on their racial views.
Historian Dan Carter, though his account of the origins of modern conservatism is perhaps more nuanced than Schickler's and Kruse's racially centered explanations, falls into a similar tendency in his The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics. He opens his book with evidence that Wallace's racial prejudice lay at the center of his political orientation, as he quotes Wallace's infamous 1963 inauguration speech. Wallace famously shouted from the steps of the Alabama statehouse, "In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust…and I say…segregation now…segregation tomorrow…segregation forever." 15 In another instance, Wallace apparently said about his 1958 gubernatorial loss to Alabama Attorney General John Patterson (who ran with the outright support of the KKK), "Well boys, no other son-of-a-bitch will ever out-nigger me again." 16 Carter also uses this quote as proof that, if Wallace himself did not feel racial prejudice, then he at least recognized the need to appeal to racial prejudices to win over voters.
Contemporary journalistic accounts also make ample use of such quotations as proof that the key to political realignment lay in race baiting. A 2001 New Yorker article by Louis Menand, appropriately titled "He Knew He Was Right: The Tragedy of Barry Goldwater," wrote that although Goldwater "hoped his personal opposition to discrimination would win 14 Ibid., 231 15 Carter, Dan T. The politics of rage: George Wallace, the origins of the new conservatism, and the transformation of American politics. LSU Press, 2000, p. 11 16 Ibid., 96 him the votes of black people," he recognized the need to go after white Southern voters, and in doing so, actively cease "chasing the votes of African-Americans." 17 Moreover, Menand notes that Goldwater himself told a group of Georgia activists in 1961 that Republicans "ought to go hunting where the ducks are." 18 The article helpfully follows up on this quotation by noting that, "the ducks…turned out to be white Democrats in revolt against integration." 19 And hordes of journalists and scholars have examined the notorious 1981 recording of political strategist Lee Atwater explaining how Republicans can win the votes of racists, and used it as evidence that Republican and conservative political strategy is indeed aimed directly at appealing to racial prejudices. In the recording, Atwater, speaking off-therecord to a handful of reporters, said the following: "You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"-that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff, and you're getting so abstract. Now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. …" 20 This, according to historian Rick Perlstein, has become a sort of "smoking gun" for liberals convinced that conservatives deliberately utilize racial appeals. 21 Indeed, the quote has been scrutinized and analyzed in a number of works of political theory and analysis, "will be the first generation…that won't be prejudiced." 22 Nevertheless, Atwater's quote retains its shock value, and its prime place in the shrine of evidence used to implicate Republicans for the supposedly hyper-racial foundations of their party and their political conservatism.

Conservatism as Economic Conservatism and Racial Conservatism
Other authors offer more nuanced accounts of the development of conservatism. For instance, the aforementioned Dan Carter, in The Politics of Rage, argues that modern conservatism was a veritable alchemy of "racial fear, anticommunism, cultural nostalgia, and traditional right-wing economics." 23 In arguing for a multifaceted basis for modern conservatism, Carter gives more credence than the likes of Schickler and Kruse to the idea of conservatism as a coalition of various demographic groups and ideological interests. For one, Carter notes that the ascendant conservative coalition had nationwide appeal, and moreover, had appeal to divergent social classes of Americans. "The typical Wallace voter," Carter writes, equating Wallace voters with conservatives, "was just as likely to be a suburban member of the Rotary Club as a regular at the Union Hall." 24 Moreover, the varied policy positions of this new conservative coalition forced politicians to walk "precarious tightropes." 25 Carter writes that Richard Nixon, perhaps the most important politician to the process of conservative political realignment, "was conservative, but not too conservative, a defender of civil rights, but always solicitous of white southerners' concerns" in trying to preserve and shore up the conservative coalition. 26 Carter writes that Nixon frequently pivoted away from racial issues to "more traditional themes of economic conservatism and limited government," but that "more often, he stood on the lofty ground of foreign policy." 27 Carter's portrayal of Nixon thus focuses on Nixon's ability to unite these various ideological strands under a somewhat coherent umbrella.
Carter's argument differs from Kruse's in that he does not view economic arguments as a ruse aimed at covering up or hiding racial prejudice from public view. Historian Joseph Crespino also tacks this line in his work, Strom Thurmond's America. In this nuanced portrait of the origins of modern conservatism, Crespino essentially argues that economic conservatism and racial conservatism went hand-in-hand in the conservative movement. His account differs slightly from Schickler's in that he does not necessarily portray the merger of these two beliefs under a single political umbrella as a specific and concerted reaction to the political merger of racial and economic liberalism. Rather, like Kruse, he views economic and racial conservatism as intensely compatible beliefs, but unlike Kruse (and like Carter), he views them as separable. It is the linkage of the two beliefs, Crespino argues, that undergirds conservatism.
Crespino argues his thesis primarily through arguing that Strom Thurmond embodies this linkage of economic and racial conservatism, and that it was this vision that prevailed in the Republican Party. He calls Thurmond's brand of politics, "Sunbelt conservatism," and writes that, "Scholars make facile distinctions between Sunbelt conservatives, who are figured as modern, principled, and broadly ideological, and southern conservatives, who are 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. figured chiefly as backward and racist." 28 Sunbelt conservatives, according to Crespino, are largely portrayed in literature such as Matthew Lassiter's The Silent Majority as suburbanites who largely wanted to ignore racial issues, and move towards a post-racial, economically focused brand of politics. But Crespino argues that distinguishing Sunbelt conservatives from their political affiliates who were apparently motivated more by racial prejudices is to ignore that the two elements were complementary and mutually reinforcing. It is for this reason that Strom Thurmond emerges as such a pivotal figure in Crespino's telling.
Crespino notes that Thurmond was one of the first Southern politicians to broadly reject the New Deal agenda in favor of a fuller embrace of free-market capitalism. He notes that Thurmond was "one of the Senate's most determined foes of labor unions and one of its greatest friends to business interests…his disdain for labor bosses became interchangeable with his loathing of civil rights leaders." 29 Indeed, Thurmond's support for business interests came decades before he switched from the Democratic to Republican Party. "Years before his party switch," Crespino writes, "Thurmond was already emerging as a leading member of an economically postwar conservative coalition." 30 Thurmond was also a leader of the argued not only for segregation (as it did famously), but also railed against labor unions, regarding them as a threat to the American capitalistic order.

Conservatism as Colorblindness: The Suburban Ethos
The historians and political scientists discussed up to this point are united by their belief that shared racial views were integral to the development of modern conservatism. Some scholars, however, somewhat mitigate the effects of race in establishing both the liberal and conservative coalitions. For instance, James Glaser, in his Race, Campaign Politics, and the Realignment in the South, argues that the dearth of racial issues in the political arena, at least in the 1970s, prevented Republicans from consolidating support in the South. Glaser notes that, "Although the Republican Party has grown enormously [in the South] since the 1960s, it has not achieved the full scale electoral success many expected ." 33 While the South tended Republican in Presidential elections (with the exception of 31  reduces the national political viability of the Republican Party. For this reason, their work is not entirely relevant to this paper, but their observations that racially moderate Democrats found political success in the 1970s and 1980s in the South helps to buttress Glaser's argument. So too does Alexander Lamis's The Two Party South, which, as the title implies, investigates the modern predominance of a two party structure in the South. Similar to Glaser, Lamis concludes that the Democrats' ability to play down political differences on racial issues contributed to their continued success.
Again, Lamis, Glaser, and the Black brothers all acknowledge the role of race in sparking partisan realignment. But they add that alignments are not absolute, particularly when race is eliminated as a political issue. The scholar who perhaps comes the closest to minimizing the prevalence of race in conservative political alignment is Matthew Lassiter, author of The Silent Majority. Lassiter writes, "Many scholars and pundits have embraced a top-down thesis of electoral realignment that credits the regional base of the Republican Party to a race-driven Southern strategy." 37 However, Lassiter argues that the scholarly focus on race as a political unifier and consolidator is mistaken, and further argues that voters susceptible to top-down racial appeals were only on the fringes, and did not constitute a significant political group. "While numerous GOP campaigns have featured 'dirty tricks' and veiled appeals to the racial resentments of a subset of the white electorate," he allows, "accounts of regional transformation that highlight these stories often conflate the fringe with the middle and invert the sequence of political change in the South." 38 Instead of conservative political elites forging a political coalition on the basis of shared racial animus, in other words, it was the grassroots, color-blind politics of modern suburbanites that changed the political face of the South and of the entire country.
Such voters were more motivated by class considerations and economic issues than racial politics. Lassiter writes, "The suburban politics of middle-class warfare charted a middle course between the open racism of the extreme right and the egalitarian agenda of the civil rights movement, based on an ethos of color-blind individualism." 39 Suburban political activism revolved around "a color blind defense of the consumer rights and residential privileges of middle-class white families," which, he says, proved a more viable political pursuit than the "overtly racialized tactics" of the Southern Strategy." 40 Moreover, Lassiter postulates that the dominance of this suburban ethos paved the way for the persistence of a two-party system in the modern South. "Third way" Democrats in the mold of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, who preached a color-blind social and fiscal moderation, proved immensely successful. If political realignment had indeed been solely about race, Lassiter seems to imply, then it would have offended the sensibilities of suburbanites (driving them into the waiting, moderate arms of the Democratic Party).
Conclusion: Most of these accounts, while divergent, emphasize the ascendant conservative coalition as an essentially cohesive group. Certainly, Schickler, Kruse, Carter, Crespino, and Lassiter seem to think so, though Lassiter diverges from the rest in that he emphasizes a nascent suburban ethos, as opposed to racial concerns, as a primary unifier. Glaser, Lamis, and the Black brothers lend credence to the idea that, were race removed from the picture, the conservative coalition would collapse. Their accounts imply that the idea that the conservative coalition was not, in fact, stable at all, despite Nixon political strategist Kevin Phillips's assertion that the Nixon's 1968 election to the Presidency heralded the advent of an "Emerging Republican Majority." But even in noting that the conservative political coalition was liable to collapse in given elections, the accounts of Glaser, Lamis, and the Black brothers fall short in noting precisely how unstable the conservative coalition was at its inception, at least from an ideological perspective.

The Ideological Diversity of Conservatism in the 1960s
The conservative coalition that thrust Richard Nixon into office in 1968 and 1972 was an inherently unstable coalition, marked by ideological heterogeneity. Its key members possessed divergent views on economic and civil rights issues. The ideological coalition that elected Nixon was marked more by a shared opposition to liberalism than any comprehensive, shared commitments to political goals. Such instability meant that the coalition was liable to collapse as soon as Democrats neutralized politically fraught issues that benefitted conservatives. Indeed, Jimmy Carter successfully did precisely this in 1976, on his way to winning states throughout the conservative Deep South and the Mountain West on his way to the White House. The electoral and political implications of the extreme heterogeneity of the conservative coalition are significant, as it effectively falsifies the common refrains about race and political alignment that point to racial conservatism as the single pivotal characteristic in forging the conservative coalition.
Contemporary scholarship also emphasizes conservatism as an ideologically diverse coalition. Notably, University of Virginia politics professor James Ceaser has written that conservatism consists of at least four ideological strains. He writes, "The assumption of theoretical unity [in American conservatism] is, however, false, and the various efforts to arrive at the one position of American conservatism are therefore doomed to failure.
American conservatism is a remarkably disparate movement." 41 He argues that the four "heads" of American political conservatism are paleo-conservatism, neo-conservatism, libertarianism, and the religious right, and that these heads "embrace principles so different that, in other places…those holding such principles have become the bitterest of foes." 42 In the United States however, these various strands are united by a common hatred of liberalism. "Were liberalism to cease to exist tomorrow," Ceaser writes, "conservatism as we know it would surely begin to break apart the next day." 43 Of course, not all who oppose contemporary American liberalism can be said to be conservative; only those who fit in one of the four conservative strands and oppose liberalism can, according to Ceaser, claim the conservative mantle. Eminent historian George Nash also notes the disparate intellectual trends within conservatism in his seminal The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945. In this 1976 work, Nash writes that American conservatism consisted of three primary groups: libertarians, traditionalists, and anticommunists. He argues that these three groups were united under the leadership of William F. Buckley into a coherent political movement, but that the fusion of these strands is not absolute; like Ceaser, he argues that these intellectual currents are at least partially contradictory. But Ceaser and Nash are largely speaking of conservatism as an intellectual movement, as distinct from modern conservatism as a political movement. Yet these intellectual contradictions did seem to manifest themselves in policy differences among 41 Ceaser, James W. "Four Heads and One Heart: The Modern Conservative Movement. " In APSA 2010Annual Meeting Paper. 2010 Ibid. 43 Ibid. prominent conservative politicians in the Nixon era. The remainder of this chapter will serve to qualitatively highlight the disparate positions on civil rights and economics held by prominent conservative politicians of the era.

Conservatism's Varied Economic Views
Conservatives were intensely split on economic issues during the 1960s. On one hand, some conservatives lined up behind free-market individualism, opposition to labor movements and the New Deal, and antagonism to federal entitlement and welfare programs. Barry Goldwater epitomized this strand of conservatism; in many instances he advocated for policies "well outside of the political mainstream." 44 While he was not a pure libertarian, Goldwater did come out in favor of making Social Security voluntary, in favor of abolishing the quite-popular Tennessee Valley Authority, and against a whole host of federal entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid. Goldwater also emerged, in the 1950s, as a leading opponent of President Dwight Eisenhower's moderate governing record and "affirmation of New Deal programs." 45 As early as his first campaign for office, a successful 1952 Senatorial run from Arizona, Goldwater espoused the sort of free-market ideals that would become his hallmark. Biographer Robert Alan Goldberg notes that, "He pledged to halt the 'expanding governmental bureaucracy, government-created inflation, and…the highest taxes ever extracted from the American citizen." 46 His animosity towards organized labor was also evident from his early political activism in Arizona, where he advocated for right-to-work laws that freed workers from being forced to join unions.
Goldwater's economic conservatism made him an ideal political ally to the Southern conservatives who opposed organized labor interests and were friends to the American business community. Crespino notes that South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond in particular was inclined towards Goldwater's brand of economic conservatism. He writes that by 1958, Thurmond was a member of "a bipartisan coalition of business interests that waged their own campaign of resistance against the New Deal and its legacies." 47 Thurmond also worked to curb the power of unions. According to Crespino, Thurmond's "disdain for labor bosses became interchangeable with his loathing of civil rights leaders." 48 He worked with business leaders in the South to support a healthy business climate, with low corporate taxes and minimal union power. Thurmond sought to unburden American businesses from regulations, and he was joined in this effort by other Southern conservatives, such as George Wallace. Thurmond and Wallace spouted free market ideals by the mid 1960s. But as we shall see, their economic policy backgrounds are somewhat more complex; each supported generous government welfare policies in the 1940s and 1950s that place them starkly at odds with the burgeoning Sunbelt coalition that emphasized deregulation. These earlier positions actually placed them in concordance with many of their Southern conservative colleagues, who advocated for government spending and entitlement programs.
In the middle of the conservative economic spectrum sat relative moderates such as George Romney and Richard Nixon. These men advocated for and enacted policies that balanced a business-friendly, free market ethos with generous social welfare spending.
Romney's governorship of Michigan was marked by corporate tax reform and income tax reductions, while simultaneously increasing state spending on education and benefits for the 47 Ibid., 121 48 Ibid., 103 poor. Meanwhile, during his Presidency, Nixon pursued a handful of economically complex and even contradictory policies, and therefore, categorizing Nixon as either an economic liberal or economic conservative is practically impossible. Nixon's New Federalism attempted to lift restrictions on federal grants to states, giving states and municipalities more control over spending, yet he simultaneously became the first President to enact significant environmental regulations, proposed a universal national income, and fought for the federalization of Medicaid benefits for poor families. Commentator Garry Wills famously labeled Nixon a liberal, and historian Bruce Schulman also questions whether Nixon was the "first conservative President" or "the last liberal." 49 Regardless of semantics and labeling, Nixon clearly fell to the left of the laissez-faire conservatism that Thurmond and Goldwater desired.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, a collection of conservative Southern politicians voiced consistent support for government expansion of entitlement programs. Conservative Southern support for federal entitlement programs extended back at least to the New Deal era. This is extremely well documented; Ira Katznelson's Fear Itself is particularly informative in demonstrating how crucial Southern Democrats were to creating the New Deal order. Such support continued into the 1960s as politicians regarded as conservative lined up to support crucial aspects of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society legislation. The leader of the Southern Caucus in the Senate, Democrat Richard Russell of Georgia, epitomizes such support. Biographer Gilbert Fite notes that as early as 1962, Russell had favored a national health care program for the elderly. Russell was also "an early supporter of federal assistance to education," 50 and he backed the Appalachian Regional Development Act of 1964 that provided federal aid to poverty-stricken regions of the Southeast. Russell was hardly a liberal-Fite notes that Russell "generally believed that Congress was passing more legislation than was needed"-but his support for Great Society programs that expanded federal aid and entitlements placed him in opposition to Goldwater and other members of the conservative coalition. 51 Strom Thurmond and George Wallace also, interestingly, supported relatively liberal economic agendas early in their careers. When Wallace was a member of the Alabama House of Representatives, "He quickly gained a reputation among parsimonious conservatives as a dangerous liberal," for his push for taxes on liquor sales to create state-funded schools. 52 Carter notes that Wallace's state legislature record "remained squarely within the mainstream of the kind of 'business progressivism' common since World War I." 53 Wallace also attacked Eisenhower for his "reactionary" economic policies. Thurmond also put together a relatively progressive early economic record. Crespino writes that Thurmond "was an ardent New Dealer," supporting federal relief programs. And as governor of South Carolina in the 1940s, his politics were considered labor-friendly.

Conservatism's Varied Civil Rights Views
Conservatives of the era were also far from monolithic on civil rights issue. On one end of the spectrum, conservatives such as George Romney supported both federal and local efforts to intervene in civil rights. As Governor of Michigan, Romney stated, "Michigan's 50 Fite, p. 425 51 Ibid. 52 Carter, p. 76 53 Ibid., p. 78 most urgent human rights problem is racial discrimination-in housing, public accommodations, education, administration of justice, and employment." 54 He would go on to push for legislation prohibiting residential segregation, and he took care to appoint blacks to positions of power within the Michigan government. From a federal standpoint, Romney was also a progressive on civil rights. He famously walked with protesters in Detroit in support of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march to support federal protection of black voting rights, and he also supported the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. Richard Nixon supported federal legislation on civil rights, too, in the lead-up to his 1968 Presidential Campaign. He publicly voiced support for the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Detractors argue that Nixon could hardly be considered a civil rights supporter due to his Presidential administration's public opposition to desegregation busing, but Nixon's support for federal civil rights legislation was evident. Moreover, his and Romney's support for federal legislation on civil rights placed them in opposition to many of their conservative colleagues. Relatively moderate Republicans looked with dismay at the racial conservatives flocking to their political side; according to Crespino, in 1964, "Moderate and liberal Republicans…urged the party to embrace its civil rights heritage and leave to the Democrats the problem of what to do with racist Southern reactionaries ." 55 In the middle of the spectrum sat Barry Goldwater. Goldwater was a personal opponent of segregation and Jim Crow. As a businessman in Phoenix, Goldwater "was one of the first Phoenix merchants to employ blacks, and he had integrated the Arizona Air National Guard." 56 He also was a member of the Tuscon NAACP. He declared, in 1957, "I don't like 54 Fine, Sidney. Expanding the Frontiers of Civil Rights: Michigan, 1948-1968 Goldberg,p. 89 segregation…in any form, in any place, amongst any people." 57 Goldwater was also not afraid to speak out against fellow conservative politicians whom he viewed as racist or demagogic. In 1966, when avowed segregationist Lester Maddox was elected Governor of Georgia, Goldwater lamented, "Georgia was a most progressive southern state and all of a sudden they have a fellow that belongs back in the Stone Age." 58 Indeed, up to that point, Maddox was perhaps best known for chasing a group of black teenagers away from his Atlanta restaurant with an ax handle. Goldwater also voiced support for the 1965 Voting Rights Act (though he was, by this time, out of the Senate), due to his belief that the federal government should actively enforce the right to vote. "The right to vote is in the Constitution," he said at the time. "There the federal government should act even if it means with troops." 59 Yet there were limits to Goldwater's activism; his constitutional conservatism prevented him from supporting most federal civil rights legislation. In his 1960 Conscience of a Conservative, Goldwater argued that, "the federal government must withdraw promptly and totally from every jurisdiction reserved to the states,"-including civil rights. 60 As Goldwater biographer Robert Alan Goldberg noted, "Southerners were particularly interested in Goldwater's…position on civil rights. It offered them a defense of states' rights and a narrow interpretation of federal responsibilities." 61 Goldwater thus was something of a mixed bag: a personal opponent of segregation, yet viewed by many African-Americans as "an apologist for segregation," due to his votes against federal civil rights legislation. 62 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid., 233 59 Ibid., 154 60 Goldwater, Barry Morris, and C. C. Goldwater Fully on the racially conservative end of the spectrum sat segregationist politicians such as Strom Thurmond, George Wallace, and Richard Russell. Several of the most ignominious quotes from these men have already been put forth in this chapter, but the fact remains that these men were virulently opposed to federal, state, and local civil rights legislation. These men were segregationists, though it is true that their federal positions were couched in Goldwater-style language of constitutional concern for states' rights. Wallace defended his anti-civil rights position by saying, "We were against big government. What we were really talking about was states' rights or state responsibilities and so forth, we were never against black people." 63 Gilbert Fite notes that Senator Richard Russell "denied that he was a racist, that he favored discrimination of any type, or that he held any ill will against blacks." 64 Russell professed that he simply desired to protect the rights of his constituentsincluding the right to run or operate a segregated business.

Conclusion
Thus, the conservative coalition of the late 1960s was comprised of politicians who held inherently contradictory views, making it obviously unstable. This chapter qualitatively demonstrates the contradictory ideological strands that existed under the conservative umbrella in the 1960s. In the following two chapters, I will demonstrate this trend quantitatively, through Senate voting records.

Introduction
Congressional voting records can be used to chart the conservative movement's ideological heterogeneity in the 1960s. In this chapter, I compare voting records on three selected pieces of economic legislation and two selected pieces of civil rights legislation. I argue two primary points; first, that on economic policy, there existed three primary ideological groups: liberals who supported the Great Society (most of whom were Democrats, but some of whom were northern Republicans), conservatives who opposed the Great Society (almost all of whom were Republicans), and moderates, who were at least partially supportive of the Great Society's economic agenda. This moderate economic group largely consisted of Southern Democrats. Second, I argue that there existed just two ideological groups on civil rights legislation: liberals who supported federal action on civil rights (a group consisting of Non-Southern Democrats and Republicans), and racial conservatives (most of whom were Southern Democrats). As I will demonstrate in subsequent chapters, the conservative ideological coalition was not neatly aligned on economic and civil rights legislation, disproving the common narrative that conservatives were consistent in their views on economic and civil rights issues. The legislation aimed at providing jobs and benefits to poor Americans; it included a jobs corps program for young people, extensive grant programs for nonprofits, loans to rural families, and federal funding of student work-study programs. This Act was met with considerable conservative opposition, as a coalition of Southern Democrats and conservative Republicans voted against it. According to a July 1964 New York Times report, conservatives believed that liberals had shoved the legislation "with undue haste as an election-year vehicle for President Johnson." 66 According to the Times, conservatives also objected to the authority that the bill would grant the federal government in undertaking economic development and poverty alleviation programs-efforts they believed would come at the expense of state and local authority. Regardless, the bill was among the most significant in the Great Society's "War on Poverty" due to its scope ($947.5 million) and the sheer variety of programs it funded.

The Economic Legislation
The second economic bill included in this analysis is the Social Security Amendments of 1965. This legislation created Medicare and Medicaid, subsidized hospital and medical provider expenses, and provided hospital insurance. The culmination of a decades-long liberal push for a semblance of national health insurance in the United States, this legislation essentially provided government-sponsored health insurance for the poor and the elderly. Its importance to the Great Society cannot be overstated, as Medicare and Medicaid alone account for about a quarter of contemporary federal spending. Yet this legislation's relevance to this thesis lies outside of its modern implications; its inclusion is necessary because, like the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, it represents a significant government foray into the economy, guaranteeing the right of the poor and the elderly to health insurance. The Social Security Amendments differ from the Economic Opportunity Act on at least two primary accounts; first, they were passed in 1965, not 1964, and so conservatives could not blame President Johnson for election-year political posturing; and second, that the legislation helped not only the poor and destitute, but also the middle class, meaning the legislation could hardly be attacked under the charges that the law was removing money from middle-class taxpayers and handing it to the poor. Indeed, Medicare guaranteed the right of all Americans aged 65 or older, regardless of income or wealth levels, to government-sponsored health insurance. Yet it still obviously represented a significant government intervention into the economy, and so a handful of conservatives on both sides of the aisle lined up in opposition.

Establishing Economic Ideological Groups 69
An analysis of voting patterns across the three economic bills reveals the existence of three ideological constituencies on economic issues. 70 The analysis of voting patterns will proceed by examining overall voting trends on the three selected pieces of legislation.
The following chart (figure 1) demonstrates the number of Senators (among Senators present in both the 88 th and 89 th Congresses) who voted for all three of the selected bills, for two of the bills, for one of the bills, and for none of the bills: 68 Dallek, Robert. Flawed giant: Lyndon Johnson and his times, 1961-1973. Oxford University Press, 1998 To avoid cumbersomeness, for the remainder of this chapter, I only footnote the data selected when utilizing a source for the first time. All data not directly cited stems from a previously-cited GovTrack page. It should be obvious, based on the bill discussed, which GovTrack page is utilized in any given instance 70

Senators who served in both 88 th and 89 th Congresses: Votes on Selected Economic Legislation (figure 1)
This chart demonstrates several points about the 88 th and 89 th Congresses. First, the Great Society was overwhelmingly popular; 43 of 89 (48%) cast votes in favor of all three bills included in this analysis. Second, the group of Senators who fell in the " Goldwater" camp opposing nearly all federal intervention in the economy was comparably small; only 20 Senators (22%) voted against all three acts, compared to 43 voting for all thee. And third, there existed a sizable bloc of Senators (26, or 29%) who were willing to vote for one or two of the pieces of legislation, indicative of ideological flexibility.
A sizable of those who showed some variance on their economic positions-in other words, most of those who voted for one or two of the three bills-were Southern Democrats.
Indeed, Southern Democrats were significantly more likely to support one or two bills (as opposed to all three or zero bills) than all other Senators. The following charts demonstrate the number of Southern Democrats who voted for three, two, one, or zero of the bills, as well   Goldberg, n. pag minority in the Senate. As I shall demonstrate, the difference in conservative opposition to these two civil rights bills is emblematic of the broader conservative split in the 1960s.

Establishing Civil Rights Ideology Groups
Voters on the two most important civil rights bills of the 1960s displayed remarkable consistency. The following charts display the votes on the Voting Rights Act of those who voted for the Civil Rights Act:

Senators who voted for the Civil Rights Act: Votes on the Voting Rights Act (figure 6) 77
A whopping 65 out of 68 possible voters cast their ballot for the Voting Rights Act as  The record of those who opposed the Civil Rights Act is only slightly more nuanced.
As this chart demonstrates, a vote against the Civil Rights Act was indeed predictive of a vote against the Voting Rights Act as well:

Senators opposed/abstained on Civil Rights Act: Votes on the Voting Rights Act (figure 7)
19 out of 23 (83%) Senators who did not vote for the Civil Rights Act also opposed or abstained from voting on the Voting Rights Act. Of these, the vast majority were Voted for VRA Against VRA Abstain

Republican Senators opposed/abstained on Civil Rights Act: Votes on the Voting Rights Act (figure 9)
These charts convey a number of interesting points. First, they demonstrate that the Senators most fully committed to stemming federal intervention on civil rights were Democrats, as none of the Republicans who voted against or abstained from voting on the Civil Rights Act also voted against the Voting Rights Act. This indicates that Republicans who were opposed to the Civil Rights Act were not wholesale against integrationist goals, but were perhaps motivated by the fear of federal incursion into individual rights that they thought the Civil Rights Act would entail. This position is perhaps epitomized by Barry Goldwater's civil rights stances. Goldwater broke with the vast majority of Republican Senators in opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but declared that his opposition to the legislation was based on his belief that the public accommodations portion of the Act was unconstitutional, and that he supported integrationist goals in general. As this paper has noted, Goldwater was a member of the NAACP and widely touted local efforts at integration around the country. Moreover, though he was no longer in the Senate at the time, he was a vocal supporter of the Voting Rights Act (as were most Republicans, as the above charts On the other hand, the committed opponents of federal civil rights legislation were Democrats (as the above chart demonstrates). Of the 17 members of the Senate who cast votes against both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, every single one was a Democrat. Of these 17 Democrats, every single one was from a former slaveholding state.
Every single one was a Southern Democrat.
Therefore, voting patterns on the two most important civil rights bills of the 20 th century indicate that there were two primary voting blocs on civil rights. The first, comprised of nearly all Republicans and all liberal Democrats, was supportive of utilizing federal legislation to accomplish civil rights goals. Within this group there was some nuance or variation in opinion-epitomized by minor Republican aversion to the perceived abrogation of constitutional principles that they feared some legislation might entail-but the fact of the matter is that this bipartisan group was broadly supportive of civil rights legislation, and the group voted as such. On the other hand were Southern Democrats, who alone opposed federal civil rights legislation. Though they claimed their opposition was rooted in concern for states' rights and an aversion to federal power, and not in racial animus, their votes have become a black mark on Southern history.
Conclusion: Republicans and Democrats alike supported federal civil rights legislation, demonstrating a clear, bi-partisan ideology group that voted liberal on civil rights. On the other hand, Senators opposed to federal civil rights legislation were almost entirely Southern Democrats.

Introduction
Given that there existed three distinct voting blocs on economic legislation and two distinct voting blocs on civil rights legislation in the 88 th and 89 th Congresses, one can postulate the existence of at least six distinct "crossover voting blocs," as I will call them, with regards to the combination of economic and civil rights legislation. The possible blocs are as follows: a) Liberal on economics and civil rights, b) moderate on economics and liberal on civil rights, c) conservative on economics and liberal on civil rights, d) liberal on economics and conservative on civil rights, e) moderate on economics and conservative on civil rights, and f) conservative on economics and conservative on civil rights. This chapter will classify Senators into these six groups, and will demonstrate that the first three groups

Crossover Voting Bloc Membership: From Voting Patterns to Classification
As stated in this chapter's introduction, there exist six potential "crossover voting blocs" which encompass the range of opinions on economic and civil rights legislation. The following charts breaks down the manners in which the totality of Senators who sat in both the 88 th and 89 Congresses voted on the aforementioned legislation:

Members of both the 88 th and 89 th Senate: Votes on selected legislation (figure 1)
This chart is cumbersome; it reveals little other than the fact that the three primary groups represented are "2 civil rights bills, 3 economic bills," "2 civil rights bills, 2 economic bills," and "2 civil rights bills, 0 economic bills." I should note that not included in this analysis are the seven Senators who were "split" on civil rights, and voted for either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but not both. I did not include these Senators in this analysis because their split votes can be explained on a case-by-case basis, taking into account nuances such as Goldwater's general support for civil rights measures yet his vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which he regarded as unconstitutional).  Glances at these charts also reveal a sizeable membership in category "c", "conservative on economics and liberal on civil rights." Though no Democratic Senator voted for both civil rights bills but against all three economic bills, 10 Republican Senators did so. Their opposition to Great Society welfare and entitlement programs combined with their support for federal legislation addressing civil rights issues places them firmly within the "conservative on economics and liberal on civil rights" category. Thus, membership in this category is at least 10.
The four Senators-one Democrat and three Republicans-who voted for both pieces of civil rights legislation and for only one economic bill are classified in category "b": "moderate on economics and liberal on civil rights." These Senators' liberal record on civil rights is self-evident, but what factors distinguish these Senators as moderate, as opposed to conservative (since they failed to cast votes for two of the three bills)? In essence, their moderation is defined by their willingness to consider supporting Great Society programs as opposed to utter disavowal of them (i.e. the Senators in category "b"). Because they failed to vote for at least two of the programs, they could hardly be considered liberal, either. They must be classified as economic moderates.
Thus, a clear picture emerges of the economic views held by Senators who were broadly supportive of federal civil rights legislation. The economic votes of Senators who supported both pieces of civil rights legislation analyzed in this thesis are contained in the chart immediately below, followed by a chart classifying these Senators into crossover voting blocs for the schema utilized by this paper:

Economic Voting Patterns: Senators in 88 th and 89 th Congress who voted liberal on Civil Rights (figure 4)
An initial read of this chart seems to indicate that liberal votes on civil rights were predictive of a liberal voting record on economic issues. Indeed, out of 65 Senators whom I classified as "liberal" on civil rights issues, 47 (72%) were also liberal on economic issues.
However, one must remember that membership in the Senate itself was essentially predictive conservative on civil rights) is necessary to complete the formation of these "crossover voting blocs." A glance back at the original two charts used in this chapter's analysis of voting pattern reveals no discernible economic voting pattern among Senators who were conservative on civil rights. The following chart better reveals the economic voting patterns among Senators who did not vote for the two civil rights bills included in this analysis:

Economic Voting Patterns: Senators Conservative on Civil Rights in 88 th and 89 th Congresses (figure 5)
This chart proves that no discernible pattern of economic voting existed amongst those who were conservative on civil rights issues. Civil rights conservatism was no guarantor of economic conservatism; in fact, the two are hardly linked, based on this chart.
Out of 17 voters opposing federal civil rights legislation, only six, or 35%, could definitively be classified as economically conservative under the analysis employed earlier in this chapter. three of the 17 (18%) could be definitively classified as liberal economic voters. But Thus, this chart demonstrates the existence of six crossover voting blocs. But with which ideology, broadly speaking, did each bloc align, liberal or conservative? And what does each bloc's alignment with a political ideology convey about the nature of that ideology?

Constructing the Liberal and Conservative Coalitions
In order to analyze the ideological makeup of liberalism and conservatism in the 1960s, I assigned each of the Senators (whose voting records are discussed above) to one of three blocs: the "Republican bloc" consisting of all Republican Senators, the "Southern  Group A  8  33  1  9  Group B  7  1  0  8  Group C  9  0  0  9  Group D  0  0  9  9  Group E  0  0  3  3  Group F  1  0  6  7  Total  25  34  19  45 I then developed a scale to determine the economic, civil rights, and dual-issue positions of the Senators in each Presidential voting bloc. In order to do this, I assigned scores for each Senator depending on his or her grouping, and assigned that score to the given presidential voting bloc. The scores that I assigned are as follows:  The results of this calculation are telling; it informs us that, as expected, the Non-Southern Democratic Senators are obviously liberal on both economics and civil rights.

Economic Points Civil Rights Points
Interestingly, it also informs us that the Republican Senators were nearly as liberal on civil rights as the Non-Southern Democratic Senators, though much more conservative on economic issues. Meanwhile, the Southern Democratic Senators were slightly more liberal than the Republican Senators on economic issues, though obviously conservative on the issue of civil rights.
Finally, the "Republicans plus Southern Democrats" bloc appears moderate on civil rights issues and economic issues. This bloc's economic score is more conservative than that of the Southern Democrats, and more liberal than that of Republicans. Simultaneously, their civil rights score is more conservative than that of Republicans, and more liberal than that of Southern Democrats.
This account confirms the anecdotal understanding of modern American conservatism and liberalism that I argued for in the outset of this thesis, namely, that liberals were fairly lockstep in their support for liberal civil rights legislation and economic legislation, whereas conservatives were much more varied in their relative support for both federal economic legislation and federal civil rights legislation. This implies that conservatism is, by nature, more heterogeneous than liberalism. Moreover, academic accounts of conservatism's ideological coherency seem incorrect in light of this evidence.

Variance Among Liberalism and Conservatism
One way of confirming this is by testing the variance of the policy positions of

Conclusion
There existed six potential "crossover voting blocs" on economics and civil rights within the 88 th and 89 th Congresses. I classified Senators into these six voting blocs, and assigned economic and civil rights "points" to each Senator based on the ideological lean of his or her voting bloc. I then and assigned each Senator to a voting bloc based on his or her party identification (and geography, in the case of Southern Democrats Additionally there are many reasons to suspect the accuracy of these results. For one, Hillary Clinton received a score of "3" on economics, while Bernie Sanders received a score of "5", yet even the most casual political observer would probably assume that Sanders's record on economics was significant to the left of Clinton's. One can assume that Clinton, in her march leftwards in order to win the Democratic nomination, made statements and proclamations that inspired OnTheIssues to award her a more liberal rating than Sanders. And even putting the comparison with Sanders aside, the idea that her economic record is significantly more conservative than even Martin O'Malley is dubious. Nevertheless, these statistics, taken at face value, offer a small snapshot into the natures of the modern Democratic and Republican parties. Specifically, the Democratic Party exhibits higher levels of cohesion on social issues than Republicans, but is split over economic issues (is it the party of democratic socialist academics who pull the party leftwards, or the party of rank-and-file unionists?), while Republicans are split over the social questions of the day (abortion, immigration, and criminal justice, to name three), while generally accepting or giving credence to free-market economics. Within these intraparty divisions, the Republican split seems, broadly, more existential or threatening to its cohesion. That these six men were perhaps the six most significant conservative politicians of the 1960s, and that they held such diverse views on perhaps the two signature policy areas of the day, evinces conservatism's ideological heterogeneity.
Quantitatively, too, my research indicates that conservatism was essentially a diverse ideological coalition. Through examining Senate voting records on key civil rights bills and Great Society economic legislation, I established the existence of two civil rights voting blocs ("liberals" and "conservatives") as well as three economics voting blocs ("liberals," "moderates," and "conservatives") within the United States Senate, which I take to be broadly representative of the spectrum of political ideology in the United States. I found that Republicans and Non-Southern Democrats both fell, by and large, into the "civil rights liberals" camp, whereas Southern Democrats (whom I consider members of the conservative coalition) were almost uniformly civil rights conservatives. On the economic issues, Non-Southern Democrats were uniformly liberal, whereas Southern Democrats and Republicans exhibited ideological diversity, with liberals, moderates, and conservatives among the camp.
The two civil rights voting blocs and the three economic voting blocs were then combined to create six "crossover voting blocs," each of which pairs a particular economic ideology with a particular civil rights ideology. I found that Non-Southern Democrats belonged, practically uniformly to the "liberal on economics, liberal on civil rights," group, whereas Republicans and Southern Democrats were relatively split among the six groups (with Republicans always belonging to "liberal civil rights" groups and Southern Democrats belonging to "conservative civil rights" groups disagreements largely concern matters of scale, Republican social disagreements valuesbased, and Republicans hold seemingly incompatible positions on many social issues. For instance, Rand Paul's fundamental disagreement with many mainstream Republicans over the potential decriminalization and legalization of marijuana seems unlikely to be resolved easily.

A Look Back, and a Look Forward
My research on conservatism in the 1960s also informs my conclusion that modern conservatism has a greater potential for ideological fissure than does modern liberalism. For Second, it highlights the way in which a social issue can separate one wing of one party from the remainder of mainstream politics. While nothing perfectly analogous to Southern Democratic disavowal of federal civil rights legislation exists in modern American politics, there are a number of social issues on which the entire country seems to be moving in the opposite direction from a portion of the Republican Party, or from a portion of conservatism itself. One can easily foresee a scenario in which the hot social cause of the day-say, death penalty abolition or criminal justice reform-is adopted by liberalism and by components of the conservative coalition, but not by the entire conservative coalition. Social values held amongst conservatives are, to generalize vastly, difficult to alter! This is precisely the point that my calculation of 2016 Republican Presidential candidates' variance on social issues was intended to demonstrate. Thus, while the civil rights heterogeneity of conservatism in the 1960s may not have any bearing on modern politics, it does provide a case study for the manner in which a social issue might split conservatives. Conservatives seem eminently more likely than liberals to be split over such an issue.

Future Research
My research is not comprehensive; I qualitatively analyzed conservative politicians in the 1960s and quantitatively analyzed Senate voting records on five bills in 1964 and 1965. It is hard to draw definitive conclusions from such research! I would encourage future researchers of this topic to delve deeper into voting records from the 1960s, and possibly incorporate Congressional voting records into the analysis as well. Secondly, I would advocate for an ideological scoring system more akin to the OnTheIssues score than the NOMINATE or GovTrack score. In this manner, academics might approach what I think is a more accurate read of conservatism: one that acknowledges its ideological diversity.
Ultimately, I think that my research offers hope that in the future, historians of the conservative movement will take care to recognize the disparate strands of thought that characterized 1960s-era conservatism, that continue to affect modern conservatism, and that have important implications for our political system today.