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

This thesis examines the American conservative coalition in the 1960s. It argues that conservatives, in the 1960s, possessed widely divergent views on both civil rights and economic issues, contradicting existing historical scholarship emphasizing conservatism's supposed homogeneity. Further, this thesis argues that the ideological heterogeneity that characterized 1960s-era conservatism continues to influence the stability of the contemporary Republican Party.