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I've been getting a couple variations on this question so let me give it my best shot. Qualities of a liberal Republican:
1. Extinct. Liberal Republicans used to have a powerful influence as Rockefeller Republicans. Rockefeller Republicans have been destroyed as an institution. https://twitter.com/ZonkerBrainless/status/1296770966161424384
1. Extinct. Liberal Republicans used to have a powerful influence as Rockefeller Republicans. Rockefeller Republicans have been destroyed as an institution. https://twitter.com/ZonkerBrainless/status/1296770966161424384
1 cont'd. There are still moderate or liberals who are Republican pols or voters, but they are extinct as a significant voting block and significant nexus of money and influence outside of specific races.
2. Good government. This is a slogan, not an ideology. But as a slogan it's supposed to represent government being responsive to the needs of its people AND without waste. The idealized vision of such a government is one that gives the needy *exactly* what they need.
2 cont'd. The basic mythology here, and I'm not going to litigate if it has anything to do with reality, is that liberal Democrats come in with their idealistic spending programs, slap it together, it runs terribly and then the stuffy lib Republicans come in and fix it.
(Tory Men and Whig Measures forever, eh @nbeaudrot?)
3. Business is good, actually. Unlike a conservative, a liberal Republican accepts that market failure is a real thing, but unlike a progressive/leftist prefers goods to be produced by a competitive market w/ health and safety regulations than decommodified.
4. You want welfare? You got social welfare money? "Fiscal conservative" gets a lot of flak, often well deserved. Again, a slogan. What distinguishes liberal Republicans is both an insistence on and a willingness to raise taxes to pay for programs.
5. Pax Americana. On foreign policy liberal Republicans are supportive of free trade, unbothered that it helps American megabusinesses, and want the US to be rich and powerful driving a stable and peaceful global order as primus inter pares (or the hegemon, not that picky)
6. Skepticism and Anti-utopianism. Insofar as a political coalition is held together by ideology or values (spoiler, all of them less than you think) the liberal Republican seeks a shared prosperity but is convinced that the path to hell is paved in good intentions.
All of these elements can be found on the left of center. Even in the same person. There's two reasons for that
A. Coalitions are self-healing, not ideologies. All of us adopt group ideas and harmonize them more than we take on ideas that are already harmonious with each other.
A. Coalitions are self-healing, not ideologies. All of us adopt group ideas and harmonize them more than we take on ideas that are already harmonious with each other.
B. The destruction of liberal Republican wing means that the centerline has moved past this block of ideas. This has a side effect of freeing natural liberal Republicans to be *different kinds* of centrist, or even liberal Democrat.
This thread is not meant to be prescriptive or flattering (although because of my biases, it probably will be the latter) but rather to be a description of a preexisting political lane that I would have ended up in if it wasn't for the Big Sort and, you know *waves at everything*
Anyway. That's what I mean by liberal Republican, and how "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" plays out with them, as opposed to a Republican who wants to do drugs or a Democrat who hates taxes.