Twenty years after he last held public office and seventeen years after his death, the name of Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller is mentioned in Republican circles mainly as a pejorative.

Rep. Peter King of New York sought to validate his credentials for assailing Newt Gingrich by noting that he had supported Barry Goldwater back when the future speaker was still a Rockefeller Republican (as indeed he was). Gen. Colin Powell spoiled his self-induction into the GOP by describing himself as a Rockefeller Republican (an apparently accurate description). To his dying day, Richard Nixon regarded me (quite incorrectly) as an unreconstructed Rockefeller Republican — citing this as reason enough not to grant an interview.