As poor and working people organized themselves on the job, in the streets, and at the polls during the mid-twentieth century, they forced Republicans to reckon with new demands for political and social citizenship in big cities across the Northeast, Midwest, and Pacific Coast. Making Republicans Liberal explores how another wing of the party responded to intensifying mass movement pressure.
Beginning in the 1930s and on through the 1960s, Republican governors such as Earl Warren of California and George Romney of Michigan articulated their own vision of liberalism in the face of mass social movement pressure. Their compromises horrified conservative Republican constituencies and paled in comparison to what people on strike and on the march really wanted. The result created a highly combustible contradiction at the core of twentieth-century politics in the United States.