Country Club Republican (Country Club Conservative)

A “country club Republican” (or “country club conservative”)  has also been called a “cocktail conservative” or a “hot tub” Republican. The term “country club Republican/conservative” describes someone who is rich and who attends country clubs, but who doesn’t have the experience or the values of average Americans.
 
“Country club Republican” has been cited in print since at least 1962 and “country club conservative” has been cited in print since 1964. A similar term—used to describe a Democrat—is “limousine liberal.”
 
 
Wikipedia: Country club Republican
“Country club Republican” is an expression employed, usually pejoratively, to describe certain members of the United States Republican Party. Some of the characteristics attributed to country club Republicans are: Higher than average income or wealth, lack of sympathy with lower income citizens, and liberal views on abortion, gay rights, and other social issues. They are also said to put less value on religion,, and to have attended more prestigious colleges than most other Republican Party members.
 
Politicians said to be country club Republicans include: President George H. W. Bush, former Congressman and governor of New Jersey Robert Winthrop Kean, and Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.
       
30 July 1962, Trenton (NJ) Evening Times, “Bucks United GOP Plans Voter Drive,” pg. 8, col. 5:
Lynch blamed GOP Chairman Paul R. Beckert and Assemblyman Alan D. Williams Jr., and the “country club” Republicans for dragging registrations.
 
23 August 1964, Baytown (TX) Sun, Letters to the Editor, pg. 4, col. 4:
We are always aflicted with the “Country-Club Conservatives” as well as the “Society Liberals.” The former tribe seems to have the upper hand right at present, but it wasn’t many years ago that the latter was more of a pest.
(Ray L. Heinrich of Baytown—ed.)
 
30 October 1964, New Castle (PA) News, “Comment From Washington: Election Of Impossibilities” by Holmes Alexander,  pg. 4, col. 3:
BARRY GOLDWATER, born in a pre-State territory and grown up as a country club conservative, was theoretically as ineligible for the presidency as Johnson was.
 
31 October 1966, Dallas (TX) Morning News, “Bush Versus Briscoe: Harris Race Stands as Paradox,” pg. A6:
“It’s a little out of the ordinary,” declares Briscoe, who was elected to three terms as district attorney, “for a country club Republican to sponsor a Negro softball team in an election year.”
(Democrat Frank Briscoe, running for Congress against Republican George Bush—ed.)
 
3 November 1966, Big Spring (TX) Daily Herald, “CarrCourts Labor” by The Associated Press, pg. 4B, col. 5:
COUNTRY CLUB
“Republicans chase people out who don’t like to go to the country club, but the Democratic party is big enough for everybody.”
(Texas Attorney General Waggoner Carr—ed.)
 
Google Books
17 February 1969, New York magazine, “You Wonder Where The Money Went” by Larry Martz, pg. 28, col. 2:
Now, I am not one of your country-club Republican types who spends his evenings kvetching about the goddam federal incompetents stealing his money.
 
Google News Archive
27 October 1970, Sarasota (FL) Herald-Tribune, “Humphrey Heavily Favored in Minnesota” (AP), pg. 12C, col. 1:
“This isn’t a contest between a fuzzy-headed hippie and a cleancut country club Republican,” Humphrey said. “It’s not a contest between the Weathermen and Agnew. It’s just a contest between two political parties.”
   
Google News Archive
15 January 1972, Tuscaloose (AL)News, “Is ItWorth Cost?” (The Huntsville Times), pg. 4, col.1:
Specific segments of the population congregated in certain areas—Negroes, steelworkers, country club conservatives, lace curtain liberals, for example—will have a better opportunity to elect their spittin’ image to the legislature.
 
Google News Archive
27 May 1972, Victoria (TX) Advocate, “Texas Campaign Trail: Foes Rattle Old Records,” pg. 8B, col. 6:
In the Republican gubernatorial runoff, state Sen. Henry Grover called his runoff opponent, Albert Fay, a “Country Club Republican” and a “limousine liberal.”
 
Google Books
Mediacracy:
American parties and politics in the communications age
By Kevin Phillips
Garden City, NY: Doubleday
1975
Pg. 198:
WASP element — old-line Yankee moderates or Arizona country-club conservatives — has been anxious to welcome ethnic or Wallaceite recruits on a basis of social and decision-making equality.
 
Google News Archive
13 December 1976, Dubuque (IA) Telegraph Herald, “Republican dilemma"by William Buckley, Jr., pg. 4, col. 2:
Novak elaborates: “The fact that the labor movementis split irreconciliably on key questions of national defense and international affairs is lost on the country-club Republicans.”
 
Google News Archive
3 November 1978, Milwaukee (WI) Journal, “Candidates Drive Home Final Points” by Donald Pfarrer, Waukesha County News, pg. 1, col. 7:
He characterized Lee Dreyfus, his Republican opponent, as a country club Republican whose policies ignore the nerds of working people and benefit the rich.
   
Google Books
American Politics in the Media Age
By Thomas R. Dye, L. Harmon Zeigler and S. Robert Lichter
Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Pub. Co.
1992
Pg. 102:
Thus, the Hollywood “limousine liberal” is becoming as popular (and valid) a stereotype as the country club conservative.
   
Huffington Post
Nico Pitney
Obama Ad: McCain Is “Country Club” Republican
First Posted: 08-22-08 02:15 PM   |  Updated: 09-22-08 05:12 AM
Democrats were ecstatic after the Obama campaign released yesterday’s hard-hitting ad on John McCain’s house gaffe, and there are no signs of let-up.
 
A new Obama spot released this afternoon, “Out of Touch,” accuses McCain of practicing “country club economics,” and hammers him on a range of statements about the economy.
 
The Independent (UK)
John Boehner: The ‘country-club’ Republican now within two heartbeats of the President
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Thursday, 4 November 2010
Assuming he is elected the next Speaker of the House of Representatives next January, John Boehner will, according to the Constitution, be two heartbeats from the Presidency. Far more important, until his party chooses its presidential nominee for 2012, he will be the most powerful Republican in America.
 
ColoradoPols.com
What Is a Country Club Republican?
by: Jason Salzman
Sat Aug 27, 2011 at 09:46:13 AM MDT
(...)
Jason Worley, Grassroots Radio host (KLZ 560-AM): Then, let me ask you. Is that what you think is a country club Republican, Wikipedia’s definition, because I have my own.
 
Bremer: This is what I wanted to bring out in the discussion is, what does it actually mean? Because, by that definition, which is the one most people would look to first. When you Google something, that’s what you do in this day and age. By that definition, Dagny Taggart would be a country club Republican. But I don’t think that’s how a log of people are using it. But I do think there is so much confusion out there that we in the conservative and Liberty movements could potentially run the risk of running into class warfare as opposed to saying, you know what we want, whether you are a high earner, a medium earner, or a low earner, we want government to get the heck off our backs and get out of our way.
 
Worley: ...If you honestly just think the government to get out of our way, I’m kind of surprised at some of the people who come out of El Paso County. But let me just say, a country club Republican is someone who votes Democrat most of the time because they’ve made their money. They are all for the kind of corporate welfare or government schemes…You know what, they don’t care if they have to pay slightly higher taxes. Thatt’s not a big deal to them. What they care about is they have their position, and pretty much to hell with everybody else.