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Why did the Republicans and Democrats essentailly swap ideologies during the twentieth century?
I have long wondered at the apparent political shift that occurred during the twentieth century in which the conservative reactionary national Democratic Party battling the Progressive Republican Party each switched ideological identities. It's frankly puzzling. I'm no historian, so I am going to try to present a layman's view of what I think happened. It seems to revolve around the failure if the otherwise Progressive Republicans to deal with the Great Depression they created by ideologically based failure to use government to either prevent or cure the Great Depression which put the Democratic Party into power nationally until 1994.
The Republican Party of the early twentieth century was controlled by liberal Progressives, but part of older liberalism was the free market ideology. The Progressive Republicans were taken over by Wall Street, and Wall Street drove the total free market ideology which both created the Great Depression and intensified it. That was what discredited the Republicans nationally and put the Democratic Party into power. They essentially remained there until 1994. The Democratic leaders led recovery from the Great Depression and then led the U.S. to win WW II. This set an all new set of more realistic leaders into national office who were willing to use government to prevent economic disasters and to win wars. The free market anti-government ideology was completely discredited with most of the crop of FDR era WW II leaders in both parties. Both parties took a largely pro-government Progressive public image.
One large element of that progressive message was that segregation was clearly not practical nor was it humane. The same leaders who came in on a message of using government to resolve the Depression and win WW II also took the realistic position that segregation had to end. Truman (not a flaming liberal, but a very practical man) integrated the military because he could. The Supreme Court recognized the impracticality and the Constitutional inconsistency of legal segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement grew. The practical Democratic leaders in office joined with the progressive Republicans to end segregation. After nearly two decades of internal battling over Civil Rights, the pro-Integration Democrats under LBJ were able to get the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Act passed. The Republicans, as the minority party then, acted as the opposition always does on major national issues when there is no clear outside enemy or threat. They voted lockstep against the civil rights legislation.
The ideological shift between the two parties was almost complete, except that the solid Democratic South was firmly against Integration while the national Democratic Party and the Progressive Republicans favored it. This was a real threat to the Democratic Party relative lock on national majority party status. That's the first point to consider. The second is that the apparent ideological homogeneity of the two national parties we see today is quite new. It is largely a function of the ability of national TV to elect candidates.
Taking that second point first, let's look at American national politics and political parties. Political parties in America are not innately ideologically homogeneous. They tend to be made to look that way nationally, the power of TV to elect candidates to office. The demand for ideological consistency nationally is a development since the 1960 Presidential election when Nixon, to his great surprise, narrowly lost because of his poor performance in the Presidential debate. Since then the parties have been made to look more ideologically homogeneous. It makes a better brand to sell to the public. Bill Buckley recognized this and pushed for an ideologically pure party in the National Review.
The current image of ideological homogeneity is a media creation to try to attract followers and funds, and the political leaders have spend the last five decades trying to manipulate their party to match the media image. That manipulation by the party leaders is an effort to try to win favor with enough voters to gain or build power for the party. This is not an innate characteristic of a political party. It is something the top politicians and the party leadership shape the party structure to be because it helps them get elected in the TV age. It is their TV political brand name to be identified and used to attract voters. Think about the structure and purposes of political parties.
American national politics is structured around the government, with political leaders attempting to attract sufficient voting followers to gain power. Those leaders organize political party institutions to organized blocs of voters and get them to the polls. People who want the government to act for them organize into blocs to put politicians forward to achieve the government actions they want. Those politicians communicate with and direct the voting actions of those blocs through organizations such as churches, businesses, unions, clubs, etc., and since WW II, the politicians have also communicated directly with the voters through the mass media. The power of the media becomes greater as voting day gets nearer, but the older methods of voter organization still exist.
So what you have is voters and public passions on one side, Party leaders and top party officials on the other, and the two are connected by the creation of party organizations. Those party organizations are creations of and reflections of what those politicians think will get them elected. The purpose of the party is to coordinate all the various ways politicians connect with voters and get them to vote for them.
The process of organizing public groups into voting blocs is played out inside organizations (churches, unions, big businesses, and others) and other media channels. When the time comes down towards the election the mass media become the key media channels, so that the elections themselves are played out most visibly in a mass media landscape. It's that mass media landscape that we are most familiar with because it is the most broadly visible. It is the political leaders and the party structures they create that coordinates all of the communications between politicians and voters other than direct personal contacts that occasionally occur. If the question is "why did the two political parties switch ideologies during the twentieth century ?", then the answer is that the switch was a series of steps, each taken by the party leaders, in order to win the next election. The political party is the key tool used by the existing political leaders to work for reelection and expand their power over government.
Earlier I stopped the narrative to look at the structure of political parties. When I stopped, the Democrats had been the dominant national political party since the Depression and they had developed a crop of experienced realistic leaders who, along with using government to control the vagaries of the economy, also took the progressive steps to resolve America's largest and longest lasting social problem, Race. This put the Democratic Party out of step with the Old South, which had been the single most reliable bloc of national Democratic votes. The crop of Depression and WW II era leaders were running out. Goldwater showed the first real national effort to replace the relatively progressive national leadership. The Goldwater movement failed, but then LBJ gave away the solid South, and as we now know, he knew what he was doing when it did it.
Nixon (another of the WW II era leaders, but always an outsider) took advantage of the Democratic weakness in the South with his "Southern Strategy." Nixon's resignation set up the situation for Jimmy Carter to come out of nowhere and take the Democratic nomination in a year that was going to be a dead-certain Democratic win, but Jimmy Carter thought like an engineer, not a politician. That set up the situation for Reagan - the conservative candidate made for TV - to come out of the West and take the Presidency from the Democrats. I am told that Carter did not believe in Party Politics, and I believe it. The Conservative Republican Party machine ran over him, and he had done nothing to build the Democratic Party to deal with such opposition. Carter was an Engineer by training, not a politician. Thinking like an engineer, Carter solved problems and ignored the political power situation those problems existed in. Where a politician would have strengthened the party for the Presidential battle, Carter solved problems in many ways that weakened the party (the Panama Canal giveaway, for example. That was handled in a totally non-political manner.)
Nixon's Southern Strategy solidified the identity of the Republican Party as the States Rights anti-integration party. The States Rights anti-government message worked well along with the Wall Street Republicans. Nixon's Southern Strategy solidified the identity of the Republican Party as the States Rights anti-integration party, and the demand by Bill Buckley and his National Review conservatives to create an ideologically unified party worked to drive all the progressives in politics towards the Democrats. The political power of the TV media solidified the new ideological image. The constant demand by Bill Buckley and his National Review conservatives to create an ideologically unified party worked to drive all the progressives in politics out of the Republican Party structure and towards the Democrats.
Nixon and Reagan were the last of the real WW II era Presidents. Both were outsiders and represented a rebellion against the more progressive leadership of the Greatest Generation. Bush 41 was made a national politician by Nixon based on his blue-blood Republican credentials, and then was made President because Reagan could not run for reelection. That was the transition to the younger generation. They were all a reaction to the progressive imposition of Civil Rights legislation on the nation along with the development of TV as a key element of winning national elections.
Unfortunately, the conservative movement that grew up to exploit TV images for political use carried with it a toxic ideology as its political brand. That toxic ideology carried the anti-modernist idea that unrestrained free markets could work and that government could not. The demand that slavish adherence to the Republican TV brand should control every action the party takes created a group of party politicians and leaders unable to govern a modern industrial nation. It has taken the multiple disasters of the Bush 43 administration to prove to a majority of the voting public that the conservative ideology simply does not work.
The Republican anti-government message and behavior, reminiscent of Hoover's reaction to the Depression and again demonstrated in the failed reaction to Katrina, totally unsuits them to run a national government of a modern industrial nation. The Republican Party as it is currently organized and under the "conservative" marketing brand has been largely discredited to much of the public now.
I think this explains the reversal of ideology between the Republicans and the Democrats. The three key elements were the ideology-based failure of the Republicans to deal with the economy adequately after WW I, then the decision by the government leaders of the Greatest Generation to deal with the Civil Rights issue in a progressive manner. The backlash to LBJ's Civil Rights legislation lost the Old South to the Democrats and allowed the Republicans to for a while become the dominant national party, but the demand for ideological purity in the party to maintain the TV brand has made the Republicans unfit to govern.
Anyway, that's my best guess at the moment.
My next question is what happens to the two parties next. With the TV mandated conservative brand the Republicans may be left in the permanent minority as a national party. Can they elect new leaders without that toxic ideology? Bush proved that they cannot govern within the anti-government framework, but the constraints of the ideology means they cannot budget or govern effectively when facing real problems. (They do quite well at making up problems for TV and solving them using the ideology those problems were designed for.)
On the other side of the isle, can the Democrats govern effectively long enough to dispel the notion that the problem is the government itself, and not the conservative ideology? The American Constitution creates a national government in which a significant minority can block all significant action on important issues.Will the Democrats handle that somehow?
.
The Republican Party of the early twentieth century was controlled by liberal Progressives, but part of older liberalism was the free market ideology. The Progressive Republicans were taken over by Wall Street, and Wall Street drove the total free market ideology which both created the Great Depression and intensified it. That was what discredited the Republicans nationally and put the Democratic Party into power. They essentially remained there until 1994. The Democratic leaders led recovery from the Great Depression and then led the U.S. to win WW II. This set an all new set of more realistic leaders into national office who were willing to use government to prevent economic disasters and to win wars. The free market anti-government ideology was completely discredited with most of the crop of FDR era WW II leaders in both parties. Both parties took a largely pro-government Progressive public image.
One large element of that progressive message was that segregation was clearly not practical nor was it humane. The same leaders who came in on a message of using government to resolve the Depression and win WW II also took the realistic position that segregation had to end. Truman (not a flaming liberal, but a very practical man) integrated the military because he could. The Supreme Court recognized the impracticality and the Constitutional inconsistency of legal segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement grew. The practical Democratic leaders in office joined with the progressive Republicans to end segregation. After nearly two decades of internal battling over Civil Rights, the pro-Integration Democrats under LBJ were able to get the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Act passed. The Republicans, as the minority party then, acted as the opposition always does on major national issues when there is no clear outside enemy or threat. They voted lockstep against the civil rights legislation.
The ideological shift between the two parties was almost complete, except that the solid Democratic South was firmly against Integration while the national Democratic Party and the Progressive Republicans favored it. This was a real threat to the Democratic Party relative lock on national majority party status. That's the first point to consider. The second is that the apparent ideological homogeneity of the two national parties we see today is quite new. It is largely a function of the ability of national TV to elect candidates.
Taking that second point first, let's look at American national politics and political parties. Political parties in America are not innately ideologically homogeneous. They tend to be made to look that way nationally, the power of TV to elect candidates to office. The demand for ideological consistency nationally is a development since the 1960 Presidential election when Nixon, to his great surprise, narrowly lost because of his poor performance in the Presidential debate. Since then the parties have been made to look more ideologically homogeneous. It makes a better brand to sell to the public. Bill Buckley recognized this and pushed for an ideologically pure party in the National Review.
The current image of ideological homogeneity is a media creation to try to attract followers and funds, and the political leaders have spend the last five decades trying to manipulate their party to match the media image. That manipulation by the party leaders is an effort to try to win favor with enough voters to gain or build power for the party. This is not an innate characteristic of a political party. It is something the top politicians and the party leadership shape the party structure to be because it helps them get elected in the TV age. It is their TV political brand name to be identified and used to attract voters. Think about the structure and purposes of political parties.
American national politics is structured around the government, with political leaders attempting to attract sufficient voting followers to gain power. Those leaders organize political party institutions to organized blocs of voters and get them to the polls. People who want the government to act for them organize into blocs to put politicians forward to achieve the government actions they want. Those politicians communicate with and direct the voting actions of those blocs through organizations such as churches, businesses, unions, clubs, etc., and since WW II, the politicians have also communicated directly with the voters through the mass media. The power of the media becomes greater as voting day gets nearer, but the older methods of voter organization still exist.
So what you have is voters and public passions on one side, Party leaders and top party officials on the other, and the two are connected by the creation of party organizations. Those party organizations are creations of and reflections of what those politicians think will get them elected. The purpose of the party is to coordinate all the various ways politicians connect with voters and get them to vote for them.
The process of organizing public groups into voting blocs is played out inside organizations (churches, unions, big businesses, and others) and other media channels. When the time comes down towards the election the mass media become the key media channels, so that the elections themselves are played out most visibly in a mass media landscape. It's that mass media landscape that we are most familiar with because it is the most broadly visible. It is the political leaders and the party structures they create that coordinates all of the communications between politicians and voters other than direct personal contacts that occasionally occur. If the question is "why did the two political parties switch ideologies during the twentieth century ?", then the answer is that the switch was a series of steps, each taken by the party leaders, in order to win the next election. The political party is the key tool used by the existing political leaders to work for reelection and expand their power over government.
Earlier I stopped the narrative to look at the structure of political parties. When I stopped, the Democrats had been the dominant national political party since the Depression and they had developed a crop of experienced realistic leaders who, along with using government to control the vagaries of the economy, also took the progressive steps to resolve America's largest and longest lasting social problem, Race. This put the Democratic Party out of step with the Old South, which had been the single most reliable bloc of national Democratic votes. The crop of Depression and WW II era leaders were running out. Goldwater showed the first real national effort to replace the relatively progressive national leadership. The Goldwater movement failed, but then LBJ gave away the solid South, and as we now know, he knew what he was doing when it did it.
Nixon (another of the WW II era leaders, but always an outsider) took advantage of the Democratic weakness in the South with his "Southern Strategy." Nixon's resignation set up the situation for Jimmy Carter to come out of nowhere and take the Democratic nomination in a year that was going to be a dead-certain Democratic win, but Jimmy Carter thought like an engineer, not a politician. That set up the situation for Reagan - the conservative candidate made for TV - to come out of the West and take the Presidency from the Democrats. I am told that Carter did not believe in Party Politics, and I believe it. The Conservative Republican Party machine ran over him, and he had done nothing to build the Democratic Party to deal with such opposition. Carter was an Engineer by training, not a politician. Thinking like an engineer, Carter solved problems and ignored the political power situation those problems existed in. Where a politician would have strengthened the party for the Presidential battle, Carter solved problems in many ways that weakened the party (the Panama Canal giveaway, for example. That was handled in a totally non-political manner.)
Nixon's Southern Strategy solidified the identity of the Republican Party as the States Rights anti-integration party. The States Rights anti-government message worked well along with the Wall Street Republicans. Nixon's Southern Strategy solidified the identity of the Republican Party as the States Rights anti-integration party, and the demand by Bill Buckley and his National Review conservatives to create an ideologically unified party worked to drive all the progressives in politics towards the Democrats. The political power of the TV media solidified the new ideological image. The constant demand by Bill Buckley and his National Review conservatives to create an ideologically unified party worked to drive all the progressives in politics out of the Republican Party structure and towards the Democrats.
Nixon and Reagan were the last of the real WW II era Presidents. Both were outsiders and represented a rebellion against the more progressive leadership of the Greatest Generation. Bush 41 was made a national politician by Nixon based on his blue-blood Republican credentials, and then was made President because Reagan could not run for reelection. That was the transition to the younger generation. They were all a reaction to the progressive imposition of Civil Rights legislation on the nation along with the development of TV as a key element of winning national elections.
Unfortunately, the conservative movement that grew up to exploit TV images for political use carried with it a toxic ideology as its political brand. That toxic ideology carried the anti-modernist idea that unrestrained free markets could work and that government could not. The demand that slavish adherence to the Republican TV brand should control every action the party takes created a group of party politicians and leaders unable to govern a modern industrial nation. It has taken the multiple disasters of the Bush 43 administration to prove to a majority of the voting public that the conservative ideology simply does not work.
The Republican anti-government message and behavior, reminiscent of Hoover's reaction to the Depression and again demonstrated in the failed reaction to Katrina, totally unsuits them to run a national government of a modern industrial nation. The Republican Party as it is currently organized and under the "conservative" marketing brand has been largely discredited to much of the public now.
I think this explains the reversal of ideology between the Republicans and the Democrats. The three key elements were the ideology-based failure of the Republicans to deal with the economy adequately after WW I, then the decision by the government leaders of the Greatest Generation to deal with the Civil Rights issue in a progressive manner. The backlash to LBJ's Civil Rights legislation lost the Old South to the Democrats and allowed the Republicans to for a while become the dominant national party, but the demand for ideological purity in the party to maintain the TV brand has made the Republicans unfit to govern.
Anyway, that's my best guess at the moment.
My next question is what happens to the two parties next. With the TV mandated conservative brand the Republicans may be left in the permanent minority as a national party. Can they elect new leaders without that toxic ideology? Bush proved that they cannot govern within the anti-government framework, but the constraints of the ideology means they cannot budget or govern effectively when facing real problems. (They do quite well at making up problems for TV and solving them using the ideology those problems were designed for.)
On the other side of the isle, can the Democrats govern effectively long enough to dispel the notion that the problem is the government itself, and not the conservative ideology? The American Constitution creates a national government in which a significant minority can block all significant action on important issues.Will the Democrats handle that somehow?
.
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Um...quite a post you've got there.
Actually, Poppy Bush served in World War II, as did Nixon. Ronnie sat that one out and broadcast Chicago Cubs games instead.
I always thought the end of the 'progressive' Republican Party came a lot sooner than you did. The Republican Party came out of the Civil War much stronger than it went in. It was the Party of the winning side, and it was the Party of Lincoln, and it was the Party of all of Lincoln's generals who went on to run--Grant, Garfield, etc, including some lower ranks like McKinley.
But the Republican Party, as the party of power, was corrupted by that power--especially in the Gilded Age of the robber barons. They swung that way in full. And let's not even mention the outright corruption of the otherwise-innocent U.S. Grant, who surrounded himself with utterly untrustworthy friends and relatives. It was generally considered the most corrupt Administration except the Harding term and, of course, the last President's, Number 43.
Maybe it was sometime after Reconstruction? That's my best guess as to when the Republican Party fell down on its origins and began to worship Mammon. Teddy Roosevelt was an anomoly who was kicked upstairs to the Vice President's slot, until fate led Leo Czolgosz to Buffalo in 1901...
August 30, 2009 11:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's a short post, not especially detailed. So there are a lot of extreme generalizations. So let me expand my logic.
Yeah, both Nixon and Bush were veterans of WW II in serious but low-ranking positions. After the war Nixon did not become a member of the post war leadership. He was an outsider. He was always fighting the post war leadership. He was an extreme Republican when the real leadership was primarily Democratic.
Bush did not become an important political leader until the 1960's and was then even more of an outsider. Again he was not a member of the significant post war American national leadership.
Reagan was not military. He was a civilian in uniform doing his civilian job far from a during WW II in any front line operation or in any real command position. He later became a political spokesperson when his film career stalled. He became President in the backlash against the Civil Rights movement and he was essentially a figurehead for a California Public Relations firm. He defeated Bush - one of the better qualified WW II candidates - for the nomination, then brought Bush in as Veep to get his supporters. It was much the same tactic as when JFK took LBJ on as Veep. But it was clear that Reagan was not part of the post-war leadership. He was a repudiation of that leadership, and he defeated and converted Bush. The conversion was demonstrated when Bush, previously pro-choice, became a firm anti-abortionist. That's why I describe both Reagan and Bush as transitional figures on the way to the post WW II leadership. They were either not part of the WW II and post-war leadership or they were outsiders to and opponents of that group.
Clinton was the first real post-war President. Nixon was an outsider to the Greatest generation, Carter was a political nullity, and Reagan was both an outsider and an opponent to the Greatest Generation. Bush 41 was an outsider and was in addition to being an outsider, subverted by Reagan because that is what was required for him to be elected.
August 31, 2009 5:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
This paragraph needs a rewrite:
"Nixon's Southern Strategy solidified the identity of the Republican Party as the States Rights anti-integration party. The States Rights anti-government message worked well along with the Wall Street Republicans. Nixon's Southern Strategy solidified the identity of the Republican Party as the States Rights anti-integration party, and the demand by Bill Buckley and his National Review conservatives to create an ideologically unified party worked to drive all the progressives in politics towards the Democrats. The political power of the TV media solidified the new ideological image. The constant demand by Bill Buckley and his National Review conservatives to create an ideologically unified party worked to drive all the progressives in politics out of the Republican Party structure and towards the Democrats."
August 31, 2009 1:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
You're right. Is there any way to edit one of these blogs after they are posted? I haven't found it yet if there is.
August 31, 2009 10:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just go to "blog now" again and open it from the list.
August 31, 2009 3:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
This map of course isnt perfect because of some outliers but it at least can give you a nice general idea of when and where the votes swapped.
O and for some stupid reason D are red on this map and R is blue.
Its pretty easy to see that the D party controlled the deep south after Grant's term in office. I guess the south didn't like a Yankee General being the president, so they went to the Democratic party. So between 1876 to 1964 and then Republicans took over the deep south and they have had control of that area since then, with the carter vs ford election being a exception.
So as you mentioned in your post the cause for the Democrats losing the deep south was the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
What happens now? Who can say, it depends on how things turn out. One thing that worries me though is that those on the right don't live in the same reality as the rest of the world. So its hard to say how fast change will come to the different parties.
One thing that encourages me though is the demographic trend lines. The Republican party is focused way to much with old/white people. The nation is becoming more and more diverse racially and of course the young today will become the old tomorrow. If these two trends stand then the Republican party will diminish over time if it doesn't change. If it doesn't change then a third party might rise up to fill the gap, though rarely has a third party group gain enough votes to overcome both parties, and with how things are set up now it would be even rarer for such a thing.
August 31, 2009 2:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm pretty sure that you are right that demographics will, in the long run, cause the rational and modernist politicians to be leading America. Unfortunately, I also agree with Keynes that in the long run we are all dead.
But I also have hope for the short run outcome. The problem I see right now is that we have a culture clash between the traditional rural culture which has always dominated America and the newer modern urban culture which is now taking over. As I pointed out in my previous blog, there is a distinct difference between the thinking of the traditional rural elites and the modern urban and industrialize elites. It's the difference between thinking rationally and deferring to traditional authoritarian elites and religious leaders. America is now over half urban in big cities, and the second generation of urbanites is coming up.
After WW II the rural population declined sharply and the population moved to the cities, but they did not like being urban. Many of them moved to suburbs that did not pay high city taxes or participate in the urban life such as with mass transit. But those older suburbs now have all the same problems as the cities had before, and the upcoming generation thinks like urban dwellers rather than like the rural population. It's people who think rural who are the key element of the conservative support.
That's my explanation for the county maps from the 2008 election in which the lower population counties for the most part went conservative and the metropolitan areas went almost entirely for the Democrats.
I've watched over the last five decades as Texas has shifted from a state politically dominated by conservative rural legislators to one that last year kicked out the rural Tom Cradick, the most powerful politician in the state as Speaker of the House, and replaced him with Straus, a much more mentally urban legislator. In addition, every major city in Texas outside Fort Worth voted for Obama in 2008. It's happening, but it's not on the media radar. But that's why the Senate is the national political battleground. The Constitution was designed to make the Senate the power center for the rural elites from non urban states. Nationally the Senate is the last political bastion for the rural elite. That's why the focus for health care (a quintessentially urban proposal) is being fought out in the Senate.
That's a trend that will only continue. The Democrats with demographics and urban populations on their side are going to be the dominant party again. I just don't know how soon.
In the meantime the traditionalists know they are under attack and that they are losing. They are desperate to reverse the social and political shift. In their desperation they will do and say literally anything. It's the old trapped rat syndrome. They are desperate and crazy. The crazy rhetoric is no surprise. That's also why I expect violence, and soon. But in the longer term, the urban politicians will win out.
August 31, 2009 5:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am reminded of a line from an old John Prine song, "...he voted for Eisenhower 'cause Lincoln won the war."
Couple of things:
TR famously left the Republican party, running as a 3rd party candidate against Taft. His populist/progressive base left with him, never to return. By the time his nephew ran for President, Republicans hadn't stood with progressives on a national level for years.
Isolationist Republicans suffered more defections in the run-up to both World Wars. Short term anti-engagement politics -- America First, the fight against the League Of Nations, etc. -- left the Republicans in a very sorry state. Wrong on WWI, wrong on the Great Depression, disastrously wrong on WWII...perhaps if we hadn't won both wars and made it through the Depression (over Republican opposition), the party would have been able to maintain its credibility, but that's not the way it worked out, and as Richard points out, by the late 1940's, the Republican party was reduced to faintly echoing Democratic Party policy positions.
And Then There Was The Cold War...the party of Joe McCarthy went on a brief joyride in the 50's, tossing aside any remaining progressive hangers-on. By the late 1960's, there was little left of Abe's Grand Old Party -- Javits, Case, Chase-Smith -- that was about it.
The States Rights, anti-immigration Republican party was born from the Southern rump of the Democratic party out of political necessity, and by the 1980s it had begun to believe its own lies...
August 31, 2009 10:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for that comment. I'm definitely not as familiar with the history of progressive politics as I'd like to be. I'm also probably lumping progressive Republicans with moderate Republicans as a single group representing the left wing of Republicanism. I do recall what the Republicans of the Northeast US, particularly New York, infuriated Goldwater when he was running for President.
Would it be fair to say that the isolationist Republicans from the early part of the century were essentially the progenitors of McCarthy and anti-Communist Republicans? Essentially the same people or their political descendants, just a different message because Isolationism had been so discredited by WW II? And there certainly was the Rockefeller wing of the Republicans.
The Democrats had a similar, if perhaps greater, diversity of politicians and ideological positions. What intrigues me is the way the conservative Republicans have worked so hard to create an ideologically unified Republican Party, essentially kicking out those who don't go along. I still think that the central reason for that is branding the product - conservative Republicans - in order to sell them to voters by TV. The way so many current Republicans run on the "I'm THE conservative in the race." message would tend to confirm that idea. Certainly Reagan was a successful getting elected as he was because of his wide-spread media reputation and his ability to deliver a script. He was made for TV where LBJ, Nixon and Carter were not.
The other thing that strikes me is how utterly and consistently incompetent the Republican right-wing positions have been throughout the last century. That's a tradition they have clearly carried into this century. Those right-wing ideologies have almost all been designed to get the candidates elected rather than to actually improve America.
August 31, 2009 1:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Republicans, as the minority party then, acted as the opposition always does on major national issues when there is no clear outside enemy or threat. They voted lockstep against the civil rights legislation. Richardxx
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The original House version:[9]
* Democratic Party: 152-96 (61%-39%)
* Republican Party: 138-34 (80%-20%)
The Senate version:[9]
* Democratic Party: 46-21 (69%-31%)
* Republican Party: 27-6 (82%-18%)
The Senate version, voted on by the House:[9]
* Democratic Party: 153-91 (63%-37%)
* Republican Party: 136-35 (80%-20%)
Voting Rights Act
Senate: 77–19
* Democrats: 47–17
* Republicans: 30–2
House: 333–85
* Democrats: 221–61
* Republicans: 112–24
Conference Report:
Senate: 79–18
* Democrats: 49–17
* Republicans: 30–1
House: 328–74
* Democrats: 217–54
* Republicans: 111–20
"I'm no historian," you said. Gotta agree with that judgment.
August 31, 2009 2:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes Ellen, well put and well documented.
Thank you.
August 31, 2009 2:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, Ellen
What I've got is more question than answer, so I wrote up what I had and what I thought and threw it out for discussion. I appreciate your research and input.
August 31, 2009 4:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
And Ellen, you're right. I should not have used the term "lockstep" without documenting it. My education continues.
August 31, 2009 5:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another great post, just look at the comments, longer than most blogs.
The current image of ideological homogeneity is a media creation to try to attract followers and funds, and the political leaders have spend the last five decades trying to manipulate their party to match the media image.
Fascinating approach. Simplistic perhaps, but hell...
Rahm is portrayed as the bad guy. Does anyone really see him as rover? I think not, at least in their heart of hearts.
Legislation is not an easy process.
I keep promising to take a look at what has been accomplished in 8 months.
August 31, 2009 2:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Republican Party started out as progressive in that they wanted to end slavery. But coming to power during the civil war also made them the party of big business. There were no foundries in Cleveland in 1860 and dozens by 1865, all making cannon and rifle barrels for the army. It was essentially only a northern party. It took until Nixon's southern strategy in 1968 for any southerners to vote Republican. They were yellow dog Democrats as in "I'd vote for a yellow dog before I'd vote Republican".
But backing up to the 1800s again. By McKinley's election in 1896 the financial powers were so entrenched in the GOP, it opened the door to populist opposition on the left. This eventually manifested itself in Teddy Roosevelt's trust busting and the Bullmoose party. Democratic party machines also took over large northern cities in the second half of the 1800s.
Republicans remained wedded to the non regulatory wishes big business and it caused their downfall in the depression.
As Dems slid away from racism starting in the late 1940s some members revolted. I'm thinking Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats. Some like Wallace and other governors down south remained Dems but railed against civil rights.
That's where things stood pretty much until the GOP decided to fully embrace racism in the late 60s after Democratic successes passing civil rights legislation in that decade.
LBJ said he was losing the south for a generation as he signed the Civil Rights Act wasn't it?
The GOP then picked up the anti abortion religious wingnuts of Robertson and Fawell in 1980 and the transformation was complete.
August 31, 2009 4:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent post.
Do you have any idea what social forces led the Democrats to move away from racism in the 40's? Because the leaders had to know that the solid South was a major element of Democrat national power, and that racism was a key element in holding the South to the Democrats.
It looks to me as though both parties tolerated a wide divergence of views on segregation and racism until the 50's, and did not use it as a campaign issue on the national level. It might have been a combination of the growth of civil rights organizations like the NAACP and the return of negro veterans after the war that changed that.
I still like my speculation that the Democratic leaders by the late 40's were experienced and very much pragmatists. They had, after all, dragged the nation out of the Depression and won WW II largely on ad hoc decisions based more on experience and experiment than any ideology or doctrine. Many of them saw nothing but trouble from segregation and moved to end it.
August 31, 2009 4:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Eleanor had been bugged FDR about ending discrimination in the 40s. He had the Tuskagee airmen and a few black combat units but he didn't want to take it on the whole ball of wax during the war. Mass migration from the south was in progress to fill for war industry jobs in the north. All this proved black folks weren't much different than anyone else.
I think after the war it just seemed ridiculous to ignore that we'd just defeated racist enemies and we ourselves weren't living up to the ideals we fought for.
I think the Brits let their empire go for much the same reasons. They did not crush Ghandi and their Indian subjects. They let them go because it was the right thing to do.
August 31, 2009 5:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Read
Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America.
Hoovers use of traditional goodwill for R's by African/ Americans and his subsequent betrayal of African/ Americans and embrace of segragation to secede Coolridge in 1928 explains a lot.
August 31, 2009 6:48 PM | Reply | Permalink