@Cal: Yeah, and the black vote then was like the Asian vote WWII, one token minority to prop on.
Last I checked your Cal also heckled the Irish to hell like every other GOP big-head, while the Democrats had Al Smith. Also the GOP lacked pretty much any type of religious vote that wasn't Protestant.
Also the GOP never officially denounced the Klan either, not since Grant, yes there were token speeches by Harding and Teddy,but only them and them alone. 1924 Democrats at least considered it.
The Klan dominated Republican politics in Indiana in the 1920s.
If it is by State action, then Wisconsin is next. The Koch family regent Scott Walker has stated his desire to transform Wisconsin into a cheap-labor state. Kentucky and West Virginia? Anyone who does is going to have big trouble with the United Mine Workers.
Ultimately whether labor unions are even allowed to exist will be a decision of federal legislation. I would not be surprised if the GOP tries to bring up a federal Duty to Starve
law in the next Congress. President Obama will veto it every time. 2017? Sure -- if the Republicans elect a President and maintain control both Houses of Congress. In such a case America becomes a highly-centralized, monolithic absolute plutocracy until the government is overthrown.
I don't know whether you think that there is a recycling of historical trends at roughly the span of a long human lifetime, but there's a good reason for the worst tendencies in human nature in any time resembling those of something like eighty years. Figure that the children born in the early 1920s associate the Great Depression with a cause in reckless speculation and an anything-goes attitude toward Big Business did everything possible to prevent a recurrence of such folly even if it tempted younger people. Whether one was a liberal like Abraham Ribicoff or a conservative like Bob Dole one resisted the shady finance that looked like late-1920s folly so long as one could. Around 2000 people like them were out of public life. The temptations of shady finance and weak regulation of hustles in the securities business were always there,but around 2000 nobody was around to stop either. By 2005 the stage was being set for a 1929-style crash.
The extinction of child memories of an event makes a repetition of folly that leads to a near-repeat of a similar catastrophe all the more possible.
http://blog.lifecourse.com/This may be interesting, and I post heavily there. Elections are a big part of American history, and generational differences are a big part of electoral demographics.