Talk Elections

Presidential Elections - Analysis and Discussion => U.S. Presidential Election Results => Topic started by: Asian Nazi on January 04, 2016, 01:24:25 PM



Title: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Asian Nazi on January 04, 2016, 01:24:25 PM
So, as we all know, the Democrats used to be the conservatives and the Republicans used to be the liberals.  So when did the parties switch? 


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: RINO Tom on January 04, 2016, 01:29:49 PM
2010, of course (when the Southern legislatures fell)!

Seriously, though, I know those guys were just DINOs.  When they REALLY switched was the 2000s.  You see, Bill Clinton (a Democrat) talked about an end to the era of big government.  He also like deregulated something or something like that, and he had a Southern accent and won West Virginia (and WV votes Republican now, so that means the Democrats of the '90s were the Republicans of today).  Then, in the 2000s, George W. Bush (a Republican) swept onto the scene, and he expanded government (he was a liberal for this) and also passed No Child Left Behind.  Plus the debt.  Democrats attacked him for this (making them the conservatives of that time period).


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Virginiá on January 04, 2016, 02:55:54 PM
2010, of course (when the Southern legislatures fell)!

Seriously, though, I know those guys were just DINOs.  When they REALLY switched was the 2000s.  You see, Bill Clinton (a Democrat) talked about an end to the era of big government.  He also like deregulated something or something like that, and he had a Southern accent and won West Virginia (and WV votes Republican now, so that means the Democrats of the '90s were the Republicans of today).  Then, in the 2000s, George W. Bush (a Republican) swept onto the scene, and he expanded government (he was a liberal for this) and also passed No Child Left Behind.  Plus the debt.  Democrats attacked him for this (making them the conservatives of that time period).

For Republicans/the South, couldn't you say the seed was planted in 1964? Goldwater lost, but many Southern states and whites began voting Republican at the presidential level after that. You could see the Democratic stranglehold on Congressional offices cracking after as well, albeit at a slow pace. It took quite awhile for this to trickle down to state offices, though. Likewise, around 1988/1992 many traditional Republican states in the North switched as well (at the presidential level, with state offices following in the decade(s) after).

Though I am only talking about party voting patterns and not the ideological components of this change.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Rockefeller GOP on January 04, 2016, 03:06:08 PM
2010, of course (when the Southern legislatures fell)!

Seriously, though, I know those guys were just DINOs.  When they REALLY switched was the 2000s.  You see, Bill Clinton (a Democrat) talked about an end to the era of big government.  He also like deregulated something or something like that, and he had a Southern accent and won West Virginia (and WV votes Republican now, so that means the Democrats of the '90s were the Republicans of today).  Then, in the 2000s, George W. Bush (a Republican) swept onto the scene, and he expanded government (he was a liberal for this) and also passed No Child Left Behind.  Plus the debt.  Democrats attacked him for this (making them the conservatives of that time period).

For Republicans/the South, couldn't you say the seed was planted in 1964? Goldwater lost, but many Southern states and whites began voting Republican at the presidential level after that. You could see the Democratic stranglehold on Congressional offices cracking after as well, albeit at a slow pace. It took quite awhile for this to trickle down to state offices, though. Likewise, around 1988/1992 many traditional Republican states in the North switched as well (at the presidential level, with state offices following in the decade(s) after).

Though I am only talking about party voting patterns and not the ideological components of this change.

Forgetting for a second that RINO's post was 100% sarcastic and hilarious, Republicans had been winning some races before 1964 in the areas with the most Northern transplants (who brought their fiscally conservative votes with them), mostly in "the New South."  All 1964/1965 did was show Southern Whites that they now had to pick between two (at least on paper) pro-civil rights parties.  Wealthier Southerners started voting Republican first and then other Southern Whites followed as the national Democratic Party became less reliant on keeping the South solid and therefore became more openly culturally liberal.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: pbrower2a on January 05, 2016, 12:53:31 AM
The Democratic Party was the catch-all party before the mid-1960s split between agrarian reactionaries and racist populists (the latter rather liberal on government spending). The North and West had liberal and conservative wings in both parties.

Signs of the weakening of the Democratic Party began as Strom Thurmond split a third Party in a protest against the baby steps of Harry S. Truman on racial equity as early as 1948.

In the 1960s, Democrats sought to win the votes of Southern blacks But such built an unwieldy coalition of people with opposite purposes in politics. Unwieldy coalitions break. Southern whites slowly drifted R.

Almost the only liberals in the South are now blacks. Thus places like Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, and New Orleans are very liberal -- as liberal as Northern cities -- but not large enough to offset the rest of the states.

Another aspect of the switch is that Northern suburbs, which used to be bastions of conservatism when they still had rural qualities when newly built, became liberal as they became more urban than rural. Suburbs of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago are now old enough that one must be old (60 or older) to remember them as attempts to bring some rural character to the fringes of great cities. The original infrastructure is getting old and has huge costs of repair or replacement.  The original lanes suited to thinly-packed tract houses now must often be widened (at much cost) to accommodate the densely-packed apartments that have even more cars per square mile. The older suburbs of places like St. Louis are getting legitimately urban, and the vote changes to match that reality. The newer suburbs of Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and Phoenix (Phoenix isn't, strictly speaking, "Southern", but its suburbs are very conservative)   have no such problems -- and they remain bastions of political and economic conservatism. Southfield, Michigan is very different from Plano, Texas. But give time and places like Scottsdale, Arizona and Marietta, Georgia will become about as liberal as Southfield, Michigan -- at which time the game is up for the GOP coalition that it now has.

   


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: pbrower2a on January 05, 2016, 01:11:29 AM
I can't show this map often enough for my liking. But here we go:

I here contrast Dwight Eisenhower to Barack Obama. Ike won Mormon country and the High Plains. But just think -- Ike won everything in the North and West, winning two states together (Massachusetts and Minnesota) that Republicans have never won together -- twice. In 2012, although winning a respectable 332 electoral votes, did not win a single state that Ike did not win twice.

(Sure, there will always be a significant overlay of any winner over the landslides of FDR in 1936, LBJ in 1964, Nixon in 1972, and Reagan in 1984 -- but the Obama wins make more impressive overlays against those of Eisenhower) because Ike and Obama both won the single states that Nixon and Reagan lost in 49-state landslides and the two tiny states that FDR lost in 1936.   



(
)
 
gray -- did not vote in 1952 or 1956
white -- Eisenhower twice, Obama twice
deep blue -- Republican all four elections
light blue -- Republican all but 2012 (I assume that greater Omaha went for Ike twice)
light green -- Eisenhower once, Stevenson once, Obama never
dark green -- Stevenson twice, Obama never
pink -- Stevenson twice, Obama once

No state voted Democratic all four times, so no state is in deep red.  


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Ebsy on January 05, 2016, 01:22:04 AM
That's actually fascinating. And you are right about the older suburbs drifting left, especially in St. Louis.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Sir Mohamed on January 05, 2016, 03:27:44 AM
Depends on the state/region. In the 1940s, guys like Dewey, Willkie or Warren were a lot more liberal than Southern Democrats (they were pretty much racists until the late 1960s) while guys like Bob Taft or John Bricker had almost nothing in common with progressives like FDR or Truman.

But it's really fascinating process. I always wondered, why the liberal wings of both parties didn't unify to a Progressive Party and the conservatives form a Conservative Party.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Rockefeller GOP on January 05, 2016, 11:21:02 AM
Depends on the state/region. In the 1940s, guys like Dewey, Willkie or Warren were a lot more liberal than Southern Democrats (they were pretty much racists until the late 1960s) while guys like Bob Taft or John Bricker had almost nothing in common with progressives like FDR or Truman.

But it's really fascinating process. I always wondered, why the liberal wings of both parties didn't unify to a Progressive Party and the conservatives form a Conservative Party.

You keep saying "they were pretty much racists" as if that is a disqualifier from also holding several liberal positions, and it's not.

Also pretty sure this thread was sarcastic response to yours about VT and ME.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook on January 05, 2016, 01:18:10 PM
It was a gradual thing from the 1960's to the 1980's. Since then it has only been further.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: OSR stands with Israel on January 05, 2016, 01:32:17 PM
On Economics- GOP has always been more right wing
Foreign Policy- They were about the same until the 1970s when the GOP became more hawkish
Social Policy- Gradual from truman to lbj



Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Rockefeller GOP on January 05, 2016, 01:43:54 PM
It was a gradual thing from the 1960's to the 1980's. Since then it has only been further.

So you're actually prepared to argue the GOP of the 1930s was to the right of the Democratic Party during that same time frame? Because you'd be like factually wrong.

Okay, Jesus, let's just answer the question in the sarcastic OP that so many people took seriously:

THEY DIDN'T.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Young Conservative on January 05, 2016, 09:17:23 PM
THEY DID NOT.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Goldwater on January 06, 2016, 01:48:47 AM
So, as we all know, the Democrats used to be the conservatives and the Republicans used to be the liberals.  So when did the parties switch? 

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or stupidity.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: H. Ross Peron on January 06, 2016, 02:40:52 AM
So, as we all know, the Democrats used to be the conservatives and the Republicans used to be the liberals.  So when did the parties switch? 

when Jesse Helms cummed in your mom's anus


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: hopper on January 09, 2016, 04:42:27 PM
2010, of course (when the Southern legislatures fell)!

Seriously, though, I know those guys were just DINOs.  When they REALLY switched was the 2000s.  You see, Bill Clinton (a Democrat) talked about an end to the era of big government.  He also like deregulated something or something like that, and he had a Southern accent and won West Virginia (and WV votes Republican now, so that means the Democrats of the '90s were the Republicans of today).  Then, in the 2000s, George W. Bush (a Republican) swept onto the scene, and he expanded government (he was a liberal for this) and also passed No Child Left Behind.  Plus the debt.  Democrats attacked him for this (making them the conservatives of that time period).
Well fiscal conservatives but definitely not Social Conservatives.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: OSR stands with Israel on January 09, 2016, 05:15:10 PM
It was a gradual thing from the 1960's to the 1980's. Since then it has only been further.

So you're actually prepared to argue the GOP of the 1930s was to the right of the Democratic Party during that same time frame? Because you'd be like factually wrong.

Okay, Jesus, let's just answer the question in the sarcastic OP that so many people took seriously:

THEY DIDN'T.

The GOP of the 1930s was clearly more right wing then the Democrats


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Oldiesfreak1854 on January 09, 2016, 05:39:42 PM
Never.  Their platforms may have changed some over the years, but the switch wasn't as radical as liberals like to pretend it was.  That's just an excuse they make to keep repeating the lie that the racist Democrats joined the GOP after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Sumner 1868 on January 09, 2016, 05:49:18 PM
Never.  Their platforms may have changed some over the years, but the switch wasn't as radical as liberals like to pretend it was.  That's just an excuse they make to keep repeating the lie that the racist Democrats joined the GOP after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

Mississippi:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=28&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=28&f=0&off=0&elect=0

Alabama:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=1&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=1&off=0&elect=0&f=0

Georgia:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&off=0&elect=0&fips=13&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=13&off=0&elect=0&f=0

South Carolina:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=45&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=45&off=0&elect=0&f=0

Louisiana:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=22&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=22&off=0&elect=0&f=0



Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Oldiesfreak1854 on January 09, 2016, 05:49:46 PM
But just think -- Ike won everything in the North and West, winning two states together (Massachusetts and Minnesota) that Republicans have never won together -- twice.
Reagan got Massachusetts twice.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Oldiesfreak1854 on January 09, 2016, 05:50:18 PM
Never.  Their platforms may have changed some over the years, but the switch wasn't as radical as liberals like to pretend it was.  That's just an excuse they make to keep repeating the lie that the racist Democrats joined the GOP after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

Mississippi:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=28&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=28&f=0&off=0&elect=0

Alabama:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=1&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=1&off=0&elect=0&f=0

Georgia:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&off=0&elect=0&fips=13&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=13&off=0&elect=0&f=0

South Carolina:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=45&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=45&off=0&elect=0&f=0

Louisiana:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=22&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=22&off=0&elect=0&f=0


Yes, that was ONE election.  After 1964, most of the segregationists went right back to the Democrats.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: hopper on January 09, 2016, 05:53:40 PM
On Economics- GOP has always been more right wing
Foreign Policy- They were about the same until the 1970s when the GOP became more hawkish
Social Policy- Gradual from truman to lbj


The Dems didn't become more isolationist after Vietnam?


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Sumner 1868 on January 09, 2016, 05:57:23 PM
Never.  Their platforms may have changed some over the years, but the switch wasn't as radical as liberals like to pretend it was.  That's just an excuse they make to keep repeating the lie that the racist Democrats joined the GOP after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

Mississippi:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=28&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=28&f=0&off=0&elect=0

Alabama:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=1&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=1&off=0&elect=0&f=0

Georgia:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&off=0&elect=0&fips=13&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=13&off=0&elect=0&f=0

South Carolina:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=45&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=45&off=0&elect=0&f=0

Louisiana:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=22&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=22&off=0&elect=0&f=0


Yes, that was ONE election.  After 1964, most of the segregationists went right back to the Democrats.

Four of these states swung toward Wallace, one for Nixon, zero for Humphrey. All voted for Nixon in 1972. Carter is the only post-CRA Democrat to win any of these voters back, and even then not incredibly.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: hopper on January 09, 2016, 05:58:16 PM
Never.  Their platforms may have changed some over the years, but the switch wasn't as radical as liberals like to pretend it was.  That's just an excuse they make to keep repeating the lie that the racist Democrats joined the GOP after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.
No, I think some Democrats think the GOP was more left wing than the Dems before either 1930 or 1940. I don't think "The Civil Rights Act" has anything to do with their argument. Most Congressional Republicans voted for "The Civil Rights Act" anyway.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: hopper on January 09, 2016, 06:00:40 PM
Never.  Their platforms may have changed some over the years, but the switch wasn't as radical as liberals like to pretend it was.  That's just an excuse they make to keep repeating the lie that the racist Democrats joined the GOP after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

Mississippi:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=28&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=28&f=0&off=0&elect=0

Alabama:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=1&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=1&off=0&elect=0&f=0

Georgia:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&off=0&elect=0&fips=13&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=13&off=0&elect=0&f=0

South Carolina:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=45&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=45&off=0&elect=0&f=0

Louisiana:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=22&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=22&off=0&elect=0&f=0


Yes, that was ONE election.  After 1964, most of the segregationists went right back to the Democrats.

Four of these states swung toward Wallace, one for Nixon, zero for Humphrey. All voted for Nixon in 1972. Carter is the only post-CRA Democrat to win any of these voters back, and even then not incredibly.
Clinton won Louisiana in 1992 and 1996. Georgia also went to Clinton in 1992 and was close in 1996 although Dole won it.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Sumner 1868 on January 09, 2016, 06:07:01 PM
Never.  Their platforms may have changed some over the years, but the switch wasn't as radical as liberals like to pretend it was.  That's just an excuse they make to keep repeating the lie that the racist Democrats joined the GOP after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

Mississippi:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=28&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=28&f=0&off=0&elect=0

Alabama:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=1&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=1&off=0&elect=0&f=0

Georgia:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&off=0&elect=0&fips=13&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=13&off=0&elect=0&f=0

South Carolina:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=45&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=45&off=0&elect=0&f=0

Louisiana:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=22&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=22&off=0&elect=0&f=0


Yes, that was ONE election.  After 1964, most of the segregationists went right back to the Democrats.

Four of these states swung toward Wallace, one for Nixon, zero for Humphrey. All voted for Nixon in 1972. Carter is the only post-CRA Democrat to win any of these voters back, and even then not incredibly.
Clinton won Louisiana in 1992 and 1996. Georgia also went to Clinton in 1992 and was close in 1996 although Dole won it.

Yes, but only because of black support. Granted, a good chunk of whites in these states clearly voted for Clinton, but the vast of white Southerners voted Republican after 1964 except for Wallace and too a lesser extent Carter.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: RINO Tom on January 12, 2016, 01:02:41 PM
Never.  Their platforms may have changed some over the years, but the switch wasn't as radical as liberals like to pretend it was.  That's just an excuse they make to keep repeating the lie that the racist Democrats joined the GOP after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

Mississippi:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=28&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=28&f=0&off=0&elect=0

Alabama:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=1&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=1&off=0&elect=0&f=0

Georgia:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&off=0&elect=0&fips=13&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=13&off=0&elect=0&f=0

South Carolina:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=45&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=45&off=0&elect=0&f=0

Louisiana:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1960&fips=22&off=0&elect=0&f=0

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1964&fips=22&off=0&elect=0&f=0


Yes, that was ONE election.  After 1964, most of the segregationists went right back to the Democrats.

Four of these states swung toward Wallace, one for Nixon, zero for Humphrey. All voted for Nixon in 1972. Carter is the only post-CRA Democrat to win any of these voters back, and even then not incredibly.
Clinton won Louisiana in 1992 and 1996. Georgia also went to Clinton in 1992 and was close in 1996 although Dole won it.

Yes, but only because of black support. Granted, a good chunk of whites in these states clearly voted for Clinton, but the vast of white Southerners voted Republican after 1964 except for Wallace and too a lesser extent Carter.

In 1976, Carter won 46% of the "White South" (compared to Ford's 52%).  Considering that Carter won every Southern state except for Virginia (one of the bigger Southern states) and barely won Texas and Florida (two other big Southern states with a lot of Northern transplants at the time), I think it's perfectly reasonable to say that Southern Whites in the Deep South most certainly voted for Carter, especially when you look at his victory margins and how many people voted in each state (I rounded the numbers in the parentheses but used the exact numbers, available on Wikipedia, for the calculations):

JIMMY CARTER SOUTHERN MARGINS

BORDER SOUTH
VA: +1.34% Ford (1.70 million total)
OK: +1.21% Ford (1.09 million total)
TX: +3.17% Carter (4.07 million total)
FL: +5.28% Carter (3.15 million total)
KY: +7.19% Carter (1.17 million total)
NC: +11.05% Carter (1.68 million total)
TN: +13.00% Carter (1.48 million total)
WV: +16.04% Carter (750,000 total)

That'd put Carter at winning just over 52% of the votes in the Border South.

DEEP SOUTH
MS: +1.88% Carter (769,000 total)
LA: +5.78% Carter (1.28 million total)
SC: +13.04% Carter (802,000 total)
AL: +13.11% Carter (1.18 million total)
AR: +30.01% Carter (769,000 total)
GA: +33.78% Carter (1.47 million total)

That'd put Carter at winning almost 58% of the vote in the Deep South ... I don't think you do that in the 1970s without winning the White vote, or at least coming damn close considering the turnout disparity that still existed between Whites and Blacks in that decade.  Carter did significantly better in the Deep South than in the Border South, and given that the biggest Deep South state gave him over 65% of the vote and that four gave him over 55% of the vote, I think it's safe to say Carter did just fine among Deep South Whites, 12 years after the Civil Rights Act was signed.

All the CRA did was OPEN UP politics in the South; White Southerners now had to choose between two parties that - at least outwardly - supported civil rights.  Both parties (despite popular misconception) continued to make overtures toward racist Whites in the South for years after the Civil Rights Act, and Republicans started to do better as the South became less agrarian (notice how Carter still won the rural, White counties in 1980 yet managed to lose most Southern states to Reagan, thanks to GOP inroads in the growing suburbs...).  It wasn't this magical moment when all these old racist Southern Democrats were like, "I think I'll be a Republican now, even though their party voted more in favor of this than anyone else!"  That's as ridiculous as union voters becoming Republicans because of Obama's support for the TPP.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Kingpoleon on January 12, 2016, 01:12:44 PM
Never. As for Wallace voters, the only two I ever knew were Democratic until 2004 and too senile to vote after that.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: RINO Tom on January 12, 2016, 01:16:18 PM
Never. As for Wallace voters, the only two I ever knew were Democratic until 2004 and too senile to vote after that.

Despite what this forum would like to hear, that is probably how most "old school Dixiecrats" probably voted ... what is so appealing to them about a Connecticut, WASPy, dynasty family member of the Party of Lincoln who's clearly pretending to be a cowboy?  LOL.  These folks almost certainly voted for Clinton, and given they were probably already in their 60s by the time Reagan was running, I doubt they voted for the California Republican either.

Now I will say, if any true Dixiecrats were still alive, I bet they would have crossed party lines for the first time in order to prevent a Black man from being elected ... but most are dead.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Bojack Horseman on January 12, 2016, 04:49:51 PM
Never.  Their platforms may have changed some over the years, but the switch wasn't as radical as liberals like to pretend it was.  That's just an excuse they make to keep repeating the lie that the racist Democrats joined the GOP after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

That's not a lie at all. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 set in motion the South's turn from D to R, hence why Barry Goldwater won 4 states that would have been easily for Johnson in any other circumstance. They fell in love with Reagan and the GOP in 1980 because of his dog whistle racism, and have voted Republican ever since. Since 1976, the Republicans have run further and further to the right, embracing racism more and more with each passing election.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Bojack Horseman on January 12, 2016, 05:02:51 PM
Never. As for Wallace voters, the only two I ever knew were Democratic until 2004 and too senile to vote after that.

Despite what this forum would like to hear, that is probably how most "old school Dixiecrats" probably voted ... what is so appealing to them about a Connecticut, WASPy, dynasty family member of the Party of Lincoln who's clearly pretending to be a cowboy?  LOL.  These folks almost certainly voted for Clinton, and given they were probably already in their 60s by the time Reagan was running, I doubt they voted for the California Republican either.

Now I will say, if any true Dixiecrats were still alive, I bet they would have crossed party lines for the first time in order to prevent a Black man from being elected ... but most are dead.

Storm Thurmond? Richard Shelby? Fob James? Zell Miller? Buddy Roemer? The biggest racist ever to serve in the Senate, Jesse Helms? How about Trent Lott, Mills Godwin, Nathan Deal, and Sonny Perdue?


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: RINO Tom on January 12, 2016, 05:56:09 PM
Never. As for Wallace voters, the only two I ever knew were Democratic until 2004 and too senile to vote after that.

Despite what this forum would like to hear, that is probably how most "old school Dixiecrats" probably voted ... what is so appealing to them about a Connecticut, WASPy, dynasty family member of the Party of Lincoln who's clearly pretending to be a cowboy?  LOL.  These folks almost certainly voted for Clinton, and given they were probably already in their 60s by the time Reagan was running, I doubt they voted for the California Republican either.

Now I will say, if any true Dixiecrats were still alive, I bet they would have crossed party lines for the first time in order to prevent a Black man from being elected ... but most are dead.

Storm Thurmond? Richard Shelby? Fob James? Zell Miller? Buddy Roemer? The biggest racist ever to serve in the Senate, Jesse Helms? How about Trent Lott, Mills Godwin, Nathan Deal, and Sonny Perdue?

Strom Thurmond was ONE of 21 Senate Democrats who switched parties in 1964.  The rest were just fine remaining Democrats.  Again, what would their incentive be to join the party that supported it at an even higher rate, even if that party nominated ONE candidate ONE time that opposed that ONE civil rights law (and had a flawless civil rights record before that)?

Richard Shelby was a Democrat until 1994 ... do you think it took him 30 years to realize that the CRA had been passed?

James also became a Republican in 1994.  It is intellectually dishonest for you to act like the Civil Rights Act caused that.  I know you're not that dumb or that much of a hack.

Zell Miller IS STILL A DEMOCRAT, lol.  He endorsed Michelle Nunn just this past year!  Come on, dude.

Buddy Roemer became a Republican in 1991 ... a full three years earlier than those other two.  Conclusion: obviously the Civil Rights Act signed in the 1960s.

Jesse Helms became a Republican in 1970, 6 years after the CRA was signed.  As for him being the most racist, I think that's highly debatable.  Helms introduced legislation that would take away tax-free status to colleges in North Carolina that discriminated based on race.  He hired James Meredith (ya know, the first Black student to ever attend Ole Miss?) on his staff, for God's sake.  If Democrats like Al Gore, Sr. and Robert Byrd are going to get total passes for saying "I'm sorry, I was wrong" (let's forget for a second that Byrd remained a racist sack of sh^t well into his senile term as leader of the Congressional Democrats, a post he held into Obama's Presidency...), then you should extend the same forgiveness to Republicans.

Trent Lott became a Democrat until 1972.  It took this genius 8 whole years to figure out that Democrats were now a party totally committed to racial equality and Republicans had completely absorbed racism?  What a moron.

Godwin became one in 1973.  Yet another one who didn't question their party allegiance after the signing of the CRA.

Deal became a Republican in 1995.  I've noticed a lot clearer trend of a shift to the cultural left in the '80s for the Democrats alienating a lot of Southerners, much more so than civil rights.

Perdue didn't ditch the Democrats until 1998.  Only a moron would tie that to civil rights or dog whistle politics.

Look, as I've said many times before, the Civil Rights Act opened up politics in the South (just as Martin Luther King predicted it would), but it didn't usher the region toward the GOP.  It did temporarily in 1964, but that was clearly an anomaly.  A party whose Senators and Representatives supported the law overwhelmingly let an opponent of the law win a very divided field.  So what?  They ran right back to a Democrat in Wallace (yes, he ran as an independent, but he went right back to the Dems and was unapologetic in his liberal fiscal views during the campaign) in 1968, sure they voted for Nixon in 1972 but so did every other state and they all came right back home to the Peanut Farmer in 1976.  Looking at the county maps, your rural, poor, White Southern counties STILL voted against Reagan in 1980; his strength came from the suburbs.  That is a fact.

The CRA caused Democrats to lose their stranglehold on Dixie; it by no means delivered it to the GOP.  The GOP had to 1) convince the South that its ECONOMIC interests actually lay with the Republicans and 2) wait for several "Dixiecrats" to die off.  Sorry if that gets in the way of your justification for why everyone who ever did anything good politically was a liberal and therefore the legacy of modern liberal Democrats can only then logically be a noble one, but history is a lot more complicated than "the parties switched" (seriously, I can see how a dumb^ss third grader can believe that, but people posting on this site with a wealth of data and knowledge at their disposal??).  Even on civil rights.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Hillary pays minimum wage on January 14, 2016, 12:59:38 AM
More important than numbers and data is reasons. Some Republican states have always been that way or at least go further back than you think. KS NE SD ND for example. As time goes on the issues change and the parties are forced to take stands on them based on what already appeals to their base. Time is to thank for the change. RI MA were Democrat just prior to the depression. The parties are half similar when compared to 50 years ago too if you look at the maps.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: hopper on January 17, 2016, 02:38:27 AM
Never.  Their platforms may have changed some over the years, but the switch wasn't as radical as liberals like to pretend it was.  That's just an excuse they make to keep repeating the lie that the racist Democrats joined the GOP after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

That's not a lie at all. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 set in motion the South's turn from D to R, hence why Barry Goldwater won 4 states that would have been easily for Johnson in any other circumstance. They fell in love with Reagan and the GOP in 1980 because of his dog whistle racism, and have voted Republican ever since. Since 1976, the Republicans have run further and further to the right, embracing racism more and more with each passing election.
Further and Further to the right? I don't think Trump is really that conservative. "The Club For Growth" for example hates Trump because only Bernie Sanders is more fiscally liberal than Trump out of all the Presidential Candidates running currently. You think George W. Bush, McCain, Bob Dole, and Romney were racists? You think all white people voted for Reagan because of dog whistle racism?


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Hillary pays minimum wage on January 17, 2016, 05:00:54 AM
Never. As for Wallace voters, the only two I ever knew were Democratic until 2004 and too senile to vote after that.

Despite what this forum would like to hear, that is probably how most "old school Dixiecrats" probably voted ... what is so appealing to them about a Connecticut, WASPy, dynasty family member of the Party of Lincoln who's clearly pretending to be a cowboy?  LOL.  These folks almost certainly voted for Clinton, and given they were probably already in their 60s by the time Reagan was running, I doubt they voted for the California Republican either.

Now I will say, if any true Dixiecrats were still alive, I bet they would have crossed party lines for the first time in order to prevent a Black man from being elected ... but most are dead.

Storm Thurmond? Richard Shelby? Fob James? Zell Miller? Buddy Roemer? The biggest racist ever to serve in the Senate, Jesse Helms? How about Trent Lott, Mills Godwin, Nathan Deal, and Sonny Perdue?

You're also the party of Strom Thurmond and mind you Robert Byrd.  Jesse Helms I believe was a Democrat.  You listen to the left and this is what happens.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Virginiá on January 17, 2016, 12:23:37 PM
You're also the party of Strom Thurmond and mind you Robert Byrd.  Jesse Helms I believe was a Democrat.  You listen to the left and this is what happens.

We can't deny that those people were Democrats (even if Strom switched long before he died). Robert Byrd appeared to turn over a new leaf quite some time before he died as well. Obviously I didn't know him personally, but he was definitely not acting racist, or saying racist things, or pushing racist policies for a long time before he died in 2010.

However, now these types of people are Republicans and have been for years, at least in most elections. There are racist northerners but there are quite a lot of racists from the South and will continue to be until the older generation is thoroughly replaced, and even then. It's not that the Republican party in itself has these racist overtones, it's their base of support (the South). Any party that represents these people will end up giving off that image until things change - And as I said, to varying degrees, they are changing.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Hillary pays minimum wage on January 17, 2016, 04:25:43 PM
You're also the party of Strom Thurmond and mind you Robert Byrd.  Jesse Helms I believe was a Democrat.  You listen to the left and this is what happens.

We can't deny that those people were Democrats (even if Strom switched long before he died). Robert Byrd appeared to turn over a new leaf quite some time before he died as well. Obviously I didn't know him personally, but he was definitely not acting racist, or saying racist things, or pushing racist policies for a long time before he died in 2010.

However, now these types of people are Republicans and have been for years, at least in most elections. There are racist northerners but there are quite a lot of racists from the South and will continue to be until the older generation is thoroughly replaced, and even then. It's not that the Republican party in itself has these racist overtones, it's their base of support (the South). Any party that represents these people will end up giving off that image until things change - And as I said, to varying degrees, they are changing.

I have two posting styles.  One is for those who know what's going on and one for talking heads of the far left.  Hopefully, when I reply to you, I'm much more respectful and polite.  You have a deep knowledge of government and history.  My party has had their share of rotten eggs too.  It's just not always as dramatic as some make it out to be.

Looking at 1964 and 1980 we see pivotal points in the electorate.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: hopper on January 17, 2016, 05:07:42 PM
You're also the party of Strom Thurmond and mind you Robert Byrd.  Jesse Helms I believe was a Democrat.  You listen to the left and this is what happens.

We can't deny that those people were Democrats (even if Strom switched long before he died). Robert Byrd appeared to turn over a new leaf quite some time before he died as well. Obviously I didn't know him personally, but he was definitely not acting racist, or saying racist things, or pushing racist policies for a long time before he died in 2010.

However, now these types of people are Republicans and have been for years, at least in most elections. There are racist northerners but there are quite a lot of racists from the South and will continue to be until the older generation is thoroughly replaced, and even then. It's not that the Republican party in itself has these racist overtones, it's their base of support (the South). Any party that represents these people will end up giving off that image until things change - And as I said, to varying degrees, they are changing.
Yeah I think Byrd gave up his racist plank in the early 1980's.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Rockefeller GOP on January 17, 2016, 07:55:29 PM
You're also the party of Strom Thurmond and mind you Robert Byrd.  Jesse Helms I believe was a Democrat.  You listen to the left and this is what happens.

We can't deny that those people were Democrats (even if Strom switched long before he died). Robert Byrd appeared to turn over a new leaf quite some time before he died as well. Obviously I didn't know him personally, but he was definitely not acting racist, or saying racist things, or pushing racist policies for a long time before he died in 2010.

However, now these types of people are Republicans and have been for years, at least in most elections. There are racist northerners but there are quite a lot of racists from the South and will continue to be until the older generation is thoroughly replaced, and even then. It's not that the Republican party in itself has these racist overtones, it's their base of support (the South). Any party that represents these people will end up giving off that image until things change - And as I said, to varying degrees, they are changing.
Yeah I think Byrd gave up his racist plank in the early 1980's.

So did Thurmond and Helms, but they don't get a pass from Democrats.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: / on January 17, 2016, 08:18:40 PM
lmao "the parties never switched platforms"


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Hillary pays minimum wage on January 17, 2016, 08:20:11 PM
lmao "the parties never switched platforms"

Go on?


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: / on January 17, 2016, 08:48:50 PM

(
)

Red - States that voted majority R before 1964 and majority D since 1964
Blue - States that voted majority D before 1964 and majority R since 1964
Green - States that voted majority R both before and after 1964
Orange - States that voted majority D both before and after 1964
Yellow - States that voted for both parties equally before 1964 and majority R since 1964

This seems to imply (correctly) that either the parties or the states switched platforms sometime around 1964.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Hillary pays minimum wage on January 17, 2016, 08:52:45 PM

(
)

Red - States that voted majority R before 1964 and majority D since 1964
Blue - States that voted majority D before 1964 and majority R since 1964
Green - States that voted majority R both before and after 1964
Orange - States that voted majority D both before and after 1964
Yellow - States that voted for both parties equally before 1964 and majority R since 1964

This seems to imply (correctly) that either the parties or the states switched platforms sometime around 1964.

I'm glad to see this. Platforms evolve with issues as they change. They're partly similar and partly different. It's not as simple as saying they changed it stayed the same. Nice work!


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Intell on January 17, 2016, 08:55:14 PM
lmao "the parties never switched platforms"

They didn't, their bases just changed.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: / on January 17, 2016, 08:56:57 PM
lmao "the parties never switched platforms"

They didn't, their bases just changed.

???

Their bases changed because their platforms changed.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Bojack Horseman on January 17, 2016, 09:24:41 PM
Never.  Their platforms may have changed some over the years, but the switch wasn't as radical as liberals like to pretend it was.  That's just an excuse they make to keep repeating the lie that the racist Democrats joined the GOP after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

That's not a lie at all. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 set in motion the South's turn from D to R, hence why Barry Goldwater won 4 states that would have been easily for Johnson in any other circumstance. They fell in love with Reagan and the GOP in 1980 because of his dog whistle racism, and have voted Republican ever since. Since 1976, the Republicans have run further and further to the right, embracing racism more and more with each passing election.
Further and Further to the right? I don't think Trump is really that conservative. "The Club For Growth" for example hates Trump because only Bernie Sanders is more fiscally liberal than Trump out of all the Presidential Candidates running currently. You think George W. Bush, McCain, Bob Dole, and Romney were racists? You think all white people voted for Reagan because of dog whistle racism?

Reagan went to Emmet Till's hometown and gave a speech about "states' rights." I'll let Lee Atwater explain it further: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MAPeFRNtTP4


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Rockefeller GOP on January 17, 2016, 09:36:33 PM
lmao "the parties never switched platforms"

They didn't, their bases just changed.

???

Their bases changed because their platforms changed.

I know you're like some high school kid, but parties don't just "switch" platforms.  That's insanity.  If you think it's that simple, there's no way around the fact that you're a moron.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: OSR stands with Israel on January 17, 2016, 10:12:52 PM

(
)

Red - States that voted majority R before 1964 and majority D since 1964
Blue - States that voted majority D before 1964 and majority R since 1964
Green - States that voted majority R both before and after 1964
Orange - States that voted majority D both before and after 1964
Yellow - States that voted for both parties equally before 1964 and majority R since 1964

This seems to imply (correctly) that either the parties or the states switched platforms sometime around 1964.

Calvin Coolidge was not more liberal then FDR then Wilson in any way. FDR and Wilson dominated the south while Coolidge dominated the North east and west


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Stranger in a strange land on January 17, 2016, 11:02:39 PM
The parties didn't switch. The party coalitions (who votes for which party and more importantly, why) changed.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: RINO Tom on January 18, 2016, 12:27:21 AM
The parties didn't switch. The party coalitions (who votes for which party and more importantly, why) changed.

And this should be obvious and very distinguishable from the laughable fairytale that "the parties switched" for just about anyone with a working brain.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Goldwater on January 18, 2016, 12:52:39 AM

(
)

Red - States that voted majority R before 1964 and majority D since 1964
Blue - States that voted majority D before 1964 and majority R since 1964
Green - States that voted majority R both before and after 1964
Orange - States that voted majority D both before and after 1964
Yellow - States that voted for both parties equally before 1964 and majority R since 1964

This seems to imply (correctly) that either the parties or the states switched platforms sometime around 1964.

So you're saying that, for example, the 1988 Republican Party platform is the same as the 1940 Democratic Party platform, and vice versa? Because that's laughably ridiculous.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Kosmos on January 18, 2016, 03:09:41 PM
I was under the impression that it began in the 1960s?


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Rockefeller GOP on January 18, 2016, 03:15:38 PM
I was under the impression that it began in the 1960s?

LOL, well it didn't begin or happen at all.

Change =/= switch.  Obviously parties change with each decade.  However, there are quite obvious conservative elements of the GOP of every age, and there have been liberal elements of the Democratic Party in every age.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: RINO Tom on January 19, 2016, 04:40:16 PM
Obviously anyone with a brain knows that the parties used to be much more of "big tent" organizations, but how could someone argue that a Democratic Party (and a predecessor Democratic-Republican Party) could be cranking out quotes like this and still be considered a "conservative" political party (which would be implied, as these quotes were all made before most mythical "switch" dates)?

“I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
– Thomas Jefferson

“Corporations, which should be carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”
– Grover Cleveland, who is for some reason viewed as this "original DINO" of sorts, LOL

“I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
– Woodrow Wilson's acceptance speech at the 1912 Democratic National Convention

“Democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt ... to be fair, when people talk about party switching in the '60s, they just conveniently leave out the '30s and '40s rather than make up lies about them

Combine that with these types of quotes from Republicans and Whigs and Federalists long before any mythical switch dates, and it's literally undeniable that there have remained progressive elements of the Democrats and conservative elements of the GOP since the beginning:

“That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise.”
– Abraham Lincoln, quoted in a speech by NOTORIOUS "RINO" Teddy Roosevelt

“I never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence ... [the Declaration] does not declare that all men are equal in their attainments or social position.”
– Abraham Lincoln

"You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves."
- Abraham Lincoln

"The first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to carry his own weight."
- Teddy Roosevelt

There has absolutely been a similar *attitude*, especially on economic affairs, that has stayed consistent through the ages - with the Republicans being the party that celebrates the near perfection of the free market, the idea of the self-made man and praising economic individualism while the Democrats have always been skeptical of this approach, weary of giving business too much freedom/power and believing that the government should be there for the less fortunate.  When you consider that social issues change every 20-30 years, what is so different?  The coalitions?  Well duh ... But the coalitions have changed since the 1990s, and the parties obviously haven't "switched" since then.

Honestly, looking at a few maps and deciding that the parties must have been opposite in the past is a simpleton's exercise and intellectually lazy, not to mention a disrespect to a wealth of primary sources.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Virginiá on January 19, 2016, 05:30:10 PM

So did Thurmond and Helms, but they don't get a pass from Democrats.

Did he, though (I am legitimately asking)? I see articles around, particularly this Slate one, about how he never publicly renounced his views on racial segregation. I was able to find plenty of Byrd-related material with him renouncing this or that, and even pushing policies or ideas that no Dixiecrat would ever do.

I'd like to think Strom came around, but I don't actually know if he did, and if it was genuine.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: RINO Tom on January 19, 2016, 06:59:53 PM

So did Thurmond and Helms, but they don't get a pass from Democrats.

Did he, though (I am legitimately asking)? I see articles around, particularly this Slate one, about how he never publicly renounced his views on racial segregation. I was able to find plenty of Byrd-related material with him renouncing this or that, and even pushing policies or ideas that no Dixiecrat would ever do.

I'd like to think Strom came around, but I don't actually know if he did, and if it was genuine.

I'm not sure about Thurmond, but I know he fathered and cared for a Black daughter ... couldn't have been THAT racist, LOL.  And Helms hired James Meredith (first Black student to ever attend Ole Miss) on his staff and was apparently (according to Wikipedia) the only Senator to return his inquiries.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Virginiá on January 19, 2016, 07:06:30 PM

So did Thurmond and Helms, but they don't get a pass from Democrats.

Did he, though (I am legitimately asking)? I see articles around, particularly this Slate one, about how he never publicly renounced his views on racial segregation. I was able to find plenty of Byrd-related material with him renouncing this or that, and even pushing policies or ideas that no Dixiecrat would ever do.

I'd like to think Strom came around, but I don't actually know if he did, and if it was genuine.

I'm not sure about Thurmond, but I know he fathered and cared for a Black daughter ... couldn't have been THAT racist, LOL.  And Helms hired James Meredith (first Black student to ever attend Ole Miss) on his staff and was apparently (according to Wikipedia) the only Senator to return his inquiries.

I do remember reading that. Apparently he got her pregnant when he was 22 or so. I think all that makes him is a hypocrite, because he still went on to be pretty thoroughly racist after doing that. After all, it happened in the 20s and it was literally generations before things began to change.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: RINO Tom on January 19, 2016, 07:14:08 PM
Also not exactly related to Strom, but Paul Thurmond (his son) did call for the removal of the Confederate Flag this summer and had the decency and historical literacy to admit that the Civil War was fought over slavery. ;)

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/06/south-carolina-state-senator-and-son-segregationist-just-called-confederate-flags-remov


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on January 20, 2016, 02:39:45 AM
It is easy to look at a map and ignore the context within each of those states during those periods. The Depression saw the mobilization of a New Deal Coalition, including ethnic whites, minorities and Jeffersonian-Jacksonian Democrats (Southern Illinois for instance). The growth and organization power of unions, gave Democrats a permenant advantage in most of the cities, out voting the urban based GOP middle class base. At the time rural areas were split with places like rural New England, upstate NY, Central and Northern PA and the rural portions of Northern OH, ILL, and Indiana voting Republican. Meanwhile the Southern portions of ILL, IN and OH and even parts of Southern PA voted Democratic.

The effect of this was that Republicans could no longer win in the North at the levels necessary to sustain majorities and everytime things went bad, the GOP imploded like 1948 and 1958. Only people with substantial union support like Rockefeller could win. Prior to the New Deal Coalition, you had people like Republican James Wadsworth getting elected as Senator of New York. Wadsworth opposed women voting and the FDA. Harding got 60% in New York and Coolidge was the last Republican to win New York City. Upstate could actually outvote the city or at least come close to it, and in the city you had a substantial WASP middle class Republican vote. You also had far left Italian Progressives like Fio join the Republicans because the Democratic establishment in Tammany Hall was hostile to them. And of course African-Americans were still voting Republican. After the New Deal, only Liberal Republicans of the mold of Thomas Dewey and his heirs could win in the state.

After World War II, the WASP Middle class moved to the suburbs as did a good number of first Irish and German, and then Italian new middle class voters and powered Republican strength in places like Suffolk, Nassau and Westchester, as well as Staten Island within the city. But the Democratic margins in the city were thus increased and the growth in the city was amongst Democratic leaning demographics, Hispanics and African Americans, as well as more recent ethnic white immigrants, who were thus poorer.  Beginning in the post-war period you had a simultaneous move to the sunbelt, by largely the same group of middle class Republicans. This ramped up in the 1970's and 1980's and helped make Florida so Republican during the Reagan era until the movement diversified and even became Democratic leaning towards the late 1980's.

You cannot look at a map and presume everything else remains the same. Demographic change has a big impact and it is not just in cities. As the new group comes in, the old group's areas of majority are pushed further and further out. The only English majority/plurality counties in New York are in the central upstate. The Irish majority/plurality counties are in the Hudson valley and the Italian majority/plurality ones are NYC suburbs. In 1860, most every county in the state would be English Majority and even super majority with the city being Irish plurality or majority. One hundred or more years before that it was the same story with the Dutch being pushed further and further out by the English. Note this does not mean their presence in the city disappeared, merely that it was swamped by larger and newer demographics. It also doesn't mean there was necessary a flight of people, just that rural counties are naturally behind the city in terms of demographic change by two or three groups.

A massive inmigration of people occured into Vermont and New Hampshire. The one going into New Hampshire was largely Republican leaning consisting of the right demographics leaving Taxachusetts. The opposite was true of Vermont as liberals from Boston and New York located there. Both states as well as Maine, naturally drifted to the Democrats in the 1960's and early 1970's, but New Hampshire swung back hard to the GOP in the 1970's and 1980's, becoming one of 41s best states, largely because of that inmigration. More recent groups moving into NH have been Democratic leaning.

The native demographics of both states fit the GOP like a glove. WASP, rural and Northern. NH had pockets of working class ethnics and more residual Jacksonian Democrats hence why Wilson won it and it was the least Republican of the three Northern New England states. However, that native population changed in its attitudes. It became far more secular over the course of the 20th century. Environmentalism became a big concern as religion became less of one and that was a big thing in the 1960s and 1970s. They were also non-interventionist, protectionist and hostile to immigration, both of which meant that the new sunbelt GOP was a horrible fit for them across the board. Even so there was still a negative reaction to the influx of urban liberals on the part of the Vermont natives and it created a reaction in the late 1990's, which crested in a 10% loss to Howard Dean and Bush losing by about 10% to Gore in 2000.

Remember the two cores of GOP support in the North. Forget Ideology and forget limited government/bigger government for a minute.

Urban/suburban Middle and upper class WASPs - inherited from the Federalists
Select Rural Areas - inherited in waves from Jeffersonian Republicans and eventually Jacksonian Democrats.

This is by nature an at-least center right coalition. It is also not a winning a coalition even before the New Deal. Republicans used tariffs to augment it with workers and some Republicans were rather pro-labor because it was necessary to sustain a pro-industrial party to prevent poor farmers from uniting with poor workers in a Democratic coalition, which is what happened in the 1930s. There was thus substantial space for Progressives to operate within the GOP as well not just with the Civil War legacy, but this geographic necessity of appealing to labor.

What changed was after World War II, the anti-New Deal right realized there was no going back to 1924 in the Northeast and Midwest. Numerous Republicans were moving to the South and Ikes popularity loosened people up to at least considering a Republican in the South. This process began in 1952 with places like Virginia and Tennessee, which had the largest residual bases of GOP support of any of the Southern states, and the fast growing cities of the South like Charlotte, Dallas, Tampa and going further west, Phoenix. Beginning in 1948 and doubled up in 1964, many Southerners no longer regarded the Democrats as their champions on Civil Rights and while some switched solely because of Goldwater, most who switched at these points because they were conservative pro-business suburbanites who viewed their home party not only has hostile on race issues but also on economic ones. They saw the Republicans as a viable alternative for the first time now that there was "not a dimes worth a difference" on Civil Rights anymore. Even use of the dog whistle tactics mentioned by Democrats in this thread was an attempt to be the "lesser of two evils" on the issue and those issues like busing had as much appeal in Michigan, as the Dallas surbubs.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: RINO Tom on January 20, 2016, 10:24:53 PM
Great post, NC Yankee.  I'll add one more thing that I think any self-respecting student of history needs to truly comprehend: we cannot project our ideas of tolerant/intolerant, conservative/liberal, enlightened/unenlightened, etc. onto different eras without being VERY careful.  For example, everyone would look back on the Civil War era and at first glance think of the Democrats as the clearly more intolerant, racist party that was on the wrong side of history, while the GOP was this tolerant, forward-thinking mechanism for change, but people during that day certainly didn't see things in that black and white of terms.  I'm reminded of this quote on pg. 205 of the book "Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of Civil War" by Bruce Levine, a book I had to read for an advanced Civil War & Reconstruction class in college:

"Especially in the North, Democrats strove to depict the contest between themselves and their opponents (the Republicans) as one between cultural tolerance and bigorty (against the South, against Catholics, against the foreign-born).  Only the Democrats were ready to protect the rights of all white residents, native- and foreign-born alike, and regardless of religious faith.  'Let this be made the issue in the Newspapers & the Legislature & everywhere,' Stephen A. Douglas had earlier advised..."

People need to remember that almost every White American of the 1860s thought Blacks were literally an inferior race, including the vast majority of Republicans, and there were VERY real (and at the time considered persuasive) arguments being made by Democrats that slavery was actually good for Black Americans and Republicans were just giving them a path to starving on the streets.



Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: mianfei on February 24, 2018, 07:14:34 AM
It is easy to look at a map and ignore the context within each of those states during those periods. The Depression saw the mobilization of a New Deal Coalition, including ethnic whites, minorities and Jeffersonian-Jacksonian Democrats (Southern Illinois for instance). The growth and organization power of unions, gave Democrats a permenant advantage in most of the cities, out voting the urban based GOP middle class base. At the time rural areas were split with places like rural New England, upstate NY, Central and Northern PA and the rural portions of Northern OH, ILL, and Indiana voting Republican. Meanwhile the Southern portions of ILL, IN and OH and even parts of Southern PA voted Democratic.

The effect of this was that Republicans could no longer win in the North at the levels necessary to sustain majorities and everytime things went bad, the GOP imploded like 1948 and 1958. Only people with substantial union support like Rockefeller could win. Prior to the New Deal Coalition, you had people like Republican James Wadsworth getting elected as Senator of New York. Wadsworth opposed women voting and the FDA. Harding got 60% in New York and Coolidge was the last Republican to win New York City. Upstate could actually outvote the city or at least come close to it, and in the city you had a substantial WASP middle class Republican vote. You also had far left Italian Progressives like Fio join the Republicans because the Democratic establishment in Tammany Hall was hostile to them. And of course African-Americans were still voting Republican. After the New Deal, only Liberal Republicans of the mold of Thomas Dewey and his heirs could win in the state.

After World War II, the WASP Middle class moved to the suburbs as did a good number of first Irish and German, and then Italian new middle class voters and powered Republican strength in places like Suffolk, Nassau and Westchester, as well as Staten Island within the city. But the Democratic margins in the city were thus increased and the growth in the city was amongst Democratic leaning demographics, Hispanics and African Americans, as well as more recent ethnic white immigrants, who were thus poorer.  Beginning in the post-war period you had a simultaneous move to the sunbelt, by largely the same group of middle class Republicans. This ramped up in the 1970's and 1980's and helped make Florida so Republican during the Reagan era until the movement diversified and even became Democratic leaning towards the late 1980's.

You cannot look at a map and presume everything else remains the same. Demographic change has a big impact and it is not just in cities. As the new group comes in, the old group's areas of majority are pushed further and further out. The only English majority/plurality counties in New York are in the central upstate. The Irish majority/plurality counties are in the Hudson valley and the Italian majority/plurality ones are NYC suburbs. In 1860, most every county in the state would be English Majority and even super majority with the city being Irish plurality or majority. One hundred or more years before that it was the same story with the Dutch being pushed further and further out by the English. Note this does not mean their presence in the city disappeared, merely that it was swamped by larger and newer demographics. It also doesn't mean there was necessary a flight of people, just that rural counties are naturally behind the city in terms of demographic change by two or three groups.

A massive inmigration of people occured into Vermont and New Hampshire. The one going into New Hampshire was largely Republican leaning consisting of the right demographics leaving Taxachusetts. The opposite was true of Vermont as liberals from Boston and New York located there. Both states as well as Maine, naturally drifted to the Democrats in the 1960's and early 1970's, but New Hampshire swung back hard to the GOP in the 1970's and 1980's, becoming one of 41s best states, largely because of that inmigration. More recent groups moving into NH have been Democratic leaning.

The native demographics of both states fit the GOP like a glove. WASP, rural and Northern. NH had pockets of working class ethnics and more residual Jacksonian Democrats hence why Wilson won it and it was the least Republican of the three Northern New England states. However, that native population changed in its attitudes. It became far more secular over the course of the 20th century. Environmentalism became a big concern as religion became less of one and that was a big thing in the 1960s and 1970s. They were also non-interventionist, protectionist and hostile to immigration, both of which meant that the new sunbelt GOP was a horrible fit for them across the board. Even so there was still a negative reaction to the influx of urban liberals on the part of the Vermont natives and it created a reaction in the late 1990's, which crested in a 10% loss to Howard Dean and Bush losing by about 10% to Gore in 2000.

Remember the two cores of GOP support in the North. Forget Ideology and forget limited government/bigger government for a minute.

Urban/suburban Middle and upper class WASPs - inherited from the Federalists
Select Rural Areas - inherited in waves from Jeffersonian Republicans and eventually Jacksonian Democrats.

This is by nature an at-least center right coalition. It is also not a winning a coalition even before the New Deal. Republicans used tariffs to augment it with workers and some Republicans were rather pro-labor because it was necessary to sustain a pro-industrial party to prevent poor farmers from uniting with poor workers in a Democratic coalition, which is what happened in the 1930s. There was thus substantial space for Progressives to operate within the GOP as well not just with the Civil War legacy, but this geographic necessity of appealing to labor.

What changed was after World War II, the anti-New Deal right realized there was no going back to 1924 in the Northeast and Midwest. Numerous Republicans were moving to the South and Ikes popularity loosened people up to at least considering a Republican in the South. This process began in 1952 with places like Virginia and Tennessee, which had the largest residual bases of GOP support of any of the Southern states, and the fast growing cities of the South like Charlotte, Dallas, Tampa and going further west, Phoenix. Beginning in 1948 and doubled up in 1964, many Southerners no longer regarded the Democrats as their champions on Civil Rights and while some switched solely because of Goldwater, most who switched at these points because they were conservative pro-business suburbanites who viewed their home party not only has hostile on race issues but also on economic ones. They saw the Republicans as a viable alternative for the first time now that there was "not a dimes worth a difference" on Civil Rights anymore. Even use of the dog whistle tactics mentioned by Democrats in this thread was an attempt to be the "lesser of two evils" on the issue and those issues like busing had as much appeal in Michigan, as the Dallas suburbs.
Excellent post! The importance of the Sun Belt migration in causing a large scale partisan reversal by providing opportunities for an anti-New-Deal party. In essence, the Sun Belt takeover of politics was what permitted the Republicans to win seven of ten Presidential elections (and nearly win two of the other three) between 1952 and 1988. Middle class white suburbanites were a perfect fit for an economically conservative low-tax party hostile to the very high income tax rates introduced to fund World War II, the Marshall Plan, the Korean War and the Great Society. They also were desperate to see the government stay out of social engineering to deal with racial problems caused by the “Great Migration” which had begun in the 1910s and accelerated during the Civil Rights era.

The one bug I have in your analysis is the omission of the Pacific Northwest (at least that area west of the Cascades). This region has been the most socially liberal of the nation since long before party vote correlations reversed at a state level in the 1960s. Washington, Oregon and California (also Hawaii which was far from statehood at this stage) were single-party Republican bastions between the Panic of 1893 and the New Deal. However, these states turned overwhelmingly to FDR in 1932 and 1936 (Landon was a terrible fit for these states even vis-à-vis most of the rest of the nation) but until a major Democratic revolution in 1954 remained strongly Republican at the state level. Especially in Washington, the GOP was frequently threatened by leftist third party movements, up to William Hope Harvey in 1932 reaching 20 percent in Thurston County. Big-government New Deal Democrats were – despite their social conservatism and Catholic influence – a better fit than a free-market GOP.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Kyle Rittenhouse is a Political Prisoner on February 26, 2018, 10:54:19 AM
On an economic level, from ~1860 to ~1925 the two were roughly even, but after this the Democrats became markedly more economically liberal. On social issues, the switch happened on a presidential level from ~1964 to ~1984, but took some time to percolate down ballot. As a result, it would be accurate to say the GOP during much of the 19th and 20th centuries was the more “liberal” party. Nowadays, this is clearly not true.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: OSR stands with Israel on February 26, 2018, 01:55:34 PM
On an economic level, from ~1860 to ~1925 the two were roughly even, but after this the Democrats became markedly more economically liberal. On social issues, the switch happened on a presidential level from ~1964 to ~1984, but took some time to percolate down ballot. As a result, it would be accurate to say the GOP during much of the 19th and 20th centuries was the more “liberal” party. Nowadays, this is clearly not true.

How many GOP nominees from 1896-1996 was more liberal than the Democratic one lol(There is only 1 and that is 1904)


The fact is ever since the election of 1896 the GOP has been the more conservative party, and the election of 1912 solidified it.




Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: America's Sweetheart ❤/𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖙𝖞 𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖗 on February 26, 2018, 04:19:36 PM
On an economic level, from ~1860 to ~1925 the two were roughly even, but after this the Democrats became markedly more economically liberal. On social issues, the switch happened on a presidential level from ~1964 to ~1984, but took some time to percolate down ballot. As a result, it would be accurate to say the GOP during much of the 19th and 20th centuries was the more “liberal” party. Nowadays, this is clearly not true.

How many GOP nominees from 1896-1996 was more liberal than the Democratic one lol(There is only 1 and that is 1904)


The fact is ever since the election of 1896 the GOP has been the more conservative party, and the election of 1912 solidified it.



I wonder if TR had won the GOP nomination in 1912 instead of running third party, if that would have taken the party in a progressive direction for the foreseeable future.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: darklordoftech on February 26, 2018, 07:24:52 PM
"The parties have completely switched" and "the parties haven't switched whatsoever" are both oversimplifications. The Republicans have always been the more business-friendly party and the Democrats have always used "common man" rhetoric. However, it used to be that businesses wanted the government to help them and the Democrats saw the free market as anti-elitist, parties have definitely switched their views on blacks, etc. New England used to be more religious, but it was a pr o-civil rights, feminist, and pro-education form of religion. Grover Cleveland opposed women's suffrage.

On another note, William Jennings Bryan was the Bernie Sanders to Cleveland's Bill/Hillary Clinton.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: OSR stands with Israel on February 26, 2018, 09:25:20 PM
On an economic level, from ~1860 to ~1925 the two were roughly even, but after this the Democrats became markedly more economically liberal. On social issues, the switch happened on a presidential level from ~1964 to ~1984, but took some time to percolate down ballot. As a result, it would be accurate to say the GOP during much of the 19th and 20th centuries was the more “liberal” party. Nowadays, this is clearly not true.

How many GOP nominees from 1896-1996 was more liberal than the Democratic one lol(There is only 1 and that is 1904)


The fact is ever since the election of 1896 the GOP has been the more conservative party, and the election of 1912 solidified it.



I wonder if TR had won the GOP nomination in 1912 instead of running third party, if that would have taken the party in a progressive direction for the foreseeable future.


depends on if Wilson still gets elected or not . If Wilson still gets elected almost certainly not , if Taft wins maybe.



Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Karpatsky on February 26, 2018, 09:41:04 PM
On Economics- GOP has always been more right wing
Foreign Policy- They were about the same until the 1970s when the GOP became more hawkish
Social Policy- Gradual from truman to lbj



Basically this.

A lot of people fighting strawmen in this thread. No one with any knowledge of the situation thinks that one day in 1964 Johnson sent Strom Thurmond over to the Republican caucus with a briefcase full of political positions and asked them to send theirs over. And I think one would have to be willfully ignorant to deny that the cultural conservatism which was once the basis of the Solid South is now almost completely in the Republican camp. The question is not whether these trends exist, because they clearly do, but to what extent they exist, what issues they touch, and how long it took for them to become apparent.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Chunk Yogurt for President! on February 26, 2018, 10:25:51 PM
The bases of both parties would have revolted if the platforms switched.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: darklordoftech on February 27, 2018, 03:50:11 PM
The Jacksonian Democrats opposed public schools.

In 1820-1928, Prohibition was generally supported by Protestant Republicans and opposed by Catholic and Jewish Democrats. In 1984, Frank Lautenberg, a Jewish Democrat, introduced the National Drinking Age act, and initially, the Democrats supported it and the Republicans, including Reagan himself, opposed it.

While the Democrats have always used "common man" rhetoric, I'm not sure how a slaveowning planter elite is any less elitist than a mercantile elite. If a slaveowner calling a banker "elitist" isn't an example of the pot calling the kettle black, I'm not sure what is.

Grover Cleveland opposed disaster relief and women's suffrage.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Kyle Rittenhouse is a Political Prisoner on March 02, 2018, 05:22:41 PM
On an economic level, from ~1860 to ~1925 the two were roughly even, but after this the Democrats became markedly more economically liberal. On social issues, the switch happened on a presidential level from ~1964 to ~1984, but took some time to percolate down ballot. As a result, it would be accurate to say the GOP during much of the 19th and 20th centuries was the more “liberal” party. Nowadays, this is clearly not true.

How many GOP nominees from 1896-1996 was more liberal than the Democratic one lol(There is only 1 and that is 1904)


The fact is ever since the election of 1896 the GOP has been the more conservative party, and the election of 1912 solidified it.



In 1924, 1916, 1908, 1904. From 1896-1932, the GOP was more liberal most of the time.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: OSR stands with Israel on March 02, 2018, 05:56:38 PM
On an economic level, from ~1860 to ~1925 the two were roughly even, but after this the Democrats became markedly more economically liberal. On social issues, the switch happened on a presidential level from ~1964 to ~1984, but took some time to percolate down ballot. As a result, it would be accurate to say the GOP during much of the 19th and 20th centuries was the more “liberal” party. Nowadays, this is clearly not true.

How many GOP nominees from 1896-1996 was more liberal than the Democratic one lol(There is only 1 and that is 1904)


The fact is ever since the election of 1896 the GOP has been the more conservative party, and the election of 1912 solidified it.



In 1924, 1916, 1908, 1904. From 1896-1932, the GOP was more liberal most of the time.


1924 LMAO , Calvin Coolidge was probably the most conservative president since the 1850s and ran on his record of huge tax cuts , enforcing prohibition , making government smaller , and restricting immigration.


1916 lol again Wilson was clearly more liberal than Hughes

1908 Bryan was clearly more liberal than Taft


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: darklordoftech on March 02, 2018, 06:56:20 PM
On an economic level, from ~1860 to ~1925 the two were roughly even, but after this the Democrats became markedly more economically liberal. On social issues, the switch happened on a presidential level from ~1964 to ~1984, but took some time to percolate down ballot. As a result, it would be accurate to say the GOP during much of the 19th and 20th centuries was the more “liberal” party. Nowadays, this is clearly not true.

How many GOP nominees from 1896-1996 was more liberal than the Democratic one lol(There is only 1 and that is 1904)


The fact is ever since the election of 1896 the GOP has been the more conservative party, and the election of 1912 solidified it.



In 1924, 1916, 1908, 1904. From 1896-1932, the GOP was more liberal most of the time.


1924 LMAO , Calvin Coolidge was probably the most conservative president since the 1850s and ran on his record of huge tax cuts , enforcing prohibition , making government smaller , and restricting immigration.


1916 lol again Wilson was clearly more liberal than Hughes

1908 Bryan was clearly more liberal than Taft
Coolidge's opponent opposed child labor laws and anti-lynching laws while Coolidge supported both.

Bryan was perhaps the most liberal politician of his time, but is often misremembered thanks to the Scopes Trial. What few remember is that the time, evolution was being used to justify eugenics and social darwinism.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: OSR stands with Israel on March 02, 2018, 07:04:14 PM
On an economic level, from ~1860 to ~1925 the two were roughly even, but after this the Democrats became markedly more economically liberal. On social issues, the switch happened on a presidential level from ~1964 to ~1984, but took some time to percolate down ballot. As a result, it would be accurate to say the GOP during much of the 19th and 20th centuries was the more “liberal” party. Nowadays, this is clearly not true.

How many GOP nominees from 1896-1996 was more liberal than the Democratic one lol(There is only 1 and that is 1904)


The fact is ever since the election of 1896 the GOP has been the more conservative party, and the election of 1912 solidified it.



In 1924, 1916, 1908, 1904. From 1896-1932, the GOP was more liberal most of the time.


1924 LMAO , Calvin Coolidge was probably the most conservative president since the 1850s and ran on his record of huge tax cuts , enforcing prohibition , making government smaller , and restricting immigration.


1916 lol again Wilson was clearly more liberal than Hughes

1908 Bryan was clearly more liberal than Taft
Coolidge's opponent opposed child labor laws and anti-lynching laws while Coolidge supported both.

Bryan was perhaps the most liberal politician of his time, but is often misremembered thanks to the Scopes Trial. What few remember is that the time, evolution was being used to justify eugenics and social darwinism.

Coolidge at the state level was much much different than the Coolidge at the Presidential Level. Presidential Coolidge probably is the most conservative President since at least the 1850s.


Here is the 1924 Democratic Platform: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29593

They slam the GOP for being in bed with Big Business and supporting a tax policy that helps the rich.







Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: mianfei on March 02, 2018, 07:31:14 PM
On an economic level, from ~1860 to ~1925 the two were roughly even, but after this the Democrats became markedly more economically liberal. On social issues, the switch happened on a presidential level from ~1964 to ~1984, but took some time to percolate down ballot. As a result, it would be accurate to say the GOP during much of the 19th and 20th centuries was the more “liberal” party. Nowadays, this is clearly not true.
As David Carlin pointed out in his 2006 book Can a Catholic Be a Democrat?, although the GOP was economically more conservative (in general) from 1896 onwards, the New Deal Democrats were always socially extremely conservative by today’s standards, and much more morally conservative than Northern and Pacific state Republicans.

As one illustration, it was the FDR administration that introduced the Hays Code for motion pictures, which was extremely restrictive compared to what could be filmed in Europe where the working classes were extremely anti-religion (especially Catholicism). As another, the New Deal saw the development of the “family wage” as an effort to hold and encourage permanent marriages, because it was felt that women working depressed wages, increased unemployment, and had been encouraged (if wholly tacitly) by the free-market GOP administrations in the 1920s.

However, the crises brought about by attempts to enforce facility integration in the 1950s and 1960s forcibly turned the Democratic Party away from ideals of the “natural family” and toward social engineering and acceptance of “alternative” lifestyles like homosexuality and cohabitation. As I said in my previous post, the “Revolution of 1954” in the Pacific States was the prelude to this change, and led to elimination of laws on abortion and homosexuality for the first time in US history in these states. In fact, this 1954 revolution was in my view an undoubted factor reversing historic party alignments in the rest of the nation.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on March 02, 2018, 08:05:26 PM
The one bug I have in your analysis is the omission of the Pacific Northwest (at least that area west of the Cascades). This region has been the most socially liberal of the nation since long before party vote correlations reversed at a state level in the 1960s. Washington, Oregon and California (also Hawaii which was far from statehood at this stage) were single-party Republican bastions between the Panic of 1893 and the New Deal. However, these states turned overwhelmingly to FDR in 1932 and 1936 (Landon was a terrible fit for these states even vis-à-vis most of the rest of the nation) but until a major Democratic revolution in 1954 remained strongly Republican at the state level. Especially in Washington, the GOP was frequently threatened by leftist third party movements, up to William Hope Harvey in 1932 reaching 20 percent in Thurston County. Big-government New Deal Democrats were – despite their social conservatism and Catholic influence – a better fit than a free-market GOP.

Well I have since refined some of my knowledge and have read "The Emerging Republican Majority" by Kevin Phillips.

Oregon was the most stable of the states and the most pro-Republican, conservative in a Burkean sense, it resisted a lot of the populist surges and radical impulses, that swept over Washington and California. The reason for this was that it was largely dominated by Protestant Yankees in the Portland area, and while the eastern part had a large number of Southerners move in, it was not enough to fundamentally erode that power bastion. At least not until the New Deal Era, especially the 1950's.

Northern California was impact by this same trend, but Southern California was exploding in Population and So-cal was basically an extension of the sunbelt. Half of Iowa basically picked up and moved to Orange county in the mid 20th century, as well as large number from all of the Midwestern states. The industries, demographics and ethos meant that these counties were solidly Republican and fast growing. So even if the Republicans lost ground in Norcal, they would replace it in Socal, which is what enabled them win CA from 1952 until 1988 with the exception of 1964.

A lot of Yankee Republican bastions saw shifts towards the Democrats and away from the Republicans in the 1950's midterms. Conservatives found themselves being replaced by liberals or by Democrats in Vermont and UES New York (though in migration and other demographic changes were always a factor as well). In the 1960's, many of the remaining Representatives of these "Yankee" districts, raced to left to try and catch up to their electorates. They supported Rockefeller over Nixon and their voting records in Congress surged to the left as well. This was a Quixotic and doomed strategy because the GOP basically broke away from its Yankee base by 1964 to become a Southern, German and Irish middle class party, with a declining but still solid contingent of Yankee whites. This was the case in 1968, which is when the book was written about. All they accomplished was to alienate themselves from the new base and lead to formation of the concept of "Liberal or RINO Republicanism".

In essence the Republicans changed bases rather than change ideologically. As a part of this process though, it is unavoidable that the party would evolve to match its new demographics. So a shift from Old Right Taft to Neoconservatism on defense for instance. An embrace of free trade instead of protectionism, which no longer swayed workers post Depression anyway. An ever growing view of hostility towards government since Southerners hate the federal gov't, Irish hate the establishment and the Germans hated communism and were distasteful of WW1 and even WW2 to some extent.

But generally this is what is mistaken for the "platform switch". The platforms didn't switch, the Democrat's old base became alienated by the New Deal, Civil Rights and Foreign Policy and gravitated towards the Republicans, who had a minority coalition to begin with. This gave the Republicans a large minority coalition, but their original base found their new bed fellows unsavory and slowly gravitated towards the Democrats. The evolution of the Party system typically is started by the liberal or left party and the right then reacts to it.

The Democrats were already a liberal party when this began, and it was their traditional base of poor Southern farmers and big city ethnics that pulled them so, even though these had been the foundation blocks of the Democratic party going back to the Jeffersonian era. This process began with William Jennings Bryan, who energized "the traditional Democratic base", but around a "new populist-left" platform. This was not just happening in the US, but in Britain as well where the Liberal Party, a party of similar demographics and viewpoints to the Democrats, went through a similar transformation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_(UK)#The_rise_of_New_Liberalism) in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

This same base elected Wilson and it is from Wilson that you get FDR. Over this same period, Irish and Germans stopped being disadvantaged immigrants and became middle class people who wanted their cut of power more than they wanted Gov't expansion. So they still hated the establishment, but now it was the New Deal Establishment running things.

The closest thing to a platform switch occurred in the late 19th century, when the Democrats (and Liberals) began to use gov't as tool to uplift the poor as opposed to regarding government as tool for elites to preserve their power. Previously both the Democrats and Liberals had opposed such bastions of power over the preceding 100 years, and both had opposed the policy of protectionism while the American Whigs/Republicans and Tories were protectionist and elitist oriented.




Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Skill and Chance on March 02, 2018, 09:29:55 PM
The one bug I have in your analysis is the omission of the Pacific Northwest (at least that area west of the Cascades). This region has been the most socially liberal of the nation since long before party vote correlations reversed at a state level in the 1960s. Washington, Oregon and California (also Hawaii which was far from statehood at this stage) were single-party Republican bastions between the Panic of 1893 and the New Deal. However, these states turned overwhelmingly to FDR in 1932 and 1936 (Landon was a terrible fit for these states even vis-à-vis most of the rest of the nation) but until a major Democratic revolution in 1954 remained strongly Republican at the state level. Especially in Washington, the GOP was frequently threatened by leftist third party movements, up to William Hope Harvey in 1932 reaching 20 percent in Thurston County. Big-government New Deal Democrats were – despite their social conservatism and Catholic influence – a better fit than a free-market GOP.

Well I have since refined some of my knowledge and have read "The Emerging Republican Majority" by Kevin Phillips.

Oregon was the most stable of the states and the most pro-Republican, conservative in a Burkean sense, it resisted a lot of the populist surges and radical impulses, that swept over Washington and California. The reason for this was that it was largely dominated by Protestant Yankees in the Portland area, and while the eastern part had a large number of Southerners move in, it was not enough to fundamentally erode that power bastion. At least not until the New Deal Era, especially the 1950's.

Northern California was impact by this same trend, but Southern California was exploding in Population and So-cal was basically an extension of the sunbelt. Half of Iowa basically picked up and moved to Orange county in the mid 20th century, as well as large number from all of the Midwestern states. The industries, demographics and ethos meant that these counties were solidly Republican and fast growing. So even if the Republicans lost ground in Norcal, they would replace it in Socal, which is what enabled them win CA from 1952 until 1988 with the exception of 1964.

California from 1888-1988 is really fascinating.  It was consistently R+2ish for 40 years, then it had a massive crush on FDR and voted more for him than the nation every time, then right back to R+2 for another 40 years as soon as FDR is off the ballot.  And it stayed that stable while experiencing a massive influx of people!

A lot of Yankee Republican bastions saw shifts towards the Democrats and away from the Republicans in the 1950's midterms. Conservatives found themselves being replaced by liberals or by Democrats in Vermont and UES New York (though in migration and other demographic changes were always a factor as well). In the 1960's, many of the remaining Representatives of these "Yankee" districts, raced to left to try and catch up to their electorates. They supported Rockefeller over Nixon and their voting records in Congress surged to the left as well. This was a Quixotic and doomed strategy because the GOP basically broke away from its Yankee base by 1964 to become a Southern, German and Irish middle class party, with a declining but still solid contingent of Yankee whites. This was the case in 1968, which is when the book was written about. All they accomplished was to alienate themselves from the new base and lead to formation of the concept of "Liberal or RINO Republicanism".

Wasn't this primarily where the GOP congressional votes for various New Deal measures were already coming from, though?  I mean, Dewey and Willkie were part of this crowd and they emphatically declined to run on New Deal repeal.  1958 was really when the last GOP urban machines fell (Philadelphia, the Italian vote in NYC, urban NorCal, etc.), but I don't know that they ever had much of an ideology beyond patronage for GOP-voting groups.  On a different note, it's surprising that we think of the 1950's as a particularly conservative time today.

In essence the Republicans changed bases rather than change ideologically. As a part of this process though, it is unavoidable that the party would evolve to match its new demographics. So a shift from Old Right Taft to Neoconservatism on defense for instance. An embrace of free trade instead of protectionism, which no longer swayed workers post Depression anyway. An ever growing view of hostility towards government since Southerners hate the federal gov't, Irish hate the establishment and the Germans hated communism and were distasteful of WW1 and even WW2 to some extent.

This was a combination of 2 things: 1. Recognition that they simply couldn't compete for working class votes with the New Deal at stake 2. Outreach to the growing managerial class as protectionism became associated with organized labor.

But generally this is what is mistaken for the "platform switch". The platforms didn't switch, the Democrat's old base became alienated by the New Deal, Civil Rights and Foreign Policy and gravitated towards the Republicans, who had a minority coalition to begin with. This gave the Republicans a large minority coalition, but their original base found their new bed fellows unsavory and slowly gravitated towards the Democrats. The evolution of the Party system typically is started by the liberal or left party and the right then reacts to it.

The Democrats were already a liberal party when this began, and it was their traditional base of poor Southern farmers and big city ethnics that pulled them so, even though these had been the foundation blocks of the Democratic party going back to the Jeffersonian era. This process began with William Jennings Bryan, who energized "the traditional Democratic base", but around a "new populist-left" platform. This was not just happening in the US, but in Britain as well where the Liberal Party, a party of similar demographics and viewpoints to the Democrats, went through a similar transformation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_(UK)#The_rise_of_New_Liberalism) in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

This same base elected Wilson and it is from Wilson that you get FDR. Over this same period, Irish and Germans stopped being disadvantaged immigrants and became middle class people who wanted their cut of power more than they wanted Gov't expansion. So they still hated the establishment, but now it was the New Deal Establishment running things.

I think this is the key.  The broad demographic shifts of 1945-1995 really look like the GOP version of the "emerging Democratic majority" idea.  Basically, the GOP base in the suburbs grows continuously after WWII until they finally have enough people distributed widely enough to run the show.  It isn't really traceable to one exceptionally potent economic or social event like the Depression, Panic of 1893, or Civil War.  People got notably more libertarian as 19th century fears of deprivation faded away.


The closest thing to a platform switch occurred in the late 19th century, when the Democrats (and Liberals) began to use gov't as tool to uplift the poor as opposed to regarding government as tool for elites to preserve their power. Previously both the Democrats and Liberals had opposed such bastions of power over the preceding 100 years, and both had opposed the policy of protectionism while the American Whigs/Republicans and Tories were protectionist and elitist oriented.

IMO the story behind the changes we are seeing on trade is that wages really have stagnated since 2000 in some industries and since 2008 for most workers even as prices for certain vital goods have kept rising.  With large swaths of the country gradually dropping out of the middle class, Trump realized that the right needs something to offer again to prop up working class wages.  The alternative was a 20 year majority for the left.  If you watch Obama's 2012 campaign speeches, he got this on a personal level, and economically speaking, he won when he wasn't supposed to win.  Clinton simply didn't get it and lost when she should never have lost.



Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: TheLeftwardTide on March 02, 2018, 09:36:41 PM
Party switches - a favorite discussion topic of Atlas (and myself, too).

Did the parties "switch platforms"? I mean, sort of; Karl Marx was a Republican, and there were plenty of left-anarchists in the GOP during the Civil War. Conversely, almost all of the outspoken racists left in America; the alt-right, the KKK, etc. now support the Republican party.

Democrats were once the party of classical liberalism and social conservatism. They were in favor of small-government values and free trade. The Bourbon Democrats, which ruled the party from post-Civil War to the late 1890s, are almost universally defined to be center-right.

But the Atlas RINOs have a point, and a damn good one. The Democrats have almost always had a more working-class, ethnic base, and they have always championed themselves as the savior of the common man. The Republicans have almost always basically been the party of big business.

Set the stage in the late 1890s. There are two major parties, which are both center-right and are basically in total agreement in terms of economic policy (with the exception of trade). The first truly left-wing political movement - the Greenback Party - tried to take hold in the 1880s. Due to the way that the political system was (and still is) set up, this third party could never actually take hold as a major political party. So - Plan B - integrate the ideas of the political movement into the major parties.

On the national level, the Democratic Party was the better selection at the time. Before the Civil War, it's populist platform was, in many respects, similar to that of the Greenback party; both Jefferson and Jackson, despite not being fond of each other at all, both believed very strongly in the fundamental principle of preventing the concentration of power in the hands of the few. The Panic of 1893 completely shook up the political landscape; the Republicans had the largest gain in the House of Representatives in American history, and the Bourbon Democrats lost nearly all of their political influence in the party. This culminated in the 1896 nomination of William Jennings Bryan, who integrated the Greenback/Populist party platform and used the idea of Jacksonian Democracy to justify it.

At the same time, there were several Populist-Republican coalitions going on in the South. These were eventually crushed by the elite, planter-class, conservative Democrats, who enacted voter disenfranchisement laws that not only kept blacks, but poor whites as well, away from the polls.

But only about a decade later (so ~1910s), many race-baiting populist Democrats, who were not economically conservative, use the votes of poor whites to get elected. The best examples of this are James K. Vardaman (D-MS) and Benjamin Tillman (D-SC).

Only a decade after that (so ~1920s-1930s), added to the mix of Southern Democrats were a handful of racially moderate populist Democrats. Prominent examples include Gov. Charles Hillman Brough (D-AR) who publicly supported anti-lynching laws and was even cross-endorsed by the GOP, Sen. Oscar Underwood (D-AL) who fought tooth-and-nail to curb KKK influence in Alabama and even served as Senate Minority Leader during the early 20s, and of course Huey Long (D-LA).

Of course, all the while, there were truly fiscally and socially conservative Democrats in the South, largely due to the one-party nature of the region at the time.

The issue of party-switching really comes with the question of race. Some modern Democratic social liberals want to separate themselves, and their party, from the Dixiecrat racists as much as possible, and so they say that the parties "completely switched" in the 1960s. Opportunist partisan Republican Trumptards want to argue how the Democrats are the real racists. Both groups are wrong.

The GOP was, at its inception, extremely popular with African-Americans. The decline of support for African-Americans had really begun during the 1870s, when Rutherford B. Hayes brokered a deal to withdraw federal troops from the South. The GOP, at the time, had felt as if they had done enough for the African-Americans, and gave up on them as a constituency; though African-Americans were still staunchly Republican (for obvious reasons). After that, a strategy called the Lily-White Movement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily-white_movement) was slowly taking hold, in which the Republican Party would attempt to appeal to white conservatives instead of African-Americans for their vote. It became their main electoral strategy in the South in the early 20th century.

By the 1920s, there were prominent racists in both parties. The Second KKK was not exclusive to the South; at one point, 15% of the American population was a part of the KKK. Denver had elected a Republican KKK mayor during this time. The final nail in the coffin for African-American support for the Republican Party was the election of 1928, and Herbert Hoover. Al Smith, being an urban Catholic who was against Prohibition, was very unpopular in the South for a Democrat at the time, and so Hoover went after Southern white votes hard. In conjunction with this (and arguably more importantly) were economic troubles; his mishandling of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 which left the African-American populated Delta economically devastated, and the whole Great Depression thing.

The New Deal had disproportionately benefited poor and working-class voters, and so they formed the new Democratic base. African-Americans were disproportionately poor at the time, and were able to get jobs in the WPA. Around the same time, a prominent liberal Northern Democratic wing was taking hold, one which was in favor of both Civil Rights and the New Deal. So, African-Americans in the North chose to vote for the Northern Democrats, despite being buddy-buddy with the Dixiecrats, over the Republicans who would cut the government spending that was keeping them afloat.

So, you can see how the parties did not necessarily switch, but through the process of gradual realignments, ended up with different positions on the issues, and different party base demographics. Often the 1960s dominate the conversation, but the early 20th century was just as important in this gradual realignment of the two major parties.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: darklordoftech on March 03, 2018, 06:55:11 PM
When did the Republicans become the party of free trade?

When was the first time that Republicans preached "fiscal responsibility"?


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: mianfei on March 04, 2018, 08:35:04 PM
When did the Republicans become the party of free trade?

When was the first time that Republicans preached "fiscal responsibility"?
By and large, these changes came with Warren Harding in the 1920s after the crisis of World War I. The “Depression of 1920” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czcUmnsprQI) cited by the radical right as proof that smaller government will cure depressions, was the most decisive event.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: TheLeftwardTide on March 04, 2018, 09:26:02 PM
When did the Republicans become the party of free trade?

When was the first time that Republicans preached "fiscal responsibility"?

By and large, these changes came with Warren Harding in the 1920s after the crisis of World War I. The “Depression of 1920” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czcUmnsprQI) cited by the radical right as proof that smaller government will cure depressions, was the most decisive event.

Quote
Why You've Never Heard of the Great Depression of 1920
Jesus Christ, you would think that the corporate billionaire donors funding the Mises Institute would be able to come up with better propaganda...

These people actually believe that the Great Depression would have ended 7 years earlier without the New Deal...yes, an economy that was bleeding jobs in 1933 would have magically repaired itself instantly!

Similarly, they also think that why Hoover was so unsuccessful with the economy during the Depression was because he was too much of an interventionist (which really makes no sense because by that logic, FDR would have had an even more stagnant economy than Hoover). They think that the Smoot-Hawley tariff explains literally everything about the 1930s economy.

Smoot-Hawley was passed under the Hoover administration and definitely exacerbated the Great Depression to a certain extent. However, Democrats campaigned on lowering tariffs in 1932, and FDR largely did so while in office.

So, I would set the cut-off point for when the parties "switched" on trade to sometime after World War II. Probably in the 1950s is when the GOP adopted the position of free trade, due to the emergence of large multinational corporations who could manufacture overseas thanks to faster transportation, as well as the middle-class suburbia which formed the new GOP base. Around the same time (1950s), the Democrats adopted the position of fair trade due to the political power of blue-collar labor unions in the manufacturing belt of America.

In the early 1990s, this alignment was still present - most of the congressional opposition to NAFTA came from the Democrats, and more Republicans had a favorable opinion of NAFTA than Democrats at the time. But because it was a Democratic president - Bill Clinton - eventually pushed through NAFTA, the parties largely "de-polarized" on the issue of trade, with there being free-trade and protectionist wings in both parties.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Joe McCarthy Was Right on March 04, 2018, 11:40:28 PM
When did the Republicans become the party of free trade?

When was the first time that Republicans preached "fiscal responsibility"?
Republicans slowly became less protectionist every year from 1936 to 1960 because they saw opening up trade as a way to build alliances with other countries to stop the spread of communism. By 1960, there was no difference between the parties on trade. Then by the 90's, unions persuaded some congressional Democrats to oppose NAFTA. Romney ran a more protectionist platform than Obama did though, so somewhat of a reversal of that evolution started in 2012. Trade is not a left/right issue, or even a regional issue, it just depends on the politician.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on March 09, 2018, 10:58:56 PM
When did the Republicans become the party of free trade?

When was the first time that Republicans preached "fiscal responsibility"?
Republicans slowly became less protectionist every year from 1936 to 1960 because they saw opening up trade as a way to build alliances with other countries to stop the spread of communism. By 1960, there was no difference between the parties on trade. Then by the 90's, unions persuaded some congressional Democrats to oppose NAFTA. Romney ran a more protectionist platform than Obama did though, so somewhat of a reversal of that evolution started in 2012. Trade is not a left/right issue, or even a regional issue, it just depends on the politician.

It also depends on economic conditions and particularly the economic conditions and context facing your parties base demographics.

Democrats were certainly the vanguard party for free trade from 1828 until 1970. Republicans were indeed becoming less and less protectionist but were easily still the more protectionist party even after WWII. Beginning in the 1970's, US manufactures began to lose ground on the global markets, so unions who had almost always been for free trade (to expand exports of dominant US goods) became more protectionist. At the same time the GOP was making its move towards the sunbelt and the rise of interest groups and donors, as well as sunbelt politicians within the GOP meant that it became the most free trade party.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on March 09, 2018, 11:17:36 PM
Party switches - a favorite discussion topic of Atlas (and myself, too).

Did the parties "switch platforms"? I mean, sort of; Karl Marx was a Republican, and there were plenty of left-anarchists in the GOP during the Civil War. Conversely, almost all of the outspoken racists left in America; the alt-right, the KKK, etc. now support the Republican party.


Yes, the GOP was massive and broad during its inception but this dynamic was also similar to one occurring in Britain. In both countries the Classically liberal party was dominant, in the US the Republicans united a coalition in opposition to slavery that spanned from NE business elites to Marxists and radicals). In Britain, Disraeli had several dalliances with the radical member before they ultimately joined with the Whigs to form the Liberal Party. The concept of an elitist "nationalist" Conservative-Radical alliance against the classical liberals was not an alien concept in the 19th century. European Conservatives, had no problem with bigger government and at various points made economic concessions as a sop for keeping their heads firmly attached and not severed by the angry masses. Bismarck was perhaps the ultimate example of this and that was 30 years later.


Democrats were once the party of classical liberalism and social conservatism. They were in favor of small-government values and free trade. The Bourbon Democrats, which ruled the party from post-Civil War to the late 1890s, are almost universally defined to be center-right.


It depends on what you mean by "social conservatism". The Democrats were almost always the more egalitarian party while the Republicans (and Whigs before them) were more elitist in orientation). Therefore if you mean social conservatism in terms of race, certainly though both parties were racist in their own ways, if you mean in more broad terms it can cut the other way. The social issues of the time were different and the areas in which the Republicans were reformist was motivated by a paternalistic and even racist viewpoint of forcing protestant civilization and religion on inferior people's. This applied to the Whigs as well, which motivated their support for public school, so they could "educate" catholics out of being catholic and blacks out of being African.


But the Atlas RINOs have a point, and a damn good one. The Democrats have almost always had a more working-class, ethnic base, and they have always championed themselves as the savior of the common man. The Republicans have almost always basically been the party of big business.

Am I now included in this group? :P

Set the stage in the late 1890s. There are two major parties, which are both center-right and are basically in total agreement in terms of economic policy (with the exception of trade). The first truly left-wing political movement - the Greenback Party - tried to take hold in the 1880s. Due to the way that the political system was (and still is) set up, this third party could never actually take hold as a major political party. So - Plan B - integrate the ideas of the political movement into the major parties.

On the national level, the Democratic Party was the better selection at the time. Before the Civil War, it's populist platform was, in many respects, similar to that of the Greenback party; both Jefferson and Jackson, despite not being fond of each other at all, both believed very strongly in the fundamental principle of preventing the concentration of power in the hands of the few. The Panic of 1893 completely shook up the political landscape; the Republicans had the largest gain in the House of Representatives in American history, and the Bourbon Democrats lost nearly all of their political influence in the party. This culminated in the 1896 nomination of William Jennings Bryan, who integrated the Greenback/Populist party platform and used the idea of Jacksonian Democracy to justify it.

This is a key point that is often lost or forgotten. It was by and large the same Jacksonian base, just motivated by a different, more modern and more pro-gov't agenda.

At the same time, there were several Populist-Republican coalitions going on in the South. These were eventually crushed by the elite, planter-class, conservative Democrats, who enacted voter disenfranchisement laws that not only kept blacks, but poor whites as well, away from the polls.

The extent to which this was effective is never emphasized. There are counties listed in Kevin Phillip's book that had 30,000 white and 45,000 black citizens of voting age, but only had like 8,000 mostly all white voters. There would almost certainly be a heavy class skew on top of the race skew in these countries and they almost universally favored Thurmond in 1948, Goldwater in 64, but interestingly enough preferred Nixon over Wallace. Class dynamics at play once again.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on March 09, 2018, 11:21:05 PM
When did the Republicans become the party of free trade?

1980, is when they definitively became the party that was most in favor of free trade.

When was the first time that Republicans preached "fiscal responsibility"?

1896 arguably, but certainly by 1920.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: darklordoftech on March 10, 2018, 09:14:22 PM
The social issues of the time were different and the areas in which the Republicans were reformist was motivated by a paternalistic and even racist viewpoint of forcing protestant civilization and religion on inferior people's. This applied to the Whigs as well, which motivated their support for public school, so they could "educate" catholics out of being catholic and blacks out of being African.
And today Democrats support public schools in order to "educate" people about how guns, cigarettes, alcohol, wearing hats to school, and girls showing skin are the worst things to ever happen to humanity and to "educate" blacks about the evils of rap music and "gang clothing" while Republicans say that public schools are "liberal indoctrination". Nonetheless, the idea that compulsory education (along with many other beliefs about people under 18/21) are anti-Catholic in origin is interesting.

It's also interesting that it was the Whigs who pushed for New England states to abolish the death penalty, yet the 1988 election had the Democrats opposing the death penalty and the Republicans supporting it. The most vocal supporter of the death penalty was Lee Atwater, who started out working for Strom Thurmomd, a former Democrat.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on March 10, 2018, 11:27:45 PM
The social issues of the time were different and the areas in which the Republicans were reformist was motivated by a paternalistic and even racist viewpoint of forcing protestant civilization and religion on inferior people's. This applied to the Whigs as well, which motivated their support for public school, so they could "educate" catholics out of being catholic and blacks out of being African.
And today Democrats support public schools in order to "educate" people about how guns, cigarettes, alcohol, wearing hats to school, and girls showing skin are the worst things to ever happen to humanity and to "educate" blacks about the evils of rap music and "gang clothing" while Republicans say that public schools are "liberal indoctrination". Nonetheless, the idea that compulsory education (along with many other beliefs about people under 18/21) are anti-Catholic in origin is interesting.

It's also interesting that it was the Whigs who pushed for New England states to abolish the death penalty, yet the 1988 election had the Democrats opposing the death penalty and the Republicans supporting it. The most vocal supporter of the death penalty was Lee Atwater, who started out working for Strom Thurmomd, a former Democrat.

That is regional influence at work. The Southern and Western states have long been more pro-capital punishment, while the Northern states and especially Michigan opposed it because they associated capitol punishment with the British empire just across the border in Canada.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: darklordoftech on March 18, 2018, 04:12:28 AM
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2018/03/17/pub-refuses-serve-irish-people/433503002/


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook on March 19, 2018, 04:02:05 PM
It depends on the platform itself. On some platforms they never switched, but on most of them they did switch in a more gradual way.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: The Mikado on March 19, 2018, 06:43:41 PM
Could people stop with this insane idea that the Republicans were ever a "liberal" party in the American sense? They have been the party of big business and Wall Street from the 1870s to present. Hell, they weren't even "liberal" in the European sense in the 19th century: they were arch-protectionists and major supporters of high tariffs (both for protecting American business and for revenue purposes).

The big shift isn't in the party platforms so much as who made up the party. The mass defection of African-Americans from the GOP to the Dems from 1930s-1960s ended up making the Northern Democrats the party of civil rights (can't get elected in NY or IL or etc without the black vote), which alienated white conservative Southern Democrats and gradually pushed them into the GOP in the 1970s-2000s. It's inaccurate to say the parties "switched platforms" generally, though. The main groups that made up the GOP in the 1920s (big business, highly-paid professionals, Midwestern farmers) are still all mostly Republican groups, while the main groups behind Northern Democrats (recent immigrants, labor unionists, religious minorities, the poor) are mainly still Democratic voting blocs.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: RINO Tom on March 20, 2018, 02:01:16 PM
Could people stop with this insane idea that the Republicans were ever a "liberal" party in the American sense? They have been the party of big business and Wall Street from the 1870s to present. Hell, they weren't even "liberal" in the European sense in the 19th century: they were arch-protectionists and major supporters of high tariffs (both for protecting American business and for revenue purposes).

The big shift isn't in the party platforms so much as who made up the party. The mass defection of African-Americans from the GOP to the Dems from 1930s-1960s ended up making the Northern Democrats the party of civil rights (can't get elected in NY or IL or etc without the black vote), which alienated white conservative Southern Democrats and gradually pushed them into the GOP in the 1970s-2000s. It's inaccurate to say the parties "switched platforms" generally, though. The main groups that made up the GOP in the 1920s (big business, highly-paid professionals, Midwestern farmers) are still all mostly Republican groups, while the main groups behind Northern Democrats (recent immigrants, labor unionists, religious minorities, the poor) are mainly still Democratic voting blocs.

Most people can't see past "racist Alabama redneck voted Democrat in 1890, racist Alabama redneck voted Republican in 2016; conclusion: parties are opposite now."


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: The Mikado on March 20, 2018, 09:53:04 PM
Could people stop with this insane idea that the Republicans were ever a "liberal" party in the American sense? They have been the party of big business and Wall Street from the 1870s to present. Hell, they weren't even "liberal" in the European sense in the 19th century: they were arch-protectionists and major supporters of high tariffs (both for protecting American business and for revenue purposes).

The big shift isn't in the party platforms so much as who made up the party. The mass defection of African-Americans from the GOP to the Dems from 1930s-1960s ended up making the Northern Democrats the party of civil rights (can't get elected in NY or IL or etc without the black vote), which alienated white conservative Southern Democrats and gradually pushed them into the GOP in the 1970s-2000s. It's inaccurate to say the parties "switched platforms" generally, though. The main groups that made up the GOP in the 1920s (big business, highly-paid professionals, Midwestern farmers) are still all mostly Republican groups, while the main groups behind Northern Democrats (recent immigrants, labor unionists, religious minorities, the poor) are mainly still Democratic voting blocs.

Most people can't see past "racist Alabama redneck voted Democrat in 1890, racist Alabama redneck voted Republican in 2016; conclusion: parties are opposite now."

LOL exactly.

One sentence argument: There has literally never been a time from the GOP's founding in the 1850s to present at which the Republican Party wasn't the party of Wall Street and Big Business.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Kyle Rittenhouse is a Political Prisoner on March 20, 2018, 10:09:34 PM
Could people stop with this insane idea that the Republicans were ever a "liberal" party in the American sense? They have been the party of big business and Wall Street from the 1870s to present. Hell, they weren't even "liberal" in the European sense in the 19th century: they were arch-protectionists and major supporters of high tariffs (both for protecting American business and for revenue purposes).

The big shift isn't in the party platforms so much as who made up the party. The mass defection of African-Americans from the GOP to the Dems from 1930s-1960s ended up making the Northern Democrats the party of civil rights (can't get elected in NY or IL or etc without the black vote), which alienated white conservative Southern Democrats and gradually pushed them into the GOP in the 1970s-2000s. It's inaccurate to say the parties "switched platforms" generally, though. The main groups that made up the GOP in the 1920s (big business, highly-paid professionals, Midwestern farmers) are still all mostly Republican groups, while the main groups behind Northern Democrats (recent immigrants, labor unionists, religious minorities, the poor) are mainly still Democratic voting blocs.

Most people can't see past "racist Alabama redneck voted Democrat in 1890, racist Alabama redneck voted Republican in 2016; conclusion: parties are opposite now."

LOL exactly.

One sentence argument: There has literally never been a time from the GOP's founding in the 1850s to present at which the Republican Party wasn't the party of Wall Street and Big Business.
Progressive Era.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: OSR stands with Israel on March 20, 2018, 10:12:45 PM
Could people stop with this insane idea that the Republicans were ever a "liberal" party in the American sense? They have been the party of big business and Wall Street from the 1870s to present. Hell, they weren't even "liberal" in the European sense in the 19th century: they were arch-protectionists and major supporters of high tariffs (both for protecting American business and for revenue purposes).

The big shift isn't in the party platforms so much as who made up the party. The mass defection of African-Americans from the GOP to the Dems from 1930s-1960s ended up making the Northern Democrats the party of civil rights (can't get elected in NY or IL or etc without the black vote), which alienated white conservative Southern Democrats and gradually pushed them into the GOP in the 1970s-2000s. It's inaccurate to say the parties "switched platforms" generally, though. The main groups that made up the GOP in the 1920s (big business, highly-paid professionals, Midwestern farmers) are still all mostly Republican groups, while the main groups behind Northern Democrats (recent immigrants, labor unionists, religious minorities, the poor) are mainly still Democratic voting blocs.

Most people can't see past "racist Alabama redneck voted Democrat in 1890, racist Alabama redneck voted Republican in 2016; conclusion: parties are opposite now."

LOL exactly.

One sentence argument: There has literally never been a time from the GOP's founding in the 1850s to present at which the Republican Party wasn't the party of Wall Street and Big Business.
Progressive Era.


and the GOP basically drove Teddy out of the party




Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: darklordoftech on March 21, 2018, 02:27:08 AM
Amazing how some people manage to convince themselves of things like, "Obama would have been a Klansman", "Lincoln and Reagan would agree on everything," etc.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on March 21, 2018, 04:39:12 AM
Amazing how some people manage to convince themselves of things like, "Obama would have been a Klansman", "Lincoln and Reagan would agree on everything," etc.

Parties inherently exist and operate as they do, firmly grounded within the existing context and realities. Whenever a party fails to keep in touch with such is typically when it goes through a period of being in the minority until it can adjust to the new reality.

To approach a past political context by inserting modern personalities into it, creates a fallacy by rejecting the very context that produced said parties in the first place. 

There is also a degree of a desire to achieve some kind of ancestral legitimacy almost akin to that of the Tudors, by way of latching onto a set of ancestors that is not theirs and then going a step further by white washing said appropriated ancestor's record of sin. Both parties engage in this, but it should taken as the propaganda that it is.

Both parties in their present form are the product of multiple interwoven strains of thought, peoples and movements.

I have long held paid far more attention to the evolution of the ideologies themselves and then gleamed whether or not a party should be considered ideologically as something within the context of what that would have meant at the time, not what conservatism or liberalism mean now.

When asking whether one party was committed to preserving the existing social hierarchy, while another was desiring to promote more egalitarian principles (taken as a given that society at the time was racist, sexist etc by modern standards, so such would occur within those boundaries), one party comes down squarely on each side. When asking whether or not one party was dedicated to the advancing of the majority religious view and making policy based off of and seeking to perfect society in the image of said religious thought, while another was committed religious tolerance. When asking whether or not one party was dedicated to the preservation of established monied interest, while another was opposed to said interests. When asking all of these questions, you get a clear answer as these were the principle dividing lines between 19th century Conservatives and Liberals and they were present in other countries as well.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: RINO Tom on March 21, 2018, 10:17:11 AM
Could people stop with this insane idea that the Republicans were ever a "liberal" party in the American sense? They have been the party of big business and Wall Street from the 1870s to present. Hell, they weren't even "liberal" in the European sense in the 19th century: they were arch-protectionists and major supporters of high tariffs (both for protecting American business and for revenue purposes).

The big shift isn't in the party platforms so much as who made up the party. The mass defection of African-Americans from the GOP to the Dems from 1930s-1960s ended up making the Northern Democrats the party of civil rights (can't get elected in NY or IL or etc without the black vote), which alienated white conservative Southern Democrats and gradually pushed them into the GOP in the 1970s-2000s. It's inaccurate to say the parties "switched platforms" generally, though. The main groups that made up the GOP in the 1920s (big business, highly-paid professionals, Midwestern farmers) are still all mostly Republican groups, while the main groups behind Northern Democrats (recent immigrants, labor unionists, religious minorities, the poor) are mainly still Democratic voting blocs.

Most people can't see past "racist Alabama redneck voted Democrat in 1890, racist Alabama redneck voted Republican in 2016; conclusion: parties are opposite now."

LOL exactly.

One sentence argument: There has literally never been a time from the GOP's founding in the 1850s to present at which the Republican Party wasn't the party of Wall Street and Big Business.
Progressive Era.

The Republicans were still the party of industry and big business during that era when compared to the Democrats.

Roosevelt was in many ways as idiosyncratic a nominee as Trump*, whereas W. Wilson was in line with many Democrats (as he was of course a compromise nominee in 1912) and the party had thrice nominated W. J. Bryan. By contrast, McKinley, Taft, Hughes, Speaker Cannon, J. Sherman – basically every major national player but Roosevelt and LaFollette – supported policies designed to promote business and capitalism, and even Roosevelt framed many of his arguments as in the interest of fair capitalism rather than pro-worker reform. Additionally, the Republican SCOTUS nominees during that era (even Roosevelt's) were some of the most activist judges the country has ever seen, all in the name of big business.

*(I highly recommend interested students of history read Roosevelt's speeches from the era. He sounds a lot like Trump.)

Forgive my inability to cite my source, but I remember hearing on a History Channel documentary one time that a friend wrote a letter to someone at the RNC urging them not to let Teddy Roosevelt be McKinley's VP pick because he was "a Democrat in disguise."  I believe many Democrats in the era accused Roosevelt (and Taft) of opportunistically "stealing their issue" when it came to trust busting.  I think at the end of the day, it remains somewhat obvious that 1) Roosevelt was not representative of the GOP's ideology toward business and 2) was less "liberal" on that issue than most Democrats, even still.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Kyle Rittenhouse is a Political Prisoner on March 23, 2018, 07:39:30 PM
In every election from the birth of the GOP to 1952, the GOP vote by state is better correlated to the current democratic vote. The parties did, evidently, somewhat reverse.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Sadader on March 24, 2018, 04:51:54 AM
When did the Republicans become the party of free trade?

When was the first time that Republicans preached "fiscal responsibility"?

By and large, these changes came with Warren Harding in the 1920s after the crisis of World War I. The “Depression of 1920” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czcUmnsprQI) cited by the radical right as proof that smaller government will cure depressions, was the most decisive event.

Quote
Why You've Never Heard of the Great Depression of 1920
Jesus Christ, you would think that the corporate billionaire donors funding the Mises Institute would be able to come up with better propaganda...

These people actually believe that the Great Depression would have ended 7 years earlier without the New Deal...yes, an economy that was bleeding jobs in 1933 would have magically repaired itself instantly!

Yes, with better government action the Great Depression would have ended far earlier. Most economists agree that the impact of the New Deal was mildly positive, but not in curing the Depression. As a means for greater equality and social welfare, it was good, but it failed to do anything significant about the Depression. The aim was in redistribution, not necessarily in expansion. Also, remember the fact that Roosevelt balanced the ing budget halfway in to the Depression. FDR made the massive mistake of not borrowing for the programme, as he (or at least the policy writers) thought that debt financed spending was worse than the depression it was going to solve. The New Deal was nowhere near enough (or really even aiming) to lead a fiscal-stimulus recovery, so the policies were far too small to lead economic recovery in any way. A lot of the other actions even harmed recovery (see encouraging anti-competitive ess by linking collusive practices to higher wage payments (ending these anti-competitive policies massively contributed to strong recovery in the 40s http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/421169?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents (http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/421169?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)), and arbitrary agricultural price fixing). There is an argument in the fact that stimulus from reducing the size of the Government could have been better than the clusterf**k of inaction and bad actions that we actually got.

Its impact was completely negligible compared to the massive positives of FDR taking the U.S. off the Gold Standard (to stop the deflationary spiral), and WW2 (a massive expansionary factor; 100% economic growth two years in a row). The Great Recession could have easily turned into another Great Depression, but a major deciding factor in was the action of the Bush/Obama administrations (and of course Lord Ben Bernanke actually having the courage to act compared to the sh**tty 1930s Fed).


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: RINO Tom on March 24, 2018, 08:51:35 AM
In every election from the birth of the GOP to 1952, the GOP vote by state is better correlated to the current democratic vote. The parties did, evidently, somewhat reverse.

People would so easily believe two parties completely switched their ideals before they’d believe some states changed over decades, too??  Lol.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: America's Sweetheart ❤/𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖙𝖞 𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖗 on March 24, 2018, 10:37:41 AM
1908.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: OSR stands with Israel on March 24, 2018, 12:23:02 PM


I would say 1896 not 1908


McKinley was way to the right of Bryan and TR actually was put on the ticket because being a vp then meant the end to Presidential aspirations


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: RINO Tom on March 24, 2018, 01:49:26 PM
This does not mean the parties haven’t radically changed over time, but if you believe “the parties switched,” you are dumb.  No way around it.

Sorry, Old School!


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: OSR stands with Israel on March 24, 2018, 02:16:18 PM
This does not mean the parties haven’t radically changed over time, but if you believe “the parties switched,” you are dumb.  No way around it.

Sorry, Old School!


Well I said 1896 when Democrats became solidly the more left wing party

From 1876-1896 both parties were basically the same


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Fuzzy Stands With His Friend, Chairman Sanchez on March 24, 2018, 04:41:14 PM
Could people stop with this insane idea that the Republicans were ever a "liberal" party in the American sense? They have been the party of big business and Wall Street from the 1870s to present. Hell, they weren't even "liberal" in the European sense in the 19th century: they were arch-protectionists and major supporters of high tariffs (both for protecting American business and for revenue purposes).

The big shift isn't in the party platforms so much as who made up the party. The mass defection of African-Americans from the GOP to the Dems from 1930s-1960s ended up making the Northern Democrats the party of civil rights (can't get elected in NY or IL or etc without the black vote), which alienated white conservative Southern Democrats and gradually pushed them into the GOP in the 1970s-2000s. It's inaccurate to say the parties "switched platforms" generally, though. The main groups that made up the GOP in the 1920s (big business, highly-paid professionals, Midwestern farmers) are still all mostly Republican groups, while the main groups behind Northern Democrats (recent immigrants, labor unionists, religious minorities, the poor) are mainly still Democratic voting blocs.

Most people can't see past "racist Alabama redneck voted Democrat in 1890, racist Alabama redneck voted Republican in 2016; conclusion: parties are opposite now."

LOL exactly.

One sentence argument: There has literally never been a time from the GOP's founding in the 1850s to present at which the Republican Party wasn't the party of Wall Street and Big Business.
Progressive Era.


and the GOP basically drove Teddy out of the party




In 1916, TR addressed the Progressive Party, stating that the best thing Progressives could do was to rejoin the GOP, which many did.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: OSR stands with Israel on March 24, 2018, 05:28:43 PM
Could people stop with this insane idea that the Republicans were ever a "liberal" party in the American sense? They have been the party of big business and Wall Street from the 1870s to present. Hell, they weren't even "liberal" in the European sense in the 19th century: they were arch-protectionists and major supporters of high tariffs (both for protecting American business and for revenue purposes).

The big shift isn't in the party platforms so much as who made up the party. The mass defection of African-Americans from the GOP to the Dems from 1930s-1960s ended up making the Northern Democrats the party of civil rights (can't get elected in NY or IL or etc without the black vote), which alienated white conservative Southern Democrats and gradually pushed them into the GOP in the 1970s-2000s. It's inaccurate to say the parties "switched platforms" generally, though. The main groups that made up the GOP in the 1920s (big business, highly-paid professionals, Midwestern farmers) are still all mostly Republican groups, while the main groups behind Northern Democrats (recent immigrants, labor unionists, religious minorities, the poor) are mainly still Democratic voting blocs.

Most people can't see past "racist Alabama redneck voted Democrat in 1890, racist Alabama redneck voted Republican in 2016; conclusion: parties are opposite now."

LOL exactly.

One sentence argument: There has literally never been a time from the GOP's founding in the 1850s to present at which the Republican Party wasn't the party of Wall Street and Big Business.
Progressive Era.


and the GOP basically drove Teddy out of the party




In 1916, TR addressed the Progressive Party, stating that the best thing Progressives could do was to rejoin the GOP, which many did.

And had no power from 1920-1932


The GOP in the 1920s probably the most right wing American party which held power since the 1850s


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on March 24, 2018, 07:18:54 PM
You guys are missing the point. The parties didn't change, the ideologies did.


Liberalism became less concerned about liberty and more about economic equality. Conservatism reacted to this in 1890's and 1900's and became more concerned about expansion of gov't in response. The same evolution occurred in Britain.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: darklordoftech on March 25, 2018, 07:17:14 PM
Is it possible that when Ted Cruz said "New York values", he was tapping into beliefs left over from 19-century anti-Catholicism?


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Skill and Chance on March 25, 2018, 08:29:05 PM
The one constant is that Republicans have always had more support from small business owners, from family farmers tired of competing with slave labor in 1856 straight through to 2016.  Big business has been somewhere between uniformly Republican (1856-76, 1920-1992) to tilting Republican overall with some sectors voting heavily Democratic (1880-1916, 1996ish-present).


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: darklordoftech on March 26, 2018, 01:49:37 AM
The one constant is that Republicans have always had more support from small business owners, from family farmers tired of competing with slave labor in 1856 straight through to 2016.  Big business has been somewhere between uniformly Republican (1856-76, 1920-1992) to tilting Republican overall with some sectors voting heavily Democratic (1880-1916, 1996ish-present).
Which sectors of big business voted Democratic in 1880-1916 and which sectors have voted Democratic since 1996ish?


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: OSR stands with Israel on March 26, 2018, 02:32:08 AM
The one constant is that Republicans have always had more support from small business owners, from family farmers tired of competing with slave labor in 1856 straight through to 2016.  Big business has been somewhere between uniformly Republican (1856-76, 1920-1992) to tilting Republican overall with some sectors voting heavily Democratic (1880-1916, 1996ish-present).

I have a hard time believing any sector of Big Business voted for Bryan or Wilson


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: RINO Tom on March 26, 2018, 09:53:27 AM
The one constant is that Republicans have always had more support from small business owners, from family farmers tired of competing with slave labor in 1856 straight through to 2016.  Big business has been somewhere between uniformly Republican (1856-76, 1920-1992) to tilting Republican overall with some sectors voting heavily Democratic (1880-1916, 1996ish-present).
Which sectors of big business voted Democratic in 1880-1916 and which sectors have voted Democratic since 1996ish?

As for post-1996 (but also before), the tech industry has certainly favored Democrats.  Wall Street has clearly favored Republicans, but they're also non-partisan enough that they'll throw their weight behind a clear winner (see donations to Obama in 2008) when it suits their future interests.  Regarding the 1880-1916 period, I would disagree that big business was ever a "swingy" group during that time frame, but obviously Southern big business favored Democrats, and - even though their importance and influence have been greatly exaggerated, IMO - the Bourbon Democrats were certainly a thing.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Mr. Smith on March 26, 2018, 03:30:08 PM
The one constant is that Republicans have always had more support from small business owners, from family farmers tired of competing with slave labor in 1856 straight through to 2016.  Big business has been somewhere between uniformly Republican (1856-76, 1920-1992) to tilting Republican overall with some sectors voting heavily Democratic (1880-1916, 1996ish-present).

I have a hard time believing any sector of Big Business voted for Bryan or Wilson

But no problems with Cleveland, Parker, or Tilden.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: All Along The Watchtower on March 27, 2018, 11:07:07 PM
Oh how I love these threads.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on March 29, 2018, 04:37:08 PM
The one constant is that Republicans have always had more support from small business owners, from family farmers tired of competing with slave labor in 1856 straight through to 2016.  Big business has been somewhere between uniformly Republican (1856-76, 1920-1992) to tilting Republican overall with some sectors voting heavily Democratic (1880-1916, 1996ish-present).

I have a hard time believing any sector of Big Business voted for Bryan or Wilson

But no problems with Cleveland, Parker, or Tilden.

The obvious answer would be any business that benefited from free trade would lean Democrat, while the ones wanting protectionism were certainly more Republican leaning.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: The Mikado on March 31, 2018, 06:12:32 PM
I also dispute the idea that "Big Business," in any way, didn't favor the GOP over the Democrats straight through the Progressive Era.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: darklordoftech on April 06, 2018, 05:07:00 PM
I really hate when people say things like, "Obama would have been a Klansman and Trump would have supported MLK Jr.", "Lyndon opposed civil rights and Goldwater supported civil rights", etc.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: RINO Tom on April 07, 2018, 05:56:18 PM
^ No one says any of that.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: fluffypanther19 on April 07, 2018, 10:29:07 PM


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: MATTROSE94 on April 08, 2018, 01:35:51 PM
On economic isues, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party gradually switched between 1896 and 1932, whereas on social issues, both parties gradually switched positions between 1928 and 2010.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: MATTROSE94 on April 08, 2018, 08:09:29 PM
My history teacher in 9th and 12th grade said similar things lol. He was an ultra-conservative Republican who said that both parties essentially had the same platforms since the 1800s.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Mr. Smith on April 08, 2018, 11:21:17 PM
You guys are missing the point. The parties didn't change, the ideologies did.


Liberalism became less concerned about liberty and more about economic equality. Conservatism reacted to this in 1890's and 1900's and became more concerned about expansion of gov't in response. The same evolution occurred in Britain.

This...actually makes sense in a way I don't think most contemporary media or people really articulate.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: darklordoftech on April 09, 2018, 02:18:08 AM
Dinesh D'Souza says those things, as do comments and forum arguments whenever the argument of the parties switching comes up.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: RINO Tom on April 10, 2018, 01:06:33 PM
My history teacher in 9th and 12th grade said similar things lol. He was an ultra-conservative Republican who said that both parties essentially had the same platforms since the 1800s.

Well, no one not stupid says any of that.  It takes a seriously ignorant person to think political parties stay the same over centuries or that our two parties "switched" platform or ideologies, even gradually.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: darklordoftech on April 10, 2018, 01:13:33 PM
My history teacher in 9th and 12th grade said similar things lol. He was an ultra-conservative Republican who said that both parties essentially had the same platforms since the 1800s.

Well, no one not stupid says any of that.  It takes a seriously ignorant person to think political parties stay the same over centuries or that our two parties "switched" platform or ideologies, even gradually.
I'm afraid you underestimate how many stupid people there are.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: RINO Tom on April 10, 2018, 03:21:21 PM
My history teacher in 9th and 12th grade said similar things lol. He was an ultra-conservative Republican who said that both parties essentially had the same platforms since the 1800s.

Well, no one not stupid says any of that.  It takes a seriously ignorant person to think political parties stay the same over centuries or that our two parties "switched" platform or ideologies, even gradually.
I'm afraid you underestimate how many stupid people there are.

I don't think I commented on the number of stupid people in existence. :)


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on April 11, 2018, 03:12:30 AM
Dinesh D'Souza says those things, as do comments and forum arguments whenever the argument of the parties switching comes up.

We are operating on the basis of extremes here. Parties evolve over time, but the Republicans have been a conservative party since at least 1873 (once all the radicals and others who only joined to oppose Slavery had left) and the Democrats have been the "Liberal" Party since the 1830's. In the 1830's, liberalism was about being able to vote without owning property, separation of Church and state and free trade. Now it is about the right to vote, separation of church and state and increasingly again free trade. :P

In the 1830's being a conservative meant landed and money elites opposing the right to vote for everyone else, protestant moralism and protectionism.

The more things "change" the more they stay the same. :P


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on April 11, 2018, 03:15:03 AM
One thing that has changed is that elites have become more liberal and thus populists are more often than not found on the right and Conservatism in general has taken on a more populist flair. You see this in the attempts to impeach justices in PA for instance.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: darklordoftech on April 11, 2018, 06:35:09 AM
Dinesh D'Souza says those things, as do comments and forum arguments whenever the argument of the parties switching comes up.

We are operating on the basis of extremes here. Parties evolve over time, but the Republicans have been a conservative party since at least 1873 (once all the radicals and others who only joined to oppose Slavery had left) and the Democrats have been the "Liberal" Party since the 1830's. In the 1830's, liberalism was about being able to vote without owning property, separation of Church and state and free trade. Now it is about the right to vote, separation of church and state and increasingly again free trade. :P

In the 1830's being a conservative meant landed and money elites opposing the right to vote for everyone else, protestant moralism and protectionism.

The more things "change" the more they stay the same. :P

I was talking about when people try to equate Obamacare to slavery and repealing Obamacare to the 13th amendment, try to argue that present-day Democrats are ashamed of their party's past, etc.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: FEMA Camp Administrator on April 11, 2018, 12:51:31 PM
One thing that has changed is that elites have become more liberal and thus populists are more often than not found on the right and Conservatism in general has taken on a more populist flair. You see this in the attempts to impeach justices in PA for instance.

The correct term may be “plebeian” (as opposed to “proletarian”).


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: darklordoftech on April 11, 2018, 06:38:11 PM
Another obnoxious argument is the idea that the Democrats trick blacks into voting for them so that they can bring back slavery/segregation/KKK.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Darthpi – Anti-Florida Activist on April 11, 2018, 07:49:57 PM
Hard to pinpoint exactly, but if I had to I would say it started in 1896 with the Democratic nomination of William Jennings Bryan, alienating the Bourbon Democrats, and finished in 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Republican nomination of Goldwater.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: darklordoftech on April 11, 2018, 08:26:54 PM
Hard to pinpoint exactly, but if I had to I would say it started in 1896 with the Democratic nomination of William Jennings Bryan, alienating the Bourbon Democrats, and finished in 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Republican nomination of Goldwater.
Also, at some point the Democrats became moralizers like the Republicans were in 1854-1932, with New York introducing the first laws to require wearing seatbelts, Frank Lautenberg introducing the National Drinking Age, and Tipper Gore founding the Parents Music Resource Center.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on April 12, 2018, 04:26:16 AM
Hard to pinpoint exactly, but if I had to I would say it started in 1896 with the Democratic nomination of William Jennings Bryan, alienating the Bourbon Democrats, and finished in 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Republican nomination of Goldwater.
Also, at some point the Democrats became moralizers like the Republicans were in 1854-1932, with New York introducing the first laws to require wearing seatbelts, Frank Lautenberg introducing the National Drinking Age, and Tipper Gore founding the Parents Music Resource Center.

I can explain this away too.

Statism is not the same as moralizing. And not all moralizing is religious in basis.

Republicans have a long history of pushing "Protestant Moralism" in varius forms since 1854.

Liberals long ago embraced empowering the state to equalize opportunity. Over time, particularly as elites became defined by liberalism, you begin to get "liberal elitist statism", ei controlling people's behavior for their own good as determined by us mentality. It is the same mentality that produces the complaining about "WV not voting based on their interests".

Then you get moralizing for "the betterment of society" this encompasses a range of things, and often leads to statist actions like those described above and there are overlaps.

Progressivism is an amalgamation of the big gov't economics of the Populist/Progressive movement (largely on the Democratic side) and also a distilled version of the Republican Reformers of the 19th century). So basically a grab bag from several different political traditions, but the idea that Progressives are the heirs to people who wanted to educate Catholics out of being Catholic is just as outrageous as saying Obama would have been in the KKK.

And economic progressivism, cannot in any way escape the fact that they owe their existence within the Democratic party to William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson. The former they would consider a religious zealot and the latter a militant racist.

At its root thought anying saying that Obama would have been a KKK member is violating one of the first rules of historical analysis. They are inserting present figures and understandings into a past context where neither existed and where such could not have existed.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on April 12, 2018, 04:28:48 AM
One thing that has changed is that elites have become more liberal and thus populists are more often than not found on the right and Conservatism in general has taken on a more populist flair. You see this in the attempts to impeach justices in PA for instance.

Do you have a history/philosophy doctorate? I honestly think you should write a book; I would buy it.

Unfortunately no. I have considered writing a book, or several about all this but I doubt it would sell without some kind of credentials or experience that makes people take notice and listen.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: RINO Tom on April 12, 2018, 09:06:12 AM
Hard to pinpoint exactly, but if I had to I would say it started in 1896 with the Democratic nomination of William Jennings Bryan, alienating the Bourbon Democrats, and finished in 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Republican nomination of Goldwater.

Every new responder to this topic should have to read every single word of NC Yankee's posts in this thread.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: OSR stands with Israel on April 12, 2018, 11:15:56 AM
Hard to pinpoint exactly, but if I had to I would say it started in 1896 with the Democratic nomination of William Jennings Bryan, alienating the Bourbon Democrats, and finished in 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Republican nomination of Goldwater.

Every new responder to this topic should have to read every single word of NC Yankee's posts in this thread.
My opinion is democrats became a truly liberal party(neither party was   before 1896) with William Jennings Bryan taking over the party and with exception of Alton Parker , John Davis , and Bill Clinton the have not had a nominee since then who wasn’t a solid liberal


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: RINO Tom on April 12, 2018, 11:49:21 AM
Hard to pinpoint exactly, but if I had to I would say it started in 1896 with the Democratic nomination of William Jennings Bryan, alienating the Bourbon Democrats, and finished in 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Republican nomination of Goldwater.

Every new responder to this topic should have to read every single word of NC Yankee's posts in this thread.
My opinion is democrats became a truly liberal party(neither party was   before 1896) with William Jennings Bryan taking over the party and with exception of Alton Parker , John Davis , and Bill Clinton the have not had a nominee since then who wasn’t a solid liberal

But a "switch" implies a time when the Republican Party was decidedly to the "left" of the Democrats, and given that we can't just place simplistic things like "states' rights" or "racism" on some simplified political spectrum that transcends hundreds of years and several eras (the way we can, arguably, do with class issues, immigration and moralism), this is an assertion that I flatly reject and contend that you have to be - at best - very misinformed to accept.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: OSR stands with Israel on April 12, 2018, 12:10:27 PM
Hard to pinpoint exactly, but if I had to I would say it started in 1896 with the Democratic nomination of William Jennings Bryan, alienating the Bourbon Democrats, and finished in 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Republican nomination of Goldwater.

Every new responder to this topic should have to read every single word of NC Yankee's posts in this thread.
My opinion is democrats became a truly liberal party(neither party was   before 1896) with William Jennings Bryan taking over the party and with exception of Alton Parker , John Davis , and Bill Clinton the have not had a nominee since then who wasn’t a solid liberal

But a "switch" implies a time when the Republican Party was decidedly to the "left" of the Democrats, and given that we can't just place simplistic things like "states' rights" or "racism" on some simplified political spectrum that transcends hundreds of years and several eras (the way we can, arguably, do with class issues, immigration and moralism), this is an assertion that I flatly reject and contend that you have to be - at best - very misinformed to accept.

Yah both parties did not flip (your right about that)


What I think happened was that the Republican party has always been the party of Business and Industry and for the first part of the Industrial Revolution(until say around the mid 1870s) being the party of Industry was considered more "liberal" because the Democratic party was dominated by agrarians which was considered more conservative.

Basically, after that system collapsed the Democrats spent 20 years basically being Republican lite(1876-1896) then Labor and Populists in 1896 decided to basically give up on trying to take over the GOP and move to take over the Dems and they were successful because the dems really didnt have anything strong enough to prevent that from happening(since the agrarians long had been gone by that point).


That basically made the democrats the more leftist party and have been since then.


The GOP though has basically stayed constant the whole time(in their core base)


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on April 12, 2018, 08:37:10 PM
How is a group of people born of an elitist conservative tradition, count as being "Liberal".

Also I would point out that WJB was by every definition of the word pro-agrarian and he was leading the revolution against the business dominated bourbon Democrats. The Populists were agrarians. You see this is what happens when you try to postulate a flip, even in 1896. It doesn't work because it fails to understand tradition, shifting of interests and yet historical consistency within the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party believed in several core principles.
1. Expanding voting beyond landed and wealthy classes to all white males
2. Religious Freedom
3. Freedom of Trade
4. Pro-Agriculture
5. Anti-Establishment and Business/Banker Elite

This was Andrew Jackson's Democratic Party, and it is firmly within the confines of a 19th century Liberal party.

In the 1880's the party began to split because the middle class and business oriented groups who joined the party (either because they wanted free trade, or were Southerners and hated Yankees, or what have you), were following the proscribes of Jefferson and Jackson on limited government, and enterprise freed from the restriction of elite monopolies. Cleveland was also very much in line with this tradition.

However, William Jennings Bryan was also an heir to this tradition, running against policies that benefited the wealthy and supporting those that would help farmers and miners instead. He is just as agrarian as Jefferson and Jackson were, but he is rallying the same types of voters in the same basic places as they did, against the same group of people (NE Business elites).

WJB was thus a reaffirmation of the tradition of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian politics, even as he was embracing and indeed paving the way for a tradition towards utilizing government action to advance their cause, rather than seeing government as merely a way to facilitate and entrench elite monopolies.

1796
Adams: Conservative
Jefferson: Liberal

1832
Clay: Conservative
Jackson: Liberal

1896
McKinley: Conservative
WJB: Liberal

There are a number of similarities in terms of support, policies and traditions that link the Federalist, Whig and Republican candidates listed here. All of them were protectionists to verying degrees. All of them were tied to wealthy business people in the NE. All of them were Protestant Moralists (McKinley is not as well known but he is compared to Bush 43 in his religiosity). All of them supported industry over agriculture. Yet suddenly in 1896, McKinley finds himself as the first Conservative to run against as liberal on the Democratic side?


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: FEMA Camp Administrator on April 12, 2018, 08:52:15 PM
It should probably be noted that the "urbanism" of the pre-New Deal GOP is probably over-stated. They no doubt wanted an industrial, capitalist society and clung to some idea of "progress", but I have little doubt that at every step of the way they probably "tut-tutted" the morally ruinous aspects of urban life. As early as the Civil War you had Republicans in professional positions that were a class and a world apart from the unwashed masses of the urban proletariat that their desired system necessitated and created.

_ _ _

The below is senseless rambling.

As regards the early--let's use the working term "liberalism"--of the GOP, this probably requires some creative analysis. Prior to the civil war, you had two classes of elites--industrialists of the North and planters of the South; both were "conservative" of some sort owing to their class disposition. They nevertheless had opposing interests. Slaveowners of the South, separated from finance and industry, formulated a populist program to rally the masses in opposition to their rivals in the North. This was at one time led by true ideologues like Jefferson who likely bought what they sold, but, we might speculate, became more and more simple "window dressing" on a more and more plainly parasitic and unjust system. The North, to its credit, eventually--not immediately--found its business interests to contradict the business interests of the South. This was combined with moral rhetoric--the two perhaps developed independently, but in reaction to the same phenomenon. But in any case, as industry grew, by necessity it was the rising or ascendant force. The Civil War thus marked in some sense a second "bourgeois revolution" for the country. The Republican Party included not only these industrialists, but obvious reform elements--Puritans, liberals, even socialists. Nevertheless, as Northern industry and the Bloody Flag consolidated in the 1870's, the GOP continued its tradition that it inherited from the Whigs and the Federalists. In some alternate universe, we might be now discussing the quasi-socialist revolution that occurred, wherein a worker's ascendancy quickly followed a liberal ascendancy. That said, for whatever reason--call them historical preconditions--God and Capital were well situated to continue their reign in the coalition of the North, rather than give way to a labor movement.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: OSR stands with Israel on April 12, 2018, 09:10:02 PM
How is a group of people born of an elitist conservative tradition, count as being "Liberal".

Also I would point out that WJB was by every definition of the word pro-agrarian and he was leading the revolution against the business dominated bourbon Democrats. The Populists were agrarians. You see this is what happens when you try to postulate a flip, even in 1896. It doesn't work because it fails to understand tradition, shifting of interests and yet historical consistency within the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party believed in several core principles.
1. Expanding voting beyond landed and wealthy classes to all white males
2. Religious Freedom
3. Freedom of Trade
4. Pro-Agriculture
5. Anti-Establishment and Business/Banker Elite

This was Andrew Jackson's Democratic Party, and it is firmly within the confines of a 19th century Liberal party.

In the 1880's the party began to split because the middle class and business oriented groups who joined the party (either because they wanted free trade, or were Southerners and hated Yankees, or what have you), were following the proscribes of Jefferson and Jackson on limited government, and enterprise freed from the restriction of elite monopolies. Cleveland was also very much in line with this tradition.

However, William Jennings Bryan was also an heir to this tradition, running against policies that benefited the wealthy and supporting those that would help farmers and miners instead. He is just as agrarian as Jefferson and Jackson were, but he is rallying the same types of voters in the same basic places as they did, against the same group of people (NE Business elites).

WJB was thus a reaffirmation of the tradition of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian politics, even as he was embracing and indeed paving the way for a tradition towards utilizing government action to advance their cause, rather than seeing government as merely a way to facilitate and entrench elite monopolies.

1796
Adams: Conservative
Jefferson: Liberal

1832
Clay: Conservative
Jackson: Liberal

1896
McKinley: Conservative
WJB: Liberal

There are a number of similarities in terms of support, policies and traditions that link the Federalist, Whig and Republican candidates listed here. All of them were protectionists to verying degrees. All of them were tied to wealthy business people in the NE. All of them were Protestant Moralists (McKinley is not as well known but he is compared to Bush 43 in his religiosity). All of them supported industry over agriculture. Yet suddenly in 1896, McKinley finds himself as the first Conservative to run against as liberal on the Democratic side?


Well The Federalists , Whigs, and Republicans were always the pro buisness party that’s true .


And yes while the Democratic Republicans were more liberal than the Fedralists and Democrats more liberal than the Whigs , that Democratic Party was totally different than the Democrats of the third party system (which was when the Republican Party was created).


The Democrats of the first half third party system had become a totally different party and due to that  reactionary  (their support of slavery and trying to keep the agrarian dominated economy from being replaced by an industrial economy). They really didn’t stand for anything in that period other than that . The Republicans originally were basically comprised of Pro Buisness groups and people who opposed the 1850s Democratic Party (and it was made up of both Conservatives and Liberals who used to be Democrats pre 1850s).


It was really in 1876 they moved away from that(after spending the whole 1852-1876 period being a reactionary party) but they morphed into becoming a Republican lite party(Borbon Democrats) .Then in 1896 Labor took over the party and they once again became the solidly Liberal party . While yes Bryan was an agrarian he IMO was a totally different type of one because in my opinion he was that because he was one because by then the agricultural sector was no longer the dominant economic sector and Big Buisness abuse of power was hurting them too . So I think it was more Labor and Agrarians were aligned for a temporary moment because of that .



In my opinion these are the phases the Democrats have gone through :

1824-1848 : Classical Liberal Party who supported the things you mentioned above
1848-1852: A transition phase
1852-1872: A southern reactionary party
1872-1876 : Transition Phase
1876-1896: Bourbon Democrats
1896 convention : Transition Phase
1896 - 1984 : A Modern Liberal Party dominated by pro labor politics
1984- 1992 : Transition Phase
1992- Present: Neo Liberal Party



Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: darklordoftech on April 13, 2018, 12:28:21 AM
Isn't slaveowners calling businesses elitist an example of the pot calling the kettle black?


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on April 13, 2018, 12:46:16 AM
Isn't slaveowners calling businesses elitist an example of the pot calling the kettle black?

Do you think hypocrisy is anything knew to American politics?


Also, Slave owners said a lot of things based on what benefited them. They were for state's rights when it benefited them, then trampled on it to get their slaves back from that escaped (Fugitive Slave Law). They claimed to demand freedom to live their lives as they saw fit, and yet denied it not only to the slaves but suppressed, Freedom of Speech, Assembly and Religion whenever it seemed to threatened or criticize slavery.

The South's political mindset was always dictated by a sense of living on top of a volcano. We have seen time and again in election results, that white Southerners are more racist proportionally with number of and closeness too African-Americans. This is why black belt and city whites stuck with Smith in 1928, and they were the ones who led the drive for secession in the lead up to the Civil War.

The thing is there is nothing conservative about pro-slavery politics save for the preserving of the object itself, because there is no internal consistency on anything, everything is dictated based on survival be it avoiding a slave revolt, or preserving the profits of slavery. If that means trampling the constitution (Secession), usurping the courts (Dred-Scott and other contemporary rulings differ from rulings in the 1830's and before), or violating freedom of speech (restrictions on abolitionists others who threatened the system) or running roughshod over northerner's state's rights (Fugitive Slave Law), they were only too happy to do so if it helped secure slavery. Remember, for all of Lincoln's war time actions, I recall reading that Jefferson Davis never even appointed Justices to the Confederate Supreme Court.

Hypocrisy and inconsistency were and are defining hallmarks of Southern politics and politicians.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: darklordoftech on April 13, 2018, 07:20:24 AM
Isn't slaveowners calling businesses elitist an example of the pot calling the kettle black?

Do you think hypocrisy is anything knew to American politics?


Also, Slave owners said a lot of things based on what benefited them. They were for state's rights when it benefited them, then trampled on it to get their slaves back from that escaped (Fugitive Slave Law). They claimed to demand freedom to live their lives as they saw fit, and yet denied it not only to the slaves but suppressed, Freedom of Speech, Assembly and Religion whenever it seemed to threatened or criticize slavery.

The South's political mindset was always dictated by a sense of living on top of a volcano. We have seen time and again in election results, that white Southerners are more racist proportionally with number of and closeness too African-Americans. This is why black belt and city whites stuck with Smith in 1928, and they were the ones who led the drive for secession in the lead up to the Civil War.

The thing is there is nothing conservative about pro-slavery politics save for the preserving of the object itself, because there is no internal consistency on anything, everything is dictated based on survival be it avoiding a slave revolt, or preserving the profits of slavery. If that means trampling the constitution (Secession), usurping the courts (Dred-Scott and other contemporary rulings differ from rulings in the 1830's and before), or violating freedom of speech (restrictions on abolitionists others who threatened the system) or running roughshod over northerner's state's rights (Fugitive Slave Law), they were only too happy to do so if it helped secure slavery. Remember, for all of Lincoln's war time actions, I recall reading that Jefferson Davis never even appointed Justices to the Confederate Supreme Court.

Hypocrisy and inconsistency were and are defining hallmarks of Southern politics and politicians.
All very accurate.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: BenBurch on April 13, 2018, 04:51:11 PM
The Dems were always the party of the poorer, and the Reps the party of the richer.  Their parties stances depended on what their base wanted.  The poor (whites) in the 1800-early 1900's wanted Jim Crow.  So the Dems pandered to that.  See James Cox, the Dem presidential nominee in 1924.  He was a real racist POS.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on April 14, 2018, 01:15:21 AM
The Dems were always the party of the poorer, and the Reps the party of the richer.  Their parties stances depended on what their base wanted.  The poor (whites) in the 1800-early 1900's wanted Jim Crow.  So the Dems pandered to that.  See James Cox, the Dem presidential nominee in 1924.  He was a real racist POS.


This is an important point, though Cox was the nominee in 1920.

The Democrats were also more populist owing to their position as a classically liberal party and thus they were also very majoritarian in their view.

This is emphasized in the debates between Lincoln and Douglas were Douglas essentially relegates whether or not you can enslave follow human beings to "popular sovereignty" even if the Supreme Court ruled contrary, which was a term promoted by Lewis Cass before him as well.

This was also a similar basis behind the Trail of Tears. The Democrats ignored the court and pursued what they wanted anyway.

The poor whites enfranchised by the Democrats, were very racists, especially again those ones living in the black belt, in the cities and along the rivers of the South. The ones in the mountains were more passively racist, but were so disconnected from this economic circle, that they voted differently, feeling excluded by the Democrats. They thus voted against secession as well, since they didn't benefit from the slave economy, they weren't going to vote to secede to preserve it.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Bidenworth2020 on April 14, 2018, 02:20:41 AM
Hard to pinpoint exactly, but if I had to I would say it started in 1896 with the Democratic nomination of William Jennings Bryan, alienating the Bourbon Democrats, and finished in 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Republican nomination of Goldwater.

Every new responder to this topic should have to read every single word of NC Yankee's posts in this thread.
My opinion is democrats became a truly liberal party(neither party was   before 1896) with William Jennings Bryan taking over the party and with exception of Alton Parker , John Davis , and Bill Clinton the have not had a nominee since then who wasn’t a solid liberal

But a "switch" implies a time when the Republican Party was decidedly to the "left" of the Democrats, and given that we can't just place simplistic things like "states' rights" or "racism" on some simplified political spectrum that transcends hundreds of years and several eras (the way we can, arguably, do with class issues, immigration and moralism), this is an assertion that I flatly reject and contend that you have to be - at best - very misinformed to accept.

Yah both parties did not flip (your right about that)


What I think happened was that the Republican party has always been the party of Business and Industry and for the first part of the Industrial Revolution(until say around the mid 1870s) being the party of Industry was considered more "liberal" because the Democratic party was dominated by agrarians which was considered more conservative.

Basically, after that system collapsed the Democrats spent 20 years basically being Republican lite(1876-1896) then Labor and Populists in 1896 decided to basically give up on trying to take over the GOP and move to take over the Dems and they were successful because the dems really didnt have anything strong enough to prevent that from happening(since the agrarians long had been gone by that point).


That basically made the democrats the more leftist party and have been since then.


The GOP though has basically stayed constant the whole time(in their core base)
what? every trump southern deplorable is usually the equivalent of a 1940's dem. Actually, I can't think of a single group of people who have stayed completely loyal to Republicans since the forming of the party, besides whites. Ideologically, Dems have completely flipped, but they still have the same loose coalition, in those who are low income earners. Also, Republicans have always been free market capitalists.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on April 14, 2018, 03:02:30 AM
Hard to pinpoint exactly, but if I had to I would say it started in 1896 with the Democratic nomination of William Jennings Bryan, alienating the Bourbon Democrats, and finished in 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Republican nomination of Goldwater.

Every new responder to this topic should have to read every single word of NC Yankee's posts in this thread.
My opinion is democrats became a truly liberal party(neither party was   before 1896) with William Jennings Bryan taking over the party and with exception of Alton Parker , John Davis , and Bill Clinton the have not had a nominee since then who wasn’t a solid liberal

But a "switch" implies a time when the Republican Party was decidedly to the "left" of the Democrats, and given that we can't just place simplistic things like "states' rights" or "racism" on some simplified political spectrum that transcends hundreds of years and several eras (the way we can, arguably, do with class issues, immigration and moralism), this is an assertion that I flatly reject and contend that you have to be - at best - very misinformed to accept.

Yah both parties did not flip (your right about that)


What I think happened was that the Republican party has always been the party of Business and Industry and for the first part of the Industrial Revolution(until say around the mid 1870s) being the party of Industry was considered more "liberal" because the Democratic party was dominated by agrarians which was considered more conservative.

Basically, after that system collapsed the Democrats spent 20 years basically being Republican lite(1876-1896) then Labor and Populists in 1896 decided to basically give up on trying to take over the GOP and move to take over the Dems and they were successful because the dems really didnt have anything strong enough to prevent that from happening(since the agrarians long had been gone by that point).


That basically made the democrats the more leftist party and have been since then.


The GOP though has basically stayed constant the whole time(in their core base)
what? every trump southern deplorable is usually the equivalent of a 1940's dem. Actually, I can't think of a single group of people who have stayed completely loyal to Republicans since the forming of the party, besides whites. Ideologically, Dems have completely flipped, but they still have the same loose coalition, in those who are low income earners. Also, Republicans have always been free market capitalists.

There were a hell of a lot more protectionist Republicans in 1940's then there are now.

Well the idea of measuring "loyalty" across 160 years is that it ignores a simple reality. No one lives 160 years. :P



Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on April 14, 2018, 03:09:02 AM
I would also encourage you to look up Ralph Owen Brewster (R-ME) who was alleged to have ties to the KKK.

Also this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_E._Jenner
and this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Welker


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: BenBurch on April 14, 2018, 07:19:44 AM
The Dems were always the party of the poorer, and the Reps the party of the richer.  Their parties stances depended on what their base wanted.  The poor (whites) in the 1800-early 1900's wanted Jim Crow.  So the Dems pandered to that.  See James Cox, the Dem presidential nominee in 1924.  He was a real racist POS.


This is an important point, though Cox was the nominee in 1920.

The Democrats were also more populist owing to their position as a classically liberal party and thus they were also very majoritarian in their view.

This is emphasized in the debates between Lincoln and Douglas were Douglas essentially relegates whether or not you can enslave follow human beings to "popular sovereignty" even if the Supreme Court ruled contrary, which was a term promoted by Lewis Cass before him as well.

This was also a similar basis behind the Trail of Tears. The Democrats ignored the court and pursued what they wanted anyway.

The poor whites enfranchised by the Democrats, were very racists, especially again those ones living in the black belt, in the cities and along the rivers of the South. The ones in the mountains were more passively racist, but were so disconnected from this economic circle, that they voted differently, feeling excluded by the Democrats. They thus voted against secession as well, since they didn't benefit from the slave economy, they weren't going to vote to secede to preserve it.

Yeah, I don't know why I said 1924.  Anyway, I'm not just talking about down South, I'm talking about the factory workers in the North, the Working Class.  They were also racist.  I've seen pictures of lynchings, and race riots from Chicago and the Iron Ring in AP US History.  Those weren't done by Southerners. 


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on April 14, 2018, 03:37:34 PM
The Dems were always the party of the poorer, and the Reps the party of the richer.  Their parties stances depended on what their base wanted.  The poor (whites) in the 1800-early 1900's wanted Jim Crow.  So the Dems pandered to that.  See James Cox, the Dem presidential nominee in 1924.  He was a real racist POS.


This is an important point, though Cox was the nominee in 1920.

The Democrats were also more populist owing to their position as a classically liberal party and thus they were also very majoritarian in their view.

This is emphasized in the debates between Lincoln and Douglas were Douglas essentially relegates whether or not you can enslave follow human beings to "popular sovereignty" even if the Supreme Court ruled contrary, which was a term promoted by Lewis Cass before him as well.

This was also a similar basis behind the Trail of Tears. The Democrats ignored the court and pursued what they wanted anyway.

The poor whites enfranchised by the Democrats, were very racists, especially again those ones living in the black belt, in the cities and along the rivers of the South. The ones in the mountains were more passively racist, but were so disconnected from this economic circle, that they voted differently, feeling excluded by the Democrats. They thus voted against secession as well, since they didn't benefit from the slave economy, they weren't going to vote to secede to preserve it.

Yeah, I don't know why I said 1924.  Anyway, I'm not just talking about down South, I'm talking about the factory workers in the North, the Working Class.  They were also racist.  I've seen pictures of lynchings, and race riots from Chicago and the Iron Ring in AP US History.  Those weren't done by Southerners. 

Well obviously, but there is only so much you can fit in one post. :P

You had the dynamic of competition for jobs, and this brewed racist sentiments and even pro-slavery ones among Irish backed Democrats in the North. For instance you had the draft riots in NYC, and copperhead activity espoused by some of those "Non-Yankee" white rural in places I talk about and Irish immigrants in the mines of like OH and PA.

These sentiments typically helped the Democrats but by 1860, the combination of the South going too far (Dred Scott), and Lincoln's moderation "Keep slavery to where it is now" basically, enabled them to flip the script and take some of these voters. This is how he narrowly carried IN , PA and ILL and won the election.

You had a second wave of this kind of working class racism, during the early 20th century during the Great Migration because you had African Americans moving from the rural South to the urban North to work in the factories.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: BenBurch on April 14, 2018, 03:39:03 PM
The Dems were always the party of the poorer, and the Reps the party of the richer.  Their parties stances depended on what their base wanted.  The poor (whites) in the 1800-early 1900's wanted Jim Crow.  So the Dems pandered to that.  See James Cox, the Dem presidential nominee in 1924.  He was a real racist POS.


This is an important point, though Cox was the nominee in 1920.

The Democrats were also more populist owing to their position as a classically liberal party and thus they were also very majoritarian in their view.

This is emphasized in the debates between Lincoln and Douglas were Douglas essentially relegates whether or not you can enslave follow human beings to "popular sovereignty" even if the Supreme Court ruled contrary, which was a term promoted by Lewis Cass before him as well.

This was also a similar basis behind the Trail of Tears. The Democrats ignored the court and pursued what they wanted anyway.

The poor whites enfranchised by the Democrats, were very racists, especially again those ones living in the black belt, in the cities and along the rivers of the South. The ones in the mountains were more passively racist, but were so disconnected from this economic circle, that they voted differently, feeling excluded by the Democrats. They thus voted against secession as well, since they didn't benefit from the slave economy, they weren't going to vote to secede to preserve it.

Yeah, I don't know why I said 1924.  Anyway, I'm not just talking about down South, I'm talking about the factory workers in the North, the Working Class.  They were also racist.  I've seen pictures of lynchings, and race riots from Chicago and the Iron Ring in AP US History.  Those weren't done by Southerners. 

Well obviously, but there is only so much you can fit in one post. :P

You had the dynamic of competition for jobs, and this brewed racist sentiments and even pro-slavery ones among Irish backed Democrats in the North. For instance you had the draft riots in NYC, and copperhead activity espoused by some of those "Non-Yankee" white rural in places I talk about and Irish immigrants in the mines of like OH and PA.

These sentiments typically helped the Democrats but by 1860, the combination of the South going too far (Dred Scott), and Lincoln's moderation "Keep slavery to where it is now" basically, enabled them to flip the script and take some of these voters. This is how he narrowly carried IN , PA and ILL and won the election.

You had a second wave of this kind of working class racism, during the early 20th century during the Great Migration because you had African Americans moving from the rural South to the urban North to work in the factories.

I see your point.  Thanks for putting a lot of effort into your answer! 


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Bidenworth2020 on April 14, 2018, 03:50:16 PM
I would also encourage you to look up Ralph Owen Brewster (R-ME) who was alleged to have ties to the KKK.

Also this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_E._Jenner
and this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Welker
yes, there is a myth that reps were perfect on civil rights, while they were just more "moderate" on it.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on April 14, 2018, 04:33:05 PM
I would also encourage you to look up Ralph Owen Brewster (R-ME) who was alleged to have ties to the KKK.

Also this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_E._Jenner
and this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Welker
yes, there is a myth that reps were perfect on civil rights, while they were just more "moderate" on it.

The point is though, there were actually substantial numbers of Representatives and Senators in the GOP in 1940's, among whom Trump would move comfortably, especially among those in the Midwest and some parts of rural New England. Ironically, the very places that Trump made substantial pro-GOP trends happen in 2016. Trumps views are very much in line with the Paleocon beliefs espoused by a large number of voters in the 1940's in rural Midwest and rural New England, in terms of opposing trade, opposing immigration and so forth.

At the same time the Democrats were almost universally for free trade, it was even a key part of the New Deal, and split on immigration.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: darklordoftech on April 14, 2018, 04:53:48 PM
Am I correct to notice similarities between the term "Bourbon Democrat" in the second half of the 19th  century and the term "neoliberal" today?


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on April 14, 2018, 05:36:12 PM
Am I correct to notice similarities between the term "Bourbon Democrat" in the second half of the 19th  century and the term "neoliberal" today?

Most certainly, as both have ties to financial elites and support in New York for instance. Both are opposed by more populist forces within the party.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: darklordoftech on April 14, 2018, 05:52:05 PM
Am I correct to notice similarities between the term "Bourbon Democrat" in the second half of the 19th  century and the term "neoliberal" today?

Most certainly, as both have ties to financial elites and support in New York for instance. Both are opposed by more populist forces within the party.
Indeed, and both are accused of pandering to immigrants to distract voters from class issues.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: darklordoftech on April 24, 2018, 02:41:05 PM
"The GOP has always been xenophobic and business-friendly, therefore the parties didn't switch" = slund argument

"Robert Byrd, therefore the Democrats are still racist" = unsound argument

I wonder: In 1924, it was clear from the Democratic Convention that there were major differences between the Northern and Southern Democrats. The Northern Democrats, such as Al Smith and FDR, were urban, Catholic, "wet", and anti-Klan while the Southern Democrats were rural, anti-Catholic, "dry", and pro-Klan. When did the Northern and Southern Democrats become so different?


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: H. Ross Peron on September 24, 2020, 12:11:57 AM
On an economic level, from ~1860 to ~1925 the two were roughly even, but after this the Democrats became markedly more economically liberal. On social issues, the switch happened on a presidential level from ~1964 to ~1984, but took some time to percolate down ballot. As a result, it would be accurate to say the GOP during much of the 19th and 20th centuries was the more “liberal” party. Nowadays, this is clearly not true.
As David Carlin pointed out in his 2006 book Can a Catholic Be a Democrat?, although the GOP was economically more conservative (in general) from 1896 onwards, the New Deal Democrats were always socially extremely conservative by today’s standards, and much more morally conservative than Northern and Pacific state Republicans.

As one illustration, it was the FDR administration that introduced the Hays Code for motion pictures, which was extremely restrictive compared to what could be filmed in Europe where the working classes were extremely anti-religion (especially Catholicism). As another, the New Deal saw the development of the “family wage” as an effort to hold and encourage permanent marriages, because it was felt that women working depressed wages, increased unemployment, and had been encouraged (if wholly tacitly) by the free-market GOP administrations in the 1920s.

However, the crises brought about by attempts to enforce facility integration in the 1950s and 1960s forcibly turned the Democratic Party away from ideals of the “natural family” and toward social engineering and acceptance of “alternative” lifestyles like homosexuality and cohabitation. As I said in my previous post, the “Revolution of 1954” in the Pacific States was the prelude to this change, and led to elimination of laws on abortion and homosexuality for the first time in US history in these states. In fact, this 1954 revolution was in my view an undoubted factor reversing historic party alignments in the rest of the nation.

Could you explain this "Revolution of 1954" that liberalized abortion and anti-gay laws in the Fifties? I'm from California but have minimal awareness of this particular event.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Agonized-Statism on September 24, 2020, 12:51:54 PM
Aside from the coalitions, which were bound to change anyway as America's demographics and the dynamics of the electoral college shifted wildly, we've generally stuck to the fundamentals. The conservatives benefit from reduced turnout and the liberals benefit from high turnout. The conservatives are the nationalists and the liberals are the "other" (sectionalists and internationalists). The conservative party wants to stick to the Anglosphere and the liberal party wants to pivot to Asia. The conservatives still benefit, more or less, from the Protestant moral panic (although it's a tiny minority at this point) and the liberals are the "freewheeling wets". The conservative party is more for protectionism and the liberal party is more for free trade, although trade is something that changes given the nature of the economy (agrarian, industrial, post-industrial). Despite the cultural division making their positions less apparent ("coastal elitists" and all), the conservatives always have a base with the aristocracy and the bottom of the caste system always carves out a place in the liberal faction. The middle class- the suburbanites- are always swinging back and forth.

They didn't "switch platforms", because we're no longer having debates about whether or not to continue slavery or industrialize. As new debates came up, the parties adopted new issues and the coalitions adapted.

Sure, Lincoln wanted to end slavery. He also wanted to ship the slaves back to Africa and make the US a white ethnostate. And of course Eisenhower stood for the Little Rock Nine. It was for the supremacy of federal power over state power and to give capitalism a human face as the Soviets watched, not necessarily civil rights. The liberal myth that the parties switched places, ensuring a long continuous heritage of "good guys", is another attempt to absolve the country and its institutions of their sins instead of celebrating actual progressive icons like Eugene Debs and Malcolm X.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on September 30, 2020, 11:43:35 PM
https://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html

Quote
From a business perspective, Rauchway pointed out, the loyalties of the parties did not really switch. "Although the rhetoric and to a degree the policies of the parties do switch places," he wrote, "their core supporters don't — which is to say, the Republicans remain, throughout, the party of bigger businesses; it's just that in the earlier era bigger businesses want bigger government and in the later era they don't."

In other words, earlier on, businesses needed things that only a bigger government could provide, such as infrastructure development, a currency and tariffs. Once these things were in place, a small, hands-off government became better for business.

Worth pointing out that the business wing of the party still favors big gov't when it benefits them. Defense contractors are a good example of this, big agra and their subsidies and then of course big oil and their tax breaks.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Paul Weller on October 06, 2020, 07:59:20 PM
Quote
One represents the culture, the industry and progressive spirit of the North, and the other affiliates with the South and finds its main support in all that is left of an extinct system of barbarism.

Frederick Douglass on the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively, in 1888. Doesn't that seem like it could've just as easily been said today, except in reverse? A switch happened whether you like it or not. I don't see how you can read that quote, then compare it to today's political parties, and conclude otherwise.

Aside from the coalitions, which were bound to change anyway as America's demographics and the dynamics of the electoral college shifted wildly, we've generally stuck to the fundamentals. The conservatives benefit from reduced turnout and the liberals benefit from high turnout. The conservatives are the nationalists and the liberals are the "other" (sectionalists and internationalists). The conservative party wants to stick to the Anglosphere and the liberal party wants to pivot to Asia. The conservatives still benefit, more or less, from the Protestant moral panic (although it's a tiny minority at this point) and the liberals are the "freewheeling wets". The conservative party is more for protectionism and the liberal party is more for free trade, although trade is something that changes given the nature of the economy (agrarian, industrial, post-industrial). Despite the cultural division making their positions less apparent ("coastal elitists" and all), the conservatives always have a base with the aristocracy and the bottom of the caste system always carves out a place in the liberal faction. The middle class- the suburbanites- are always swinging back and forth.

They didn't "switch platforms", because we're no longer having debates about whether or not to continue slavery or industrialize. As new debates came up, the parties adopted new issues and the coalitions adapted.

Sure, Lincoln wanted to end slavery. He also wanted to ship the slaves back to Africa and make the US a white ethnostate. And of course Eisenhower stood for the Little Rock Nine. It was for the supremacy of federal power over state power and to give capitalism a human face as the Soviets watched, not necessarily civil rights. The liberal myth that the parties switched places, ensuring a long continuous heritage of "good guys", is another attempt to absolve the country and its institutions of their sins instead of celebrating actual progressive icons like Eugene Debs and Malcolm X.

I'm a leftist who would disagree. There are plenty of progressive icons from the Civil War period worth celebrating like Thaddeus Stevens, who combined progressive racial views with genuinely leftist and pro-worker economic positions. Although I consider myself a leftist rather than a liberal, the fact is that the United States has never had a leftist major party. Liberalism is often the best option we've got, as it is better than the alternative (conservatism), and in the 19th century the Republicans were often a better vehicle for liberalism than the Democrats. Also, you mention that the conservatives "always have a base with the aristocracy", but the only genuine aristocrats in American history, the Southern planter elite class descended from the English Cavaliers, were Democrats. Yes, many were Whigs and Federalists before they were Democrats, but that doesn't change the fact that in the latter 19th century they were Democrats.

https://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html

Quote
From a business perspective, Rauchway pointed out, the loyalties of the parties did not really switch. "Although the rhetoric and to a degree the policies of the parties do switch places," he wrote, "their core supporters don't — which is to say, the Republicans remain, throughout, the party of bigger businesses; it's just that in the earlier era bigger businesses want bigger government and in the later era they don't."

In other words, earlier on, businesses needed things that only a bigger government could provide, such as infrastructure development, a currency and tariffs. Once these things were in place, a small, hands-off government became better for business.

Worth pointing out that the business wing of the party still favors big gov't when it benefits them. Defense contractors are a good example of this, big agra and their subsidies and then of course big oil and their tax breaks.

You keep talking about this "big gov't" vs. "small gov't" dichotomy, but I think you're missing the broader point. Government size is and never has been at the root of the conservative-liberal struggle. Classical liberals supported liberty, freedom, and equality first and foremost. That they often happened to align themselves with support for a smaller government is no surprise, as it was an age where much of the West was still ruled by autocracies. But they didn't always ally themselves to the notion of small government. In the American context, the most blatantly egregious violation of liberty, freedom, and equality was done at the level of the local and state governments, rather than the federal government. It existed not because the federal government had too much power, but because it had too little. I am of course talking about slavery. When the Republicans increased the size of government with their Reconstruction amendments, there was nothing conservative about it: they were pursuing Jeffersonian ends via Hamiltonian means.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on October 06, 2020, 08:27:01 PM
https://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html

Quote
From a business perspective, Rauchway pointed out, the loyalties of the parties did not really switch. "Although the rhetoric and to a degree the policies of the parties do switch places," he wrote, "their core supporters don't — which is to say, the Republicans remain, throughout, the party of bigger businesses; it's just that in the earlier era bigger businesses want bigger government and in the later era they don't."

In other words, earlier on, businesses needed things that only a bigger government could provide, such as infrastructure development, a currency and tariffs. Once these things were in place, a small, hands-off government became better for business.

Worth pointing out that the business wing of the party still favors big gov't when it benefits them. Defense contractors are a good example of this, big agra and their subsidies and then of course big oil and their tax breaks.

You keep talking about this "big gov't" vs. "small gov't" dichotomy, but I think you're missing the broader point. Government size is and never has been at the root of the conservative-liberal struggle.

I am emphasizing because the narrative on the right emphasizes it and I am trying to refute it.

Its like posts like this one do not even exist: https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=270952.msg5805058#msg5805058

The narrative on the right is that the parties flipped in 1896, at least among those like OSR and others on this forum. I have spent the last several years opposing utilizing small gov't versus big gov't as a criteria for determining right versus left and if that isn't grating enough to consider in the context of your post, the very post you are responding to and the linked article is articulating why the shift in view regarding the size of gov't is not a change in core base but a shift in desires by the core base and thus not relevant to the right versus left divide.

It is times like these when responding to you gets more tiring then enjoyable. You basically took a post where I said something, said I was wrong and then repeated exactly what I said to prove I was wrong as if I said something else.





Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Adem 45 on October 18, 2020, 01:05:17 PM
Another obnoxious argument is the idea that the Democrats trick blacks into voting for them so that they can bring back slavery/segregation/KKK.
I saw some cringe Candace Owens tweet saying exactly that. The number of high profile media personalities pushing this idea, and the number of people taking it seriously, is insane.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: RINO Tom on October 18, 2020, 01:11:25 PM
Another obnoxious argument is the idea that the Democrats trick blacks into voting for them so that they can bring back slavery/segregation/KKK.
I saw some cringe Candace Owens tweet saying exactly that. The number of high profile media personalities pushing this idea, and the number of people taking it seriously, is insane.

I don't really see that very often from "serious" people on this subject, so yeah ... I imagine places like Twitter and (God forbid) YouTube comment sections are where this kind of trash belongs (right next to the GOP being the "more liberal party before 1964" ... until of course someone needs to blame the GOP for the Great Depression or invoke FDR, lol).

I've said it an obnoxious number of times, but the book Republicans and Race by Timothy Thurber expertly analyzes the Black vote's migration away from the Party of Lincoln.  The common narratives that Democrats "bought" the Black vote or "tricked" Black voters or its mirror that the GOP cynically became racist-courting White supremacists one day are both based on convenient half-truths, and the truth is that both parties didn't want to touch civil rights in the Twentieth Century (besides a few True Believers in the GOP who saw it as the party's legacy and a liberal wing of the Democratic Party that truly represented Black voters as constituents), and the way the parties evolved throughout the 1960s and 1970s wasn't really based on conscious, strategic decisions but rather circumstance.


Title: Re: When did the parties switch platforms?
Post by: Common Sense Atlantan on October 18, 2020, 03:07:54 PM
They never did.