How did the Democrats turn toward the left and how did the GOP turn right?
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  How did the Democrats turn toward the left and how did the GOP turn right?
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Author Topic: How did the Democrats turn toward the left and how did the GOP turn right?  (Read 1477 times)
TommyC1776
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« on: February 27, 2012, 10:56:05 PM »

Was it from some of Bryan's ideas or did Wilson start to bring the liberals (of the time) to the Democratic camp?

For the GOP was it Robert Taft who started the conservatism movement in the GOP?
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LastVoter
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« Reply #1 on: February 27, 2012, 11:06:06 PM »

But then they all went right after Republicans went to an educational Al-qaeda bootcamp.
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Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook
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« Reply #2 on: February 27, 2012, 11:14:28 PM »

Racism.
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Beet
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« Reply #3 on: February 27, 2012, 11:17:25 PM »

The Panic of 1893.
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tpfkaw
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« Reply #4 on: February 27, 2012, 11:36:06 PM »

FDR, FDR.

(The Democrats have always represented the cultural left, and the Republicans the cultural right).
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Fmr President & Senator Polnut
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« Reply #5 on: February 27, 2012, 11:37:01 PM »

Two reasons: the Civil Rights Act and Watergate.
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TommyC1776
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« Reply #6 on: February 28, 2012, 12:00:12 AM »

So Wilson's Child Labor laws were not leftist for that time or his support for the right of women to vote?
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TommyC1776
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« Reply #7 on: February 28, 2012, 12:03:46 AM »


That's true especially with the Tea Party.
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Negusa Nagast 🚀
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« Reply #8 on: February 28, 2012, 12:07:33 AM »

FDR, FDR.

(The Democrats have always represented the cultural left, and the Republicans the cultural right).

Roots are with Bryan and his embrace of the Populist planks into his 1896 platform.
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Fmr President & Senator Polnut
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« Reply #9 on: February 28, 2012, 12:08:03 AM »

So Wilson's Child Labor laws were not leftist for that time or his support for the right of women to vote?

I suppose you can see some shifts much earlier on, the New Deal obviously being one of them. But the turns that established the status-quo of today to me for the Democrats becoming advocates for Civil Rights (and the GOP taking advantage of the Southern Democrats disenchantment) and for the GOP, they needed a new base to suck-up votes from after Watergate, and from the 1976 election on, they focused on evangelical Christians.

The ironic thing is that the establishment of the GOP never really changed, which is why they're terrified of Santorum, he represents what they've kept at bay... a genuine fire-breathing social conservative.
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tpfkaw
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« Reply #10 on: February 28, 2012, 12:12:08 AM »

FDR, FDR.

(The Democrats have always represented the cultural left, and the Republicans the cultural right).

Roots are with Bryan and his embrace of the Populist planks into his 1896 platform.

You could read the 1896 Democratic platform and then inform us of how left-wing you found it...
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« Reply #11 on: February 28, 2012, 12:20:46 AM »

FDR, FDR.

(The Democrats have always represented the cultural left, and the Republicans the cultural right).

What do you mean by cultural? Because supporting an end to slavery doesn't sound that conservative of the time, & remember Mr. Evangelical Bryan.

And, for God's sake, pretty much the rest of this thread is just a Democratic hack thread. "Racism"! Hah!
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Negusa Nagast 🚀
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« Reply #12 on: February 28, 2012, 12:23:25 AM »

FDR, FDR.

(The Democrats have always represented the cultural left, and the Republicans the cultural right).

Roots are with Bryan and his embrace of the Populist planks into his 1896 platform.

You could read the 1896 Democratic platform and then inform us of how left-wing you found it...

I said roots. That does not mean the party dramatically lurched to the left, but began the process. And if you read the question, that is what the OP asked. If you take time to read the very link you posted, the roots are there:

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Sure is government intervention in here.

In addition, Bimetallism was brought into the Democratic platform, to benefit the poor farmers.






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tpfkaw
wormyguy
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« Reply #13 on: February 28, 2012, 12:26:31 AM »

And in the 1892 Democratic platform...

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Beet
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« Reply #14 on: February 28, 2012, 12:34:01 AM »

It's pretty left wing.

The Democratic party in 1896 was in transition from Jacksonianism to what we would today recognize as leftism. The fact that much Jacksonian anti-government rhetoric sounds right wing to today's ears is confusing, but it was considered left-wing at the time because government was still identified with the interests of elites. Because of this 19th century leftism is what we would today call libertarianism. Its origins lie with the radical (Benjamin Franklin; Thomas Paine) and agrarian (Jefferson) wings of the American revolution, with antifederalism, with the first Republican party, with the Democratic-Republican party, and finally with Jacksonian Democracy, which cast a shadow on the 19th century Democratic party almost as long as FDR did on the 20th. After the Civil War, the agrarian ideal was permanently crushed and the guts of the Jacksonian legacy ripped out with it, but the Democratic party continued on in a zombie-like state, under the Bourbon Democrats, until 1896. At that time it was swallowed by the Populist party. The 1896 platform is fascinating because it combines traditional Jacksonian attacks on big government and the centralization of power with the beginnings of usage of government for progressive purposes through the regulatory ICC.
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tpfkaw
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« Reply #15 on: February 28, 2012, 12:46:08 AM »

What Beet says is pretty fair (although, as I pointed out, the trust plank is just a mildly reworded version of the 1892 plank, and Cleveland created the ICC); but in any case the Democrats were always associated, despite periodic deviations generally mirrored by the contemporary Republicans, with economic liberalism.  This carried through until the FDR administration.  I also pointed out that the Democrats have always been the cultural left, from the Jacksonians to today.
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Хahar 🤔
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« Reply #16 on: February 28, 2012, 12:57:48 AM »

What Beet says is pretty fair (although, as I pointed out, the trust plank is just a mildly reworded version of the 1892 plank, and Cleveland created the ICC); but in any case the Democrats were always associated, despite periodic deviations generally mirrored by the contemporary Republicans, with economic liberalism.  This carried through until the FDR administration.  I also pointed out that the Democrats have always been the cultural left, from the Jacksonians to today.

I'm not sure that the party of Clement Vallandingham could be considered left in any way. The absorption of the Populists seems like a pretty good place to me (although there were of course times after that where the Democratic candidate for President ran to the right of the Republican, and partisan ideological differentiation at lower levels is a very recent thing).
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tpfkaw
wormyguy
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« Reply #17 on: February 28, 2012, 01:06:53 AM »

The Democrat ran to the right of the Republican in at least 1904, 1912, 1924, 1928, 1932, and 1960, and arguably in 1952,* 1956,* and 1976, and a case could be made for 1992.

*depending on how much weight one assigns to civil rights

The parties have only aligned into coherent entities quite recently, but the position of the Democrats as the party of (what would now be considered) economic leftism wasn't solidified until the New Deal.
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #18 on: February 28, 2012, 01:09:03 AM »

FDR, FDR.

(The Democrats have always represented the cultural left, and the Republicans the cultural right).

What do you mean by cultural? Because supporting an end to slavery doesn't sound that conservative of the time, & remember Mr. Evangelical Bryan.

And, for God's sake, pretty much the rest of this thread is just a Democratic hack thread. "Racism"! Hah!

Mckinely was very religious or atleast moralist himself. It was the time period.

Beet and Worms have it pretty well put.

Looking at the opposite side of the coin for a minute. Until 1896, strong central gov't was Conservative. Part of this was a post French Revolution reaction, and part of it was that the elites, that dominated that Federalists/Whigs/Republicans (GOP), preferred a stronger government because of the spectacle of Shays, Whiskey Rebellions, Civil War etc. And since gov't was so tiny, it didn't pose a problem or hinderance. It is only after the government starts to get bigger, that these interests start to clamor for a smaller government. That is why you see business seeking and benefiting from less gov't in the 1920's, a response to the perceived excesses of the progressive era. The same applies to the Wilkies and other business people who experienced New Deal gov't and found themselves desiring a smaller, less intrusive state.

To answer the question, you had this guy named Alexander Hamilton who sought to created a modern industrial economy, based off manufacturing and dominated by business elites. As a response, you had a reaction seeking to preserve the ideals of the Revolution and serve the interests of the common man, led by Thomas Jefferson with help from his buddies James2. That is how it happened in the 1790's.
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Gustaf
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« Reply #19 on: February 28, 2012, 07:28:07 AM »

This depends a bit on how deterministic one is.

What I would say is that after 1896 the Democrats were destined to become the party of the left. They weren't, in any definite way, of course. But it was inevitable. The same way that by WWII it was inevitable for the Dixiecrats to jump ship, even if it had not happened yet.

Back before that it seems to me as if the parties could theoretically have gone either way.
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minionofmidas
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« Reply #20 on: February 28, 2012, 08:30:22 AM »

Um, the 92 and 96 planks on trusts have virtually nothing in common. They could easily be two major centre-right and centre-left parties' stances of a given year.

What does he mean by "cultural left", anyways? Tolerance for non-protestant, ethnic Whites?
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krazen1211
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« Reply #21 on: February 28, 2012, 08:41:30 AM »

A lot of that occurred between 1990 and 2010. Keep in mind in 1990 a lot of Congressional representatives were representing opposite party territory.


As to what did it, social values, carbon taxation, universal health care, and Iraq. IE, fundamentally the size and scope of a swelling government.
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« Reply #22 on: February 28, 2012, 08:50:17 AM »

A lot of that occurred between 1990 and 2010. Keep in mind in 1990 a lot of Congressional representatives were representing opposite party territory.


As to what did it, social values, carbon taxation, universal health care, and Iraq. IE, fundamentally the size and scope of a swelling government.

I'm just going to leave this stand among the rest of the interesting historical discussion.

1896 is a good benchmark. What I want to know is who among us would consider Bryan of the 'cultural left'? A lot of things about him that today seem extremely conservative or reactionary were actually associated with the progressive movement in his time period.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #23 on: February 28, 2012, 09:11:52 AM »

The Democrats own rhetoric always made them more likely than not to turn into the comparatively left-wing of two distinctly unradical parties.
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TommyC1776
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« Reply #24 on: February 28, 2012, 11:57:43 AM »

The Democrat ran to the right of the Republican in at least 1904, 1912, 1924, 1928, 1932, and 1960, and arguably in 1952,* 1956,* and 1976, and a case could be made for 1992.

*depending on how much weight one assigns to civil rights

The parties have only aligned into coherent entities quite recently, but the position of the Democrats as the party of (what would now be considered) economic leftism wasn't solidified until the New Deal.

I see where your coming from as far as the Democratic Party of the early 1900's through (with some exceptions) the 1950's.
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