Historical continuity of Democrats and Republicans

[Skill and Chance]

I mostly agree with this.  We are reverting to something resembling the post-Reconstruction, pre-Great Depression coalitions.  What people forget is how long the protectionist, pro-infrastructure spending, vaguely isolationist version of the GOP went on.  1932 was as far from 1876 as it was from 1988 and Republicans were much stronger nationally.  Including Trump, all Republican presidents split 13/6 in favor of protectionism over free trade.  Yes, it's true that there were more 1-termers early on, but that gives a great perspective on where the parties have been in the long run.  There hasn't ever been an aggressively protectionist Democratic president. 

I think you are wrong about the elite South in the present day though.  Look at GA-06, TX-07, TX-32, the Birmingham suburbs in the Doug Jones senate special, Jefferson Parish going 57% for JBE when he got 51% statewide, Bredesen doing really well in Rutherford and Williamson, etc.  The wealthy South is rapidly shifting post-Trump and likely to end up in the Dem coalition soon.  Democratic elite South vs. Republican working class South (especially during economic downturns) was absolutely something that happened in various late 19th century elections, at least before the poll taxes were imposed.  If Harrison had succeeded in getting his proto-VRA plan through the Senate in 1890, that may well have been the long term alignment in that era.

[Skill and Chance]

I sort of view it as the Republicans always being the representative of the "in-group" (starting with Northern WASPs and expanding to other whites as time went on) and Democrats being a coalition of "out groups" (Southerners + white ethnics in the 19th century, shifting more to non-whites in the 20th century).

Well, there is one very obvious exception to this "rule." There's something of merit here, but it's lost in trying to be overly simplistic.

Yes it needs to be qualified along the lines that I used a few days ago. Not in a position to do that right now on my phone.

That’s funny, I didn’t see you mention African-Americans in any of your previous posts in this thread.

I assume Yankee is responding to the second part of my post ("lost in trying to be overly simplistic"). There's more that's problematic about Orser67's analysis than neglecting to mention African-Americans.

I agree that African Americans are the clear exception to the general rule I laid out before, but it's worth mentioning that very few African Americans could actually vote between the end of Reconstruction and the 1930s, when they mostly shifted into the Democratic Party. So there was a brief period (1865-1876) when African Americans were a critical part of the Republican coalition, but unfortunately they were largely disenfranchised during the period they were aligned with the Republican Party.

I am interested in what other parts of my general theory you disagree with, but please understand that I generally don't lay out my full argument on these types of forums unless people ask for more detail.

As an alternative history, I am really interested in what might have happened if Harrison got to sign his proto-VRA "Force Bill" into law in 1890?  Assume he gets reelected.  Democrats are clearly going to take over after the Panic of 1893 and will either quit enforcing it or just repeal it outright, but Harrison's 2nd term will mean a good 6 years of strong enforcement for black voters to regain control of some Southern state governments where they were at or close to a majority of the statewide population. In some states, this would have to be done in coalition with some poor white voters opposed to the planter elite.  That actually happened for 2 or 3 elections in NC in the 1890's without anything like the VRA, so this isn't crazy.  It's conceivable that Jim Crow laws could be permanently blocked at the state level in some states, while the system hardens after 1896 in other neighboring states. 

Could cross-racial anti-elite Southern coalitions become a permanent feature of Republican politics?

[Skill and Chance]

A political movement advocating a quasi-feudalist economy, like the 19th-early 20th century Southern elite has to be considered conservative, but conservative in an anti-enlightenment way, not conservative in the pro-business, hands off kind of way.  We've never had an explicitly anti-Enlightenment movement win statewide elections in modern times, so the whole concept feels foreign, as indeed it should because the US was explicitly founded on Enlightenment principles. However, you can see a much stronger strain of this form of conservatism in UK politics- lords and ladies and inherited titles, social class as something fixed for life, heavily restricting who can vote and hold office, etc.  The Southern founding fathers clearly expected the Southern neo-feudal system to die a natural death much faster than it did, as the anti-Enlightenment strain of Puritan New England had collapsed by their time.  Anti-Enlightenment movements in modern politics are pretty fringe, but you do see a strain of it on the integralist right and the eco-left, and also with anti-vaxxers.

Wealthy Southerners prior to WWII weren't particularly religious either, so they don't really fit in with modern pro-church conservatism either.  Indeed, the people they were oppressing were usually more devout than they were.  There is more of a straight line from the poor family farmers of the Upland South to modern Christian conservatism, but those were the people in the South who were most likely to consider voting Republican 100+ years ago.   

[Skill and Chance]

Wealthy Southerners prior to WWII weren't particularly religious either

Yet Mississipi continued Prohibition until 1966, which was one year after the Voting Rights Act. Also, what happened to the pre-WWII Southern elite throughout the rest of the 20th Century?

Well, they either adapted to industrialization (e.g. Texas oil barons) or got swamped by the in migration of successful businessmen from elsewhere with population growth and the meritocratic rise of some of the locals born poor in the farming days once public education was finally taken seriously.  The latter group dominate the Southern Evangelical movement today, not the former plantation elite.