Historic Political Narratives You Disagree With

[Wiswylfen]

The notion that the 1950s was the most prosperous decade in US history, that America had a stronger welfare state and it was some sort of progressive epoch with Eisenhower being to the left of Bernie Sanders. A quarter of the country lived in poverty and Medicare and Medicaid were non-existent. Eisenhower was a fiscal conservative who refused to deficit spend even in the midst of a recession. The only reason he kept the tax rate as high as it was was because fiscally conservative dogma was balanced budgets at the time rather then supply side.

Related : people getting confused between Eisenhower and the median republican of his time, and erroneously concluding the GOP of that era were defined by their good natured moderation

There were some very hard right Republicans, especially in the Midwest. The strength of the unions in elections like 1958 washed them out of office.

Noted Moderate Nice Guy FFs like *checks notes* Robert Taft, John Bricker, William Jenner, literally Joseph McCarthy...

Don't forget where a lot of that rural Midwestern support for the Republicans came from. Barely twenty years old by then.

[Wiswylfen]

The notion that the 1950s was the most prosperous decade in US history, that America had a stronger welfare state and it was some sort of progressive epoch with Eisenhower being to the left of Bernie Sanders. A quarter of the country lived in poverty and Medicare and Medicaid were non-existent. Eisenhower was a fiscal conservative who refused to deficit spend even in the midst of a recession. The only reason he kept the tax rate as high as it was was because fiscally conservative dogma was balanced budgets at the time rather then supply side.

Related : people getting confused between Eisenhower and the median republican of his time, and erroneously concluding the GOP of that era were defined by their good natured moderation

There were some very hard right Republicans, especially in the Midwest. The strength of the unions in elections like 1958 washed them out of office.

Noted Moderate Nice Guy FFs like *checks notes* Robert Taft, John Bricker, William Jenner, literally Joseph McCarthy...

Don't forget where a lot of that rural Midwestern support for the Republicans came from. Barely twenty years old by then.

What are you referring to?

Previously Democratic-voting Germans abandoned the party in significant numbers over their sympathy for Nazi Germany.

[Wiswylfen]

The notion that the 1950s was the most prosperous decade in US history, that America had a stronger welfare state and it was some sort of progressive epoch with Eisenhower being to the left of Bernie Sanders. A quarter of the country lived in poverty and Medicare and Medicaid were non-existent. Eisenhower was a fiscal conservative who refused to deficit spend even in the midst of a recession. The only reason he kept the tax rate as high as it was was because fiscally conservative dogma was balanced budgets at the time rather then supply side.

Related : people getting confused between Eisenhower and the median republican of his time, and erroneously concluding the GOP of that era were defined by their good natured moderation

There were some very hard right Republicans, especially in the Midwest. The strength of the unions in elections like 1958 washed them out of office.

Noted Moderate Nice Guy FFs like *checks notes* Robert Taft, John Bricker, William Jenner, literally Joseph McCarthy...

Don't forget where a lot of that rural Midwestern support for the Republicans came from. Barely twenty years old by then.

What are you referring to?

Previously Democratic-voting Germans abandoned the party in significant numbers over their sympathy for Nazi Germany.

Ironic that a thread about bad historic narratives would attract a bad historic narrative. There are 3 issues with your claim.

First, you're ignoring historic German-American Republican voting. German-Americans were not previously Democratic-voting prior to 1940: Protestant German-Americans were a longstanding part of the GOP base, and Catholic German-Americans were part of the GOP base from 1896-1928. Much, even most, of the German-American 1940 swing was reversion to the mean by previously Republican leaning voters, of the type that also happened in states like Colorado with smaller German populations.

Secondly, you're focusing on the German-American swing, while ignoring other swings that also happened in 1940. Yes, some German-Americans flipped back R (though not all: Wisconsin, the most German-American state, notably didn't) but so did plenty of other Americans: 1940 saw a nationwide anti-Roosevelt swing because of a variety of factors, including the Roosevelt Recession, Roosevelt seeking a third term, and more (yes, including opposition to entering the second World War).

Finally, you're conflating isolationism with Nazi sympathy. Many German-Americans had lingering anti-war sentiment from their experiences during the First World War, and many Americans of all stripes during this period were isolationist. Deriding German-Americans as Nazi sympathizers ignores that many of those you deride as such would later go on to fight the Nazis, had views no different than their non-German-American neighbors, and had understandable reasons for being wary of entering the war.

‘Democratic-voting Germans’ = Germans who voted for the Democrats, not ‘Germans voted for the Democrats’. While it may well have represented a reversion in Protestant German areas (not Catholic ones), this was a reversion far above the national anti-Roosevelt swing. This map and Kevin Phillips’ map of areas of German-American settlement line up together quite neatly.

Many German-Americans in these places and elsewhere did go to fight the Nazis. That does not change that these voters (not all German-Americans) voted out of opposition to Roosevelt’s anti-Nazi foreign policy and continued these patterns while their country was at war with Germany. This is not a ‘bad historic narrative’ but a fact.