When did the parties switch platforms?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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 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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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?

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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

^ No one says any of that.

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.

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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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

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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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

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.