Historical continuity of Democrats and Republicans

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

Something I've thought about recently is that contrary to a common misconception that the Democrats and Republicans have "switched sides" there's always been some continuity within each. Republicans have always tended to be the more nationalistic party and accused Democrats of being traitors/soft on the rebs/reds/terrorists, and included in their coalition Protestant zealots (in the north) and small business owners. To some extent current trends are causing the parties to revert to coalitions resembling those in the third party system as well with Democrats as the party of more recent immigrants, finance capital and free trade (DLC type Democrats are actually sort of similar ideologically to the Bourbon Democrats) and Republicans as the party of the native born working class and protectionism. The difference is that now it's as if their had been a nineteenth century coalition that had included the northern conservative Republicans and southern ex-slaveholders.

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

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.

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.

That's a good point actually. I have noticed that trend of the suburban counties outside of Atlanta shifting towards the Democrats.

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

Something I've thought about recently is that contrary to a common misconception that the Democrats and Republicans have "switched sides" there's always been some continuity within each. Republicans have always tended to be the more nationalistic party and accused Democrats of being traitors/soft on the rebs/reds/terrorists, and included in their coalition Protestant zealots (in the north) and small business owners. To some extent current trends are causing the parties to revert to coalitions resembling those in the third party system as well with Democrats as the party of more recent immigrants, finance capital and free trade (DLC type Democrats are actually sort of similar ideologically to the Bourbon Democrats) and Republicans as the party of the native born working class and protectionism. The difference is that now it's as if their had been a nineteenth century coalition that had included the northern conservative Republicans and southern ex-slaveholders.

You can extent it back to the Federalists with rebs/red/terrorists. Daniel Shays played a role in triggering the Constitutional Convention. There is also the whiskey rebellion, and the Dorr Rebellion.

Its one aspect of the Conservative versus Liberal that has remained relatively constant for 200 years and is a good indicator of which side is a Conservative versus which is a Liberal. Ironically, one of the few times this comes up with a contrary example is the Wilson administration, though it should be noted that Wilson came from elitist circles, was very anglophile and was part of a melting of traditional conservative aspects (including elements from Burke) into Liberalism. This is not a flip though, it is an academic absorption to compensate for the embrace of government for egalitarian ends that the left was doing in this period on both sides of the pond. In the UK, the Liberal Party was doing the same things, taking it from largely the same sources, and just like in the US the end result was electoral disaster in the 1920's. The difference is that the Democrats had a rotten borough of a whole region to fall back on for a decade, while the Liberals went bye bye.

There was a chart posted on here some time ago from an election in the late 19th century and it detailed how religious affiliations voted and it is worth mentioning that "Pious Protestants" and Quakers voted almost as Republican as white Evangelicals today, so for most of the Party's existence there has been a connection and even dependence on strong support from a vocal religious sect, often usually Calvinist in its teachings. This also goes right back to the 1790s with issue being made of Adam's faith versus Jefferson's lack thereof.

I have sometimes hypothesized that either the Socialist Party in the 1910s or the progressive party in the 1930s (say FDR gets assassinated and after one term of Garner the progressives in both parties jump ship) could have overtaken Democrats as the second major party in the same way that Labour overtook the Liberals. Democrats would continue to exist as a regional southern party with a handful of hardline free traders in the north but be permanently locked out of the presidency.

I'd imagine that in most countries the conservative party is more likely to have closer ties to the church and particularly the dominant church of that country which here has always been Protestants. Even if the current incarnation of the Republican Party includes conservative catholics they aren't the ones in the drivers seat. In Latin America, France and Spain (possibly Italy) though I do think the Catholic Church has played a similar role on the political right which makes me wonder if there it was Protestants as the minority religion that tended to align with the left.

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

I find Gilded Age/present parallels interesting, with debates over immigration, income inequality, debt, and anger towards Wall Street among the parallels.

Perhaps we are reaching a point at which both parties will have a faction that is more committed to addressing the income inequality and debt if on one side Bernie and Warren have a lasting impact and on the other if the "National Conservatives" actually are sincere.

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

I think it's important to remember that motive is a lot more important than method when analyzing ideology, though.  While a current protectionist Republican (when looking at politicians, I think their numbers are really overstated here...) might be advocating for the same surface-level policy as a protectionist Republican from the Nineteenth Century, it's important to ask why each was doing so. 

A current protectionist is arguing against the economic consensus on what is best for the American economy, which can and often is read as what is best for the business community.  They are effectively saying they don't care and that other things - such as a moral obligation to protect domestic industries and workers hurt by free trade - should trump economic concerns.  Is this really the same?  I'd argue not at all.

Nineteenth Century protectionists wanted high import tariffs because our economy was not in a global position to compete on price yet we had a huge domestic population needing goods ... the "pro-business" answer, ironically, was to tax imports to the point where consumers had a clear incentive to buy domestically and prop up American industry.  While it's supporting the exact same policy, it's doing it for quite literally the opposite reason.  There were certainly campaign speech overlaps ("protect the American worker!"), but who would ever label a modern protectionist as a corporate shill who is championing corporate welfare as these Republicans were accused of?

If we appreciate the historical classification of "pro-business" as a conservative ideology and "pro-worker" as a left-leaning one, I suggest that the motive to achieve those ends is somewhat irrelevant.  I mean, the GOP didn't just drop the high tariffs for no reason in the Twentieth Century; our business community had reached such a height after World War II that it didn't just no longer need them, it was actively harmed by them.  The pro-business Republican Party very naturally adjusted what it wanted to promote BECAUSE of what its end goal - which had not changed! - now demanded.

The funny thing is though there is an argument to be made today that certain forms of protectionism are corporate welfare. Restrictions on drug reimportation which benefit American pharmacutical interests, IP Laws, actually on those grounds there was a case to be made that the TPP was protectionist and that protectionism still benefits certain sectors of the American business community. Tariffs on imported sugar to benefit the corn lobby which has disproportionate power due to being pandered to in the Iowa caucus is another. It's just that the argument generally isn't framed that way.

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

We definitely see continuity in the ideals of Eugene Talmedge with modern liberalism and the modern democratic party

I know you are trying to be difficulty, but I am going to bite.

Southern politics and politicians would necessarily present a distorted image of the party, for the simple reason that it was a one party region. You had a lot of rich plantation and business owners supporting the same party as poor farmers, because as I said in the post a couple of days ago (Civil War Legacy, and the concept of being an outsider nationally even while being elite locally). As even the quickest glance at the period's history would illustrate, there was often vicious primary battles between the "Bourbons" and the Populists and Progressives. Since Bourbons would not have much to offer poor farmers for obvious reasons, they would whip up race hysteria to get votes and win primaries that they likely had no business winning. This was Pat Harrison's model in Mississippi. Depending on the state, people like Wallace and Bilbo responded (being from the other faction) by going even more hardcore racist. Other populist/progressive Southern Dems like Huey Long and Estes Kefauver generally managed to avoid this, at least somewhat.

I have mentioned this dozens of times now, none of it detracts from the main points that Truman and myself have made.

Literally just last night I was reading an interview of Gaylon Babcock, who knew the Trumans growing up in Jackson County, Missouri at the turn of the century. He explained that while his family were registered Republicans, his father would vote the Democratic ticket at the state and local level, because in his words "so seldom a capable man ran on the Republican ticket in our area because there was so little chance of being elected, he couldn't afford to give too much time to that."

Kind of a tangent but I think it's still the case today that in many one party regions you have that sort of crossover. I lived in Brooklyn for a while and noticed that many nominal conservatives were registered Democrat just so that they could vote in primaries because in many districts the Brooklyn GOP was virtually non-existent.

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

Also don't forget, WJB is considered a conservative culturally by the 1920's against the likes of "progressive" Al Smith. And Al Smith was a Republican by 1940 for all intents and purposes.

I’d argue that there’s a continuity between Cleveland and Smith (Governors of New York, economically moderate, “wet”, cosmopolitan) and between Bryan and McAdoo (rural, “dry”, religious, economically progressive). The laissez-faire capitalist consensus of the 1920s prevented people from paying attention to the economic views of Bryan, McAdoo, and Smith.

Smith was a relatively progressive governor. He always was more moderate then FDR but definitely moved to the right during the New Deal era, some of which may have been owing to intra-party feuds within the New York Democrats.

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

It's not that I ignore the progressive movement, actually quite the opposite. The problem is that there isn't one unified progressive movement to speak of prior to the New Deal. Even within the Roosevelt clan there was bitter hostility. Also there is a strong tendency to label establishment ex Whigs like Harrison as Progressives just bc they advance the old Whig economic line, and yet the Whigs are very often regarded as "conservative" and rightly so.

As for drawing lines of continuity, it is not my objective to project or legitimize my own views. I don't have to. From the time I was a young kid studying the early days of the Republic, the whole concept of the parties switching places just didn't work in my brain.

It is not I who is trying to draw lines, it is ex Republicans and their descendents trying to fabricate a history of liberalism to grab hold of and cloak cultural elitism behind faux history. Here are some things to consider. Why is ideology treated as a fixed construct? When you do that you unavoidably hit modern bias. Second a lot of what we consider to be ideology is not actually ideology, it is cultural influence. For instance the GOP became more pro immigration, trade and military when they moved South. This wasn't ideological, it is the local economic interests influencing the party. Think about that and then ask yourself what would a  Northern Conservative look like in 1884, using period definitions for the term?

Harrison was not a liberal  or a progressive. He was a mainstream Whig turned Republican. Even at the time there was a sense that TR was out of place and that is why most of his career involved establishment business types kicking him out or kicking him upstairs to get rid of him.

I was thinking about this post just now. I actually wanted to respond to it a long time ago but was locked out of my account for a long time. I had a similar experience of coming to realize that the "party switch" theory didn't make sense. I actually first noticed it first in high school when I was studying the Civil War and thinking about Lincoln's suspension of Habeus Corpus and how it was Democrats at the time who criticized him heavily and accused him of ignoring the constitution. As a young liberal at the time I drew a parallel in my head to Bush supporters using the Iraq War to justify the suppression of Civil Liberties and accusing Democrats of being traitors in the midst of a war and I think for a while I developed some misguided Copperhead sympathies as a result and would describe myself as a "Jeffersonian Democrat."

Different issues have come to the forefront in the Trump era and obviously Civil Liberties and foreign policy aren't as partisan as they once were. I do notice different parallels in this era though, particularly on immigration and trade. I think we may continue to see other historic parallels become even more apparent in the near future. Modern day liberals who idolize TR hate it when I point this out but to some degree the sort of "National Conservatism" that seems to have been embraced by people like Carlson, Hawley and Rubio is sort of ideologically similar to TRs version of progressive Republicanism in that it combines protectionism and anti-monopoly sentiment with immigration restrictionism. Meanwhile Democrats have an uneasy coalition of centrist free traders like Biden, Cuomo and Newsome on one hand and more populist debtors represented by AOC and Bernie on the other, it's just that in the present day the populist debtors tend to be downwardly mobile urban millennials rather then poor farmers.