Opinion of people who think the parties switched ideologies and practices?

[TheReckoning]

   Obviously, the history of the Republican and Democratic parties is complex, especially when talking about their historical relation to one another and the issues of the time. Some people interpret this to mean that the parties switched. What do you think of these people?

[F. Joe Haydn]

FFs. They didn't switch overnight, but what else do you call it when a party born of slavery and class dominion is today center-left, while a party born of freedom, the dignity of labor, and equality is today right-wing?

[If my soul was made of stone]

FFs. They didn't switch overnight, but what else do you call it when a party born of slavery and class dominion is today center-left, while a party born of freedom, the dignity of labor, and equality is today right-wing?

When exactly was the GOP a pro-labor party?

[Big Abraham]

FFs. They didn't switch overnight, but what else do you call it when a party born of slavery and class dominion is today center-left, while a party born of freedom, the dignity of labor, and equality is today right-wing?

When exactly was the GOP a pro-labor party?

There was an affinity between the German democratic nationalism of 1848 and the free labor doctrine of the newly-established U.S. Republican Party, so it is not surprising that a number of Marx’s friends and comrades not only became staunch supporters of the Northern cause but received senior commissions. Joseph Weydemeyer and August Willich, both former members of the Communist League, were promoted first to the ranks of Colonel and then to General.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

FFs. They didn't switch overnight, but what else do you call it when a party born of slavery and class dominion is today center-left, while a party born of freedom, the dignity of labor, and equality is today right-wing?

:/

[beaver2.0]

HP because of how simplistic it is even if there is some truth to it.

[F. Joe Haydn]

Parties in the United States are coalitions comprised of competing interests, not creeds. Even today, they function more as organs of ideological ferment than as beacons of the true and the good.

The claims to being on the side of the People, the Right Side of History, the Founders, American Greatness, or whatever other sacralized image has a claim on the national attention are basically advertising.

These ideas are important and have a real influence on the trajectory of the party system, but part of their importance lies in their ability to so thoroughly mystify voters that they cannot recognize anything beyond them.

I actually agree with this for the most part. From the end of Reconstruction to the beginning of the New Deal (ca. 1876-1932), neither the Republican nor Democratic Party was clearly more liberal or conservative than the other, but rather composed of warring progressive and conservative factions that gained the upper hand at various points. In her history of the Republican Party, Heather Cox Richardson essentially makes this same argument: pre-1876 the progressives (Lincolnites and Radicals) were in control, neither faction ruled in the intervening years (e.g. Roosevelt vs. Taft), and post-1932 the conservatives were dominant (except during the Eisenhower years).

At its founding, though, the Republican Party was a decidedly left of center party, which is why I think it has to be conceded by even the most sceptical of observers that a "switch" of sorts did indeed occur. The Democratic Party of Stephen Douglas, as has been noted by historians, was a conservative and national party that promised to uphold stability and the status quo against Republican innovations. It fulminated against the wild radicals of the Republican Party and denounced its policies as revolutionary. Frankly, I would be hard-pressed to find any party in American history more eager to define itself as on the right side of the spectrum, other than perhaps today's Republicans.

[F. Joe Haydn]

FFs. They didn't switch overnight, but what else do you call it when a party born of slavery and class dominion is today center-left, while a party born of freedom, the dignity of labor, and equality is today right-wing?

When exactly was the GOP a pro-labor party?

Also, to answer this question: free labor was one of the essential founding principles of the GOP.

[SWE]

The GOP originated as a single issue party based around opposition to the spread of slavery. There's a number of often conflicting reasons someone could come to this stance, leading to the actual party looking more like a confused mess than an ideological project. You had people with a genuine empathy for the plight of the enslaved aligned with white supremacists who opposed slavery on the grounds that they didn't want black people in their country aligned with religious fanatics aligned with Marxists aligned with business interests looking at freed slaves as a potential source of cheap labor. To call this party left-wing or right-wing is betraying a historical ignorance in favor of partisan hackery, and the GOP from its inception to the end of the civil war is probably the most straightforward and easy to put in a neat box any major party has ever been in US history, because at least that's only one issue. Imagine how messy things get when you start to add a second, or even a third issue into the mix!

[Ferguson97]

It's an extremely simplistic explanation but it's generally "correct" if incomplete.