The Old Switcheroo: Realignment of Democratic and Republican Party Ideologies

by John Ralston, ©2020

 

Throughout 2020, some Americans became concerned that people were “erasing” the country’s history. Social media pundits, i.e., the average Jack and Jill, posted and reposted copious amounts of information about the supposedly true identities of the Democratic and Republican Parties. The purpose of this historical survey is to restore what those purported history buffs think they have lost. This essay will elucidate the gradual shift of the Republican party from its stance against slavery to its support for racial segregation. Today’s Republican party is no longer the “party of Lincoln” and has forfeited any legitimate right to make that claim.

Though highly general, this text covers a wide span of time. The best way for anyone to be certain whether history is somehow disappearing would be to read a history book or take a class. Those who are not fond of reading ought to question their devotion to history and the facts represented by historical events.

Philosophy and Ideology

The names of the two major parties in the American system are irrelevant. We could call them the “Autobots” and “Decepticons” if we wanted—it would make no difference. What concerns us is their underlying ideologies. An ideology is defined as “what is valued, what is not; what must be maintained, what must be changed.” American political thinking has been largely informed by two ideologies: liberalism and conservatism.

Classical liberalism is based on the work of English philosopher John Locke. He developed the contract theory of the state, according to which a government requires the consent of the governed. Government is formed to protect the rights to life, liberty, and property. He also supported the idea of limited government. Originally, liberalism said the government that governs best governs the least. This form of liberalism believed strongly in capitalism.

Two offshoots of liberalism are populism and progressivism. The populist movement started when farmers suffering through economic crises after the Civil War called for expanded government and economic reform. The progressive movement began in urban America with calls for economic reform that would limit the power of corporations and banks. The basic ideology required a strong central government.

Contemporary liberalism evolved during the New Deal era. Its core tenet is that a strong central government is needed to protect people from the inequalities of modern industrial/technological society. Government programs should provide for basic material needs through an interventionist (positive) state. The belief is that the growth of government has enhanced individual freedom. Liberalism today is said to be compatible with capitalism, but the positive state cushions inequalities of power and wealth. Government should correct the injustices of the marketplace and redress inequalities of income and wealth by shifting the tax burden to the upper class. A benevolent government offers services to the disadvantaged. 

In areas of national security and personal morality, liberalism says the role of government should be limited. Government sets no standards of religious or sexual morality. Tolerance is shown for different lifestyles. Church and state are to be strictly separated. Therefore, prayer led by school officials is not allowed in public educational institutions. The right to abortion should be protected. Liberals do not believe in constant military intervention around the world or large defense budgets. Domestic social programs take priority over defense spending. They support a system of universal healthcare. 

The stream of neoliberalism developed when conventional liberalism became associated with the civil rights movement. Southerners did not like that because they “identified with old, white-dominated political order”. Northern whites living in “urban enclaves” felt threatened by advancement of blacks. Many voters associated liberalism with abortion, a ban on school prayer, and criticism of military spending. That association resulted in lost presidential elections. Neoliberalism shifts the focus from wealth redistribution to promotion of wealth. It stresses the need to deliver government services effectively and says government and business can work together.

Conservatism takes “doubt and distrust” as its starting point. Even the US Constitution was written out of fear of a strong government. “Tradition and established practices” are guides to the future. This mindset fails to explain how practices become established at all if nothing new is ever tried. 

This philosophy is based on works of Edmund Burke, a critic of the French Revolution. He held a firm belief in government by the wealthy class because he thought people were not equal in property or talent. According to Burke, a ruling class of highly skilled and wealthy people should control government. If most of today’s Americans counted the number of degrees on their wall and amount of money they have in the bank, they would probably be excluded from voting under that system. 

U.S. Founding Father John Adams supported a modified philosophy of conservatism, which stated that laws and government are needed to promote “public virtue”. Balanced government would suppress the evils of ambition, selfishness, and corruption. (I don’t think that’s working out.) He thought that giving the right to vote to anyone but white males was a threat to the country because poor people lacked the independence, judgment, and virtue to vote. 

Conservatives ushered in a period of industrialization and laissez-faire economics on the heels of the Civil War. They rejected government control of the economy, making them more like classical liberals. The theory of economic individualism, or Social Darwinism, was developed, basically encouraging people to compete with one another. The fittest would survive, thus improving humankind. By no means should government help the poor. American conservatives believed the key to success was hard work. Business leaders latched on to that idea, giving them the ideological ground to oppose antitrust laws, regulation of hours and wages, and a progressive income tax. Yet, they did not mind the hypocrisy of receiving government protection themselves through subsidies and tariffs on imports. 

Since the 1980s, contemporary conservatism has had a single-minded set of goals: cut social spending, change the tax code, build up the military, promote economic individualism, and fight the expanding welfare state. Modern conservatives believe that only a booming private sector economy creates jobs for the poor, immigrants, and minorities. Doling out welfare creates a permanent class of poor with no incentive to work.

Conservatives opposed the civil rights movement because it supposedly interfered with states’ rights (the same excuse used to defend slavery and start the Civil War). They oppose quotas in hiring and affirmative action. Conservative thinkers say civil rights should mean equal treatment, not equal results. Government must promote virtue and improve the nation’s moral climate (unless those virtues forbid discrimination based on race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, or ethnicity). They want to restrict abortion and allow school prayer. They oppose civil rights for LGBTQ in jobs, the military, housing, and marriage. Conservatism used to be the philosophy of the elite. Now, it is populist cause of the working and middle classes.

Neoconservatism originated when disenchanted liberals formed a new ideology. They felt the previously modest welfare state had become more intrusive and paternalistic and that liberalism had lost touch with the average person and created a new class of rich reformers. Taxes on rich people should be low and business less regulated to promote growth. They think that would help create greater social stability. They oppose policies such as school busing. In the neocon’s mind, government has promised too much but cannot deliver, thereby losing its authority and becoming ineffective. Paleoconservatives (emphasis on the “pale”), a.k.a. classical conservatives, want society to be based on “religious traditions” (which religion exactly?) and family values because they fear a secular moral order.

 

Party Systems

The Democratic and Republican parties have not always existed in their present form. George Washington was elected twice without belonging to any political party. John Adams was elected in 1796 as a member of the Federalist Party, which stood for centralized government by elites. The Democratic-Republicans, the party into which the Antifederalists had evolved, who stood for decentralized, democratic government were another political party at the end of the 18^th century. 

In 1820, John Quincy Adams ran as an Independent. In 1824, he got elected as a Democratic-Republican. In 1828, he ran as a National-Republican. 

In 1824, Andrew Jackson was elected as a member of the standalone “Democratic” party (detached from the “Republican” aspect). The new party stood for lower-class rural and urban working people on a platform of old-fashioned (conservative) politics. Andrew Jackson opposed spending on infrastructure. The Whigs of that era were pro-business and supported political reform. 

Other parties have come and gone over time: The Anti-Masonic Party, the Liberty Party, the Free-Soil Party, and the Know Nothing Party (the most befitting name for an American political party ever dreamed up), which had a far right, nativist, and anti-immigrant ideology. 

The list of parties also includes the Constitutional Union, Greenback Labor, Union Labor, Prohibition, People’s, Socialist, Farmer-Labor, Progressive, Bull Moose, Union, States’ Rights, American Independent, American, Libertarian, and Green Parties—and those are just the ones represented in presidential elections! Some names give away the party’s basic platform. The ideology behind others, the aforementioned Know-Nothings, for example, is more clandestine. 

Political scientists use the term “realignment” to refer to a “major change in patterns of support for political parties and important issues on which that pattern of support is based”. Another term they use is “party system”, which is defined as a “period during which the pattern of support for political parties based on a particular set of issues remains reasonably stable”. From the inception of the United States of America until 1968, the nation has gone through six of these realignments, with each shift occurring roughly every 36 years. 

The first party system pitted the Federalists against the Antifederalists. The second had the Antifederalists (whose name had changed to Democratic-Republicans) going against the Whigs. The country transitioned to party system #3 in 1860, when the Whigs combined with elements of the northern Democrats, creating a new party, the Republicans. This Republican Party opposed slavery and wanted the government to promote commerce. 

Election of Lincoln
The Republican party that emerged in the late 18^th century bears no resemblance to modern Republicans. The Republican party was formed in 1854 over the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which provided for the right of each state to decide the status of slavery within its borders. Their founding ideology was a belief in free soil and free labor, meaning that all citizens should have the right to own property, control their own labor, and have access to opportunities for advancement. Lincoln believed slavery was wrong, but he did not support abolition where it already existed. Republicans hoped slavery would eventually die on its own. The party supported high import tariffs and infrastructure spending such as the Pacific railroad. Division between northern and southern Democrats—something that would occur time and time again—helped Lincoln get elected. 

Reconstruction
Adoption of the 13^th Amendment in 1865 formally freed the slaves, but few slave owners accepted that change willingly. While Lincoln had a plan for Reconstruction that was more gradual and gentler, a group of Congressmen known as Radical Republicans wanted citizenship and civil rights for freed slaves immediately. When Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson, a pro-Union Democrat, became President. Johnson despised the white southern elite as well as the idea of racial equality. In 1866, race riots broken out in response to the adoption of black codes, also known as Jim Crow laws. Johnson fought with Congress over equal rights for blacks, but Congress passed a Civil Rights Act just prior to adoption of the 14^th Amendment, which was meant to protect the rights of former slaves. In 1870, the 15^th Amendment was passed to give voting rights to blacks. Thanks in part to policies and actions of the Radical Republicans, the Democratic Party became institutionalized in the former Confederacy, and Democrats dominated the South. 

Blacks later helped elect Ulysses Grant, a Republican, in 1868. By the election of 1872, a new faction had formed within the party: liberal Republicans, who wanted an end to Reconstruction. The liberal Republicans and Democrats each wound up nominating the same candidate, Horace Greeley, for President. In 1873, a financial panic and economic depression helped loosen Republican control in the South. Democrats in southern states began calling themselves “Conservatives” to distinguish themselves from northern Democrats. 

New South
The South fought an “ideological civil war” over its future. Many succumbed to the fantasy of the Lost Cause interpretation of their defeat. As they tell the story, Confederates were noble, chivalrous defenders against a tyrannical federal government run by Lincoln. There was lingering nostalgia for the Old South with its old-fashioned, medieval way of life and a cult of “worshipping the dead”. Southerners felt extreme pride of place, with home and history being two of the most revered words. They were forever glancing backward in the process of moving forward. Their ultimatum was that racial harmony depended on blacks accepting white supremacy. 

Henry W. Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, celebrated individuals he called “redeemers”, the conservative, pro-business white politicians (Democrats) who supported industrial progress based in white supremacy. The philosophy held by the redeemers—cut taxes and state spending, especially for public schools—resembles contemporary Republican ideology. 

Gilded Age (1865–1900)
Following the Civil War and Reconstruction, America suffered recession after depression after recession. Southern farmers struggled in 1880s and 1890s, leading to worse race relations. The period saw the rise of Negrophobia and efforts to disenfranchise African Americans through poll taxes, literacy tests, and white primaries. Racial segregation spread through the Democratic Solid South with separate-but-equal laws. 

Politics had a local focus. Americans expected little assistance from the federal government. They showed intense loyalty to their political parties. Party loyalty, based on religious, ethnic, and geographic divisions, remained the same for generations. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans were dominant at the national level. Elections in 1870s and 1890s were a continuation of the Civil War. Republicans (the party of the Union army) “waved the bloody shirt,” urging people to “vote like you shot”. They supported high tariffs on imports. Democrats were for limited government, states’ rights, and white supremacy, but they also liked high tariffs but only if beneficial to local business. 

Republicans were strong in the North and West but weak in the South. The found support among Protestants of British (white) descent as well as African Americans in the South, Union veterans, and the rural population. Democrats were supported by Southern whites, Northern immigrants, Roman Catholics, Jews, free thinkers, and those repelled by the Protestant Republican “party of morality”. They believed “Republicans want you to go to church every Sunday, but Democrats let you have a beer on Sunday.” 

Republicans monopolized every White House election between 1869 and 1913, except for two. Republican infighting in 1880 helped to elect James Garfield as President. In his inaugural address, the Republican defended civil rights. Garfield was assassinated after only four months in office, though his killing was unrelated to his stance on civil rights. The Republican Party maintained high tariffs, favoring big business. 

People’s Party (Populists)
The 1890s saw the rise of the People’s Party, a third party that supported government intervention in the economy and wanted to counterbalance the power of Big Business. The presidential election of 1896 was a showdown between William Jennings Bryan, the chosen candidate of the Populists and the Democrats, and the business establishment’s preferred candidate, William McKinley, on the Republican side. Bryan championed the poor, discontented, and oppressed. He wanted the federal government to help the working and middle classes. The close presidential election started the Democratic Party’s shift from pro-business conservatism to a party of liberal reform. 

This was the beginning of party system #4. During that period, Republicans were dominant in national politics and let the capitalists do whatever they wanted (laissez-faire). Later, a split in the Republican party, leading to creation of the Bull Moose party under Teddy Roosevelt, eventually gave the Democrats the upper hand. 

Progressive Era (1890–1920)
Progressives, who were described as “civic-minded Christian moralists”, wanted to reform and regulate capitalism. Government needed to take a more active role addressing problems created by urban and industrial growth. They saw government as an agency of human welfare. Progressivism was a concept supported by both major parties. Even Teddy Roosevelt said, “Progressives fight to make this country a better place to live in for those who have been harshly treated by fate.” Progressives established the principle that government at every level should be responsible for ensuring Americans are protected from abuse by powerful businesses and corrupt politicians. 

The movement took its inspiration from an economic depression, the Populist party platform, activists for honest government, Socialists, investigative journalism, the women’s suffrage movement, and an ideal called the “social gospel”. The social gospel was the belief that religious institutions and individual Christians should actually do what they claim to do: love thy neighbor. Its activists worked for social reform. Progressivism led to the birth of the YMCA and YWCA and the Salvation Army in the U.S. One influential promoter of the ideal was Washington Gladden, who believed “helping the poor was an essential element of the Christian faith.” Another was Walter Rauschenbusch, who published a book titled Christianity and the Social Crisis. In it, he asserted that anyone who tried to separate religious and social life did not understand Jesus. 

Progressives sought to reform politics, make both business and government more efficient, regulate business, and promote social justice. The movement also began a campaign against drinking, eventually leading to Prohibition. They strove for labor legislation to improve working conditions, and to introduce a progressive income tax (no pun intended). At the national level, Teddy Roosevelt won reelection as the Republicans’ candidate, making him the leader of the progressive movement. He was a strong supporter of environmental conservation, creating 5 new national parks and 18 national monuments, including the Grand Canyon. To their discredit, progressives failed to address race relations. 

During Roosevelt’s first term, he offered to give every citizen a Square Deal. His “Three C’s” agenda involved more government control of corporations, more conservation of natural resources, and regulations to protect consumers. He is quoted as saying, “A great democracy has got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy.” In his bid for a third term in office in 1912, Roosevelt proposed an agenda of New Nationalism in an attempt to force corporations to promote social welfare and serve the needs of working people. He wanted to save capitalism from the threat of a working-class revolution. “What I have advocated is not wild radicalism; it is the highest and wisest kind of conservatism,” he said. 

When the Republican Party convention of 1912 chose William H. Taft as the nominee for his second term, Roosevelt walked out with the delegates who were his supporters: social workers, teachers, professors, journalists, crusaders for women’s suffrage, plus some rich business executives. They formed their own party, the Progressive Party, nicknamed the “Bull Moose party”. Their platform called for a minimum living wage, the right to vote for women, campaign finance reform, and a federal system of social insurance (against sickness, unemployment, and disability). Roosevelt accused Taft of not being a true progressive, claiming he was against environmental conservation and failed to fight for social justice or against special interests, instead aligning himself with privileged business and political leaders. 

The Democrats nominated Woodrow Wilson, who, though winning the election because of the split in the Republican party, credited God with his victory. Wilson’s program was called New Freedom, an effort to eliminate all trusts. The election of 1912 drastically changed the character of the Republican Party. The defection of the Bull Moose progressives weakened that wing of the party. When the Republican Party returned to power in the 1920s, it had a more conservative philosophy. 

The surprise of the 1912 election was the strong performance of the Socialist Party. Their candidate, Eugene Debs, was running for the fourth time. He promoted a form of socialism that was flexible, Christian, and democratic. His desire was to bring about a transformation, not a revolution. His coalition consisted of coal miners, sharecroppers, lumberjacks, and immigrant workers. One newspaper asserted there was a “Rising Tide of Socialism”. Many Socialists won their local and state elections. Some voters saw the Socialist Party as the only alternative to the two major parties, which were not very different. 

In his inaugural speech, Wilson promised to lower tariffs, create a national banking system, strengthen antitrust laws, and show more concern for human rights than property rights. Roosevelt and Wilson believed national problems required national solutions. This was the beginning of the modern presidency, making the office stronger at the expense of Congress. The 16th Amendment allowing the creation of an income tax was ratified. The Federal Reserve was created. Wilson also believed in limiting government power. As a racial conservative, he supported racial segregation and appointed white southerners (racists) to his cabinet. 

When World War I broke out in Europe, the Wilson administration attempted to keep the nation out of the conflict. Nevertheless, he believed Providence had given America a role to play, and America had to serve the world, so isolationism was outdated. Wilson barely won reelection in 1916, and the U.S. entered the war in April 1917. Northern businesses in need of workers recruited blacks, resulting in the Great Migration to major cities in north. War mobilization expanded government authority. Civil liberties became a casualty of the war with the passage of the Espionage and Sedition Acts. 

The 18^th Amendment (Prohibition) was adopted in 1919, and the 19^th Amendment giving women the right to vote was ratified in 1920. A cultural conflict played out in the 1920s as the rural population moved into cities to escape recession. The country as a whole had greater religious and ethnic diversity. Many Americans reacted to new movements in art and music and advancements in science with militant, traditional Protestantism and nativism. The KKK experienced a revival after having died out in the 1870s when pro-slavery Democrats took control of former Confederate states. This time, the Klan also had a strong presence in the northeast and Midwest. This was accompanied by a rise in Christian fundamentalism, and William Jennings Bryan, the Populist poster child, was one of those leaders. He blamed America’s problems on the teaching of evolution. 

Conservative Republicans experienced a resurgence at the national level. They attempted to reverse progressive policies. In the election of 1920, the Republicans nominated Warren G. Harding, who had no ability or experience. Yet, he promised to “safeguard America first, exalt America first, to live for and revere America first”. (Gee, he sounds awfully familiar.) He promised a “return to normalcy”.

The Democratic Party nominated James Cox for President with Franklin D. Roosevelt as candidate for Vice President. When the Democrats lost the election, FDR predicted that the Democratic party would not return to power until the Republicans led the nation into a serious depression with high unemployment. 

While in the White House, Harding drank illegal alcohol, had extramarital affairs, and fathered illegitimate children. One mistress blackmailed him and was paid to be silent. The public knew but did not care. Some of his cabinet members were prosecuted for criminal activities. (The similarities to a certain other White House inhabitant are uncanny!)

The Republican administrations of the 1920s cut taxes, reduced corporate regulation, and appointed Supreme Court justices who overturned progressive policies. For all his faults, Harding was progressive on the racial front. Though he urged Congress to pass a law against lynching, racist Southern Democrats in the Senate stopped it. 

Harding died of food poisoning while in office, and Vice-President Calvin Coolidge, a former Republican progressive, took over. When he took office, his desire was to reduce size of government. Being fiscally frugal and pro-business himself, he had a motto: “The chief business of the American people is business.” He also wanted to reduce the number of laws on the books. 

The election of 1924 saw the Democratic party divided between urban and rural factions. The KKK supported one of the potential nominees. Another contender was an Irish Catholic who led the party’s anti-Klan and anti-Prohibition wing. Rural populists and urban progressives revived the Progressive party. Coolidge and his conservatism were reelected.

Then came a man named Herbert Hoover, who had made a name for himself in the 1920s. Calling himself a Republican “progressive conservative”, he espoused a philosophy of service beyond rugged individualism. He believed government should tell business leaders to end cutthroat competition and engage in voluntary cooperation. He became the Republican nominee for the 1928 election. The Democrats nominated Alfred Smith, who wanted to end Prohibition, though the party officially supported it. That enabled Hoover to win voters in the South and take the election. 

Unrestrained capitalism under the Republicans created the conditions for the Great Depression in the 1930’s. The strive for industrial efficiency (a progressive issue) in the 1920s enabled mass production and mass consumption and became a basic doctrine of the Republican Party. The 1920s saw an unprecedented period of economic prosperity, but it did not last. The economy began weakening in 1927. The stock market eventually crashed on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, and the economy ground to a halt in 1930. In addition to economic conditions, misguided government action worsened the Great Depression. In fact, the Hoover administration initially took a do-nothing approach, denying there was any crisis (sound familiar?). He said the ailing economy should cure itself. He kept on preaching his faith in capitalism (one of the major causes). Hoover rejected federal government intervention out of fear of socialism. His clinging to a philosophy of “rugged individualism, self-reliance, and free enterprise” nearly killed the country. 

Criticism mounted. Congress did take some action in the form of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the Emergency Relief Act, but it was half-hearted. Farmers protested, and a group of World War I veterans marched on Washington, D.C., to demand a bonus payment they had been promised. When they occupied vacant federal buildings, the President attempted to remove them by force. The clash with the Bonus Army ended with two veterans killed, many more injured, and still more arrested. 

Election of F.D.R.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected in 1932 and took action to pull the country out of the pit that business interests had dug for it, the federal government became increasingly involved in ordering economic affairs and ensuring the basic well-being for its citizens. The New Deal era created a much larger government. FDR insisted the government provide a minimum level of support for all Americans, protecting the most vulnerable while preserving a basic capitalist structure. This period of Democratic dominance at the national level defined the fifth party system. 

The election was a battle between two philosophies of government. The Democratic nominee, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, promised new ideas. “Above all, try something,” he urged. “There are many ways of going forward but only one way of standing still.” Hoover, by contrast, engaged in fear mongering, claiming FDR’s plans would destroy the foundation of the American system. (Note the Republican’s “Socialism boogeyman” taking shape.) It was not enough to save his job. Roosevelt won, marking the beginning of fundamental changes in the role of government in American life. He used his inaugural speech to reassure Americans: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The country faced four challenges: revive industry, relieve human misery, rescue the farm sector, and reform capitalism. 

Within the first 100 days of FDR’s presidency, the first New Deal was adopted: banking regulation, Wall Street regulation, the end of Prohibition, and aid to the unemployed and homeless. FDR sadly ignored racial issues, even though blacks were switching from the Republican to the Democratic party. FDR was wary of angering southern Democrats in Congress. A second New Deal was passed in 1935, and Roosevelt admitted that “social justice [was] a definite goal” of his administration. Striving to achieve that goal changed the face of American life by creating the foundation for a social welfare system, namely Social Security. 

Southern Democrats, interested in maintaining white supremacy, ensured Social Security excluded workers who were mainly African American. The government introduced payroll taxes, giving contributors a “moral, legal, and political right to collect their pensions and unemployment benefits.” 

1936 Election
FDR was elected to a second term in 1936. His coalition was made up of traditional Democrats (northern and southern), western farmers, ethnic groups in northern cities, middle-class voters, intellectuals, the labor union movement, and African Americans.

In the late 1930’s, the Democratic party in Congress showed greater division between conservative southerners and liberal northerners. The southerners did not like having to depend on votes from northern labor unions and African Americans. Several southern delegates walked out of the 1936 Democratic convention, and some southern Democrats began working with conservative Republicans to veto legislation. 

World War II
When the Second World War broke out in Europe in 1939, the ramped-up economy created opportunities for many people. African Americans from Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana headed west for jobs in the defense industry. Sharecroppers and tenant farmers left the land for jobs in manufacturing. Nevertheless, racial tensions persisted. African Americans saw the irony of fighting against racism overseas while still having to tolerate it in their own country. A riot ultimately broke out in Detroit in 1943. Even in the middle of a war, the military remained segregated.

When FDR died in office in April 1945, just prior to victory in Europe and the end of WWII, Harry Truman became President. As America transitioned back to a peacetime economy, wage and labor restrictions were loosened. The result was labor unrest. During one dispute, unionists abandoned the Democratic party. They returned, however, when Truman vetoed a bill that was anti-union. 

During this period, the ideological switch began to accelerate. Civil rights remained a problem, and Truman began taking action. Truman strengthened elements of the New Deal coalition from the working class: farmers, labor unions, and African Americans. His support for civil rights angered southern Democrats. During the 1948 Democratic convention, southern delegates from Alabama and Mississippi walked out. The rebellious southern Democrats held their own convention, calling themselves the States’ Rights Party and bearing the nickname “Dixiecrats” because they displayed the Confederate flag and played the song “Dixie”. Their nominee was Strom Thurmond. An Atlanta newspaper editor called the Dixiecrats “the anti-Negro party”. The Progressive wing of the Democratic Party also nominated its own candidate. Truman won reelection because of black voters who turned out in large numbers to support him. 

The Truman administration became burdened with the Korean War and corruption at home. In 1952, the Republicans nominated Dwight D. Eisenhower, who expressed a commitment to “moderate Republicanism”, promising a “middle way” between conservatism and liberalism. That meant restoring the authority of state and local government and restraining the federal government while renewing “traditional virtues”. 

Texas Turns Republican
The governor of Texas in 1952 and 1956 was Allan Shivers, a member of the segregationist Democratic party, which had controlled the state ever since the end of Reconstruction. The Democratic hold had partially resulted from a bad experience with its Radical Republican governor Edmund Davis following the Civil War. Shivers initiated a gradual shift away from support for Democrats in the Lone Star State. The transition began with a dispute between the federal and state governments over offshore lands. Shivers did not like the position taken by Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic presidential candidate, so he encouraged people to support Eisenhower for President. This triggered a pattern of “presidential Republicanism”. Conservative voters in Texas, referred to as Shivercrats, supported Republican candidates for President while still voting Democrat at the state level. Republicans began seeing support in the “Solid South” for first time in 100 years. “Eisenhower had made it respectable, even fashionable to vote for a Republican presidential candidate in the South.” 

Eisenhower’s domestic policy was characterized by “dynamic conservatism”: conservative when it came to money but liberal where people were concerned. Conservative Republicans resented the continued existence of the New Deal. Ike told his brother in 1954 that if the “stupid” right wing of the Republican party tried to “abolish Social Security and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear from that party again.”Along with postwar prosperity and consumer culture came an expansion of suburbs. World War II was followed by a housing shortage, leading to a construction boom on the outskirts of cities. Rural America was hemorrhaging people as the growing middle class abandoned the country and moved to the Sunbelt. Suburban developers prohibited selling to non-Whites, creating “lily-white communities”. Even a Supreme Court decision failed to end housing discrimination. 

Another mass migration of blacks began after 1945, when African Americans headed for the urban North, Midwest, and West. By 1960, more African Americans were living in cities than in rural areas. As the blacks moved in, whites moved out to the suburbs, creating racial ghettos. 

Despite ubiquitous claims that America is a Christian nation, it was not until after WWII that Americans began attending church in mass numbers. The Cold War was partially responsible for the increased attendance, with Communism being decried as an anti-Christian movement. Eisenhower began promoting a “patriotic religious crusade”. In 1954, Congress added “one nation under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance, and “In God We Trust” became the nation’s official motto in 1956. They conveniently neglected to specify which god. 

Eisenhower’s commitment to civil rights was limited because he wanted states and cities to take action on their own. He doubted that passing federal laws would change people’s attitudes. It took the judicial branch to undo some of the past injustices. When the decision in Brown vs. Board of Education was handed down in 1954, ending the doctrine of “separate but equal”, Eisenhower refused to enforce it. In 1957, Congress passed a Civil Rights Act to protect the right of African Americans to vote, but the enforcement provisions were weak. 

The sixth party system emerged in the 1960’s, when Democrats began losing their hold on power at the national level. The party in the electorate was becoming disenchanted, and voter coalitions fell apart. 

John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960 by narrow margin over Richard Nixon. Kennedy’s domestic program was dubbed the New Frontier and was designed to increase federal funding for education, provide medical insurance for the elderly, and address poverty with a new federal agency. Conservative southern Democrats and Republicans blocked the legislation. His efforts on civil rights were non-existent despite the expanding movement with sit-ins, Freedom Rides, and the demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama. He finally urged Congress to pass a civil rights bill after Governor George Wallace stood in the door of the University of Alabama to prevent African Americans from registering and a black man named Medgar Evers was murdered by a white racist in cold blood in front of his own house. 

When JFK was assassinated in 1963, he was succeeded by Lydon Johnson, who resembled Donald Trump in many respects. He was a narcissistic manic-depressive, in constant need of adoration, and prone to dramatic mood swings. He used profanity and insults towards staff. Nevertheless, he also had an admiration for FDR, showing concern for the poor. He also supported civil rights, helping to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 despite its having been held up by southern, pro-segregation Democrats. He began a “war on poverty” with passage of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 and the Food Stamp Act. Social welfare legislation angered the growing conservative wing of Republican party, which nominated Barry Goldwater for the 1964 election. Goldwater picked up states only in the Lower South, accelerating its shift to the Republican party as well as development of the national conservative movement. 

After reelection, Johnson launched his Great Society program to end poverty, revitalize cities, give every young person a chance to attend college, protect the health of elderly, support arts and humanities, clean up pollution, make highways safer, stop racial injustice, and provide “abundance and liberty for all.” In his view, the federal government could be the means to that end because he believed the country was “rich enough to do anything it has the guts, the vision, and the will to do.” He created Medicare and Medicaid and helped pass the Higher Education Act of 1965, the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1966, the Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and many more. The Voting Rights Act helped transform the South by doing away with the discriminatory voting practices and enabling black public officials to be elected. When some programs did not work as planned or became too costly, there was conservative backlash. 

The year of 1968 was a violent one with the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and Malcom X, unleashing a wave of radicalism among many young people. Republicans nominated Richard Nixon to become President with his promises of law and order and appeals to the “silent majority” of working-class and middle-class Americans, who were supposedly “the forgotten, non-shouters, non-demonstrators”. Nixon ran against Democrat Hubert Humphrey. A third-party candidate and segregationist, George Wallace (the jerk who blocked the door to the University of Alabama) ran as an American Independent. He had a hatred for anarchists, anti-war protestors, the welfare system, the size of the federal government, racial integration, and rioting in urban ghettos. He was proud to be a redneck and appealed to many voters outside the South, especially in white, working-class communities. 

Nixon took office while America was deeply divided, but his policies only made things worse. The civil rights movement for African Americans swapped over to other minorities: women, gays, Native Americans, Hispanics, and more. Nixon referred to the press as the enemy (a tactic that would be copied later by someone with no original ideas). The result of activism in every corner of society was a cultural civil war. Conservatives claimed America was being corrupted by permissiveness, anarchy, and tyranny of the rebellious minority.

Nixon himself was cold, calculating, and saw enemies around every corner. He was paranoid and vengeful, isolated from political reality. He had violent mood swings, temper tantrums of vulgar profanity, and anti-Semitic outbursts. He was a frequent liar, and his cabinet appointments were white men who would obey him blindly (sound familiar?). 

He owed his election victories in 1968 and 1972 to his “southern strategy”. Most white southern voters were religious, patriotic, anti-Communist, anti-union, and disliked social welfare for minorities. The Democratic party had ruled the Solid South for a century. They still resented losing the Civil War and going through Reconstruction. They demonized Abraham Lincoln for imposing northern ways of life on them. The 60s and 70s were marked by population growth as businesses, workers, professionals, and retirees took up residence in southern latitudes for the warm climate and financial advantages. Blue-collar workers became alienated from Democratic liberalism, and whites hated court-ordered integration. Nixon won over traditionally Democratic voters, welcoming segregationists to “the party of Lincoln.” Nixon promised to appoint Supreme Court justices who would undermine enforcement of civil rights legislation. He promised lower taxes and less government regulation. He used polarizing rhetoric, pledging law and order. “The Republican takeover of the once Democratic Solid South was the greatest realignment in American politics since FDR was elected in 1932.” The Republican coalition consisted of corporate executives, financiers, and investors as well as poor, rural, fundamentalist sout byherners. He started a program of New Federalism to give block grants to states and local governments with no restriction on how to spend the money. He did his utmost to stop the civil rights movement. 

The tenures of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter were plagued by economic recessions. Ford succeeded Nixon after Nixon resigned in the fallout of the Watergate scandal. The failed ending to the Vietnam War hindered Ford’s reelection. Carter managed to win the White House by reassembling the same groups of voters who helped FDR during the New Deal: southern whites, blacks (also especially helpful in the South), urban labor unions, and ethnic groups like Jews and Hispanics. His ineffective approaches to fixing the country’s problems, plus the Iranian hostage crisis, put America in the mood for new leadership.

Ronald Reagan grew up in the Great Depression and was once a solid Democrat. It was not until 1962 that he joined the Republican party. He made a failed attempt to become the Republican nominee in 1976. In 1980, Reagan campaigned on promises to “make American great again” (a line plagiarized by a later candidate). His platform included ending federal social-welfare programs, increasing military spending to win the Cold War, dismantling the federal bureaucracy, cutting taxes, reducing government regulations, appointing conservative judges, and affirming old-time Christian religious values (by banning abortions and allowing prayer in public schools). 

The nation saw a shift in political alignment thanks to growing number of senior citizens—who tend to hold politically and socially conservative values—and migration of people to Sunbelt states, which were already conservative. The Rust Belt of the Northeast and Midwest (Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, West Virginia) was experiencing economic decline, eventually leading to redistricting in the House of Representatives.

The Christian Right movement exploded in the 1980s. Catholic conservatives and Protestant evangelicals opened radio and TV stations to promote a faith-based political agenda in a crusade against “demonic” liberalism and communism. Evangelicals became important to Reagan. Through him, they promoted their agenda of keeping the government from interfering with the economy, reducing the size of government, overturning Roe vs. Wade, teaching Biblical creation instead of evolution in school, holding daily prayer in school, forcing women to submit to their husbands, and opposing gay rights. Reagan’s support for traditional family values, gender roles, and rights of the unborn appealed to northern Democrats (Catholics), who switched parties. 

The result of the 1980 election was a landslide for Reagan, thanks to realignment of voters. Regan Democrats—conservative, white, southern Protestants—and blue-collar, northern Catholics switched to the Republican party. Reagan’s philosophy was that government is the cause of society’s problems. His approach to supply-side economics, dubbed “Reaganomics”, involved cutting taxes, causing the deficit to soar. Reagan still gave federal subsidies to corporations and agribusiness (welfare for the rich), making the deficit worse. Increased military spending exacerbated the fiscal woes. His policies were a blow to organized labor unions. He opposed feminism, enforcement of civil rights, the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion, and equal pay for women. He opposed renewal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. When the AIDS epidemic (a “gay disease”) broke out, he failed to act. 

In the 1980s, American manufacturers shifted jobs overseas, speeding up the transition to a service-based economy. Growing numbers of jobless people had no hope, and the number of homeless people soared. The government had stopped building public housing, allowing private owners to engage in gentrification. Hurray for shopping malls—if you had the money to spend. Reagan’s presidency accelerated the nation’s shift toward conservatism. 

Reagan was succeeded by George H. W. Bush, a centrist Republican who promised a “kinder, gentler nation.” Yet, he asserted there was no need to remake American society. When he broke his campaign promise not to raise taxes, conservative Republicans were incensed. He was challenged in the primary by Pat Buchanan, who chose “America First” as his campaign slogan—a refrain that conservative candidates with no original ideas or true policies always seem to fall back on. 

Bill Clinton’s campaign for the 1992 election was an attempt to find a “third way” between conservatism and liberalism. He was the leader of the New Democrats, who wanted to appeal to Reagan Democrats (middle-class whites). His platform provided for cuts in the defense budget, tax relief for the middle class, and aid to former Soviet republics after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The economic slump helped Clinton and Al Gore win over working-class voters. 

By the 21^st century, America had changed. Over 80% of the 325 million citizens lived in cities and suburbs. The number of minorities in the country was overtaking that of whites, who made up only 63% in 2015, down from 80% in 1980. Candidate Pat Buchanan, in his second bid for the presidency, referred to the rising percentage of immigrants as “the greatest invasion” in America’s history. During this period of increased immigration, the Republican party was getting whiter and whiter. 

When Clinton helped push through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), he lost part of the Democratic coalition, namely labor unions and southerners fearing for their jobs. As part of his agenda, he took a stab at healthcare reform. When that failed to get off the ground, the effect on the mid-term elections enabled Republicans to win both houses of Congress for the first time since 1952. They had mobilized religious and social conservatives on a platform that was pro-school prayer, anti-abortion, anti-feminism, and anti-gay rights. The Christian Coalition declared that Christians needed to “take back” the country. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and his fellow Republicans in Congress adopted a Contract with America containing promises to end the “corrupt liberal welfare state” that served the “undeserving” poor (as opposed to poor people whom Republicans might actually consider deserving?). They promised lower taxes, less government regulation of business, less environmental protection, reductions in social-welfare programs, a balanced-budget amendment, and term limits for Congress (the item in the Contract that came just below “teach pigs to fly”). Republican Tom Delay made a less-than-surprising confession about his party: “We are ideologues. We have an agenda. We have a philosophy.” 

In the second half of his first term, Clinton passed welfare reform. It placed limits on aid to needy families and infuriated Democrats. During his next campaign in 1996, he claimed the era of big government had ended. Thanks to a Republican party split between economic conservatives and social conservatives, Clinton easily won reelection. His second term saw remarkable economic expansion thanks to the New Economy, creating record government budget surpluses, low unemployment, low inflation, record corporate profits, and personal wealth. It was also accompanied by globalization and outsourcing. Then came the Monica Lewinsky scandal involving the President’s hanky-panky with an intern. Despite wall-to-wall (some might call it “blow-by-blow”) news coverage, most Americans hated the “moralizing, self-righteous hypocrites telling other people how to live their lives.”

In the 2000 election, Democrat Al Gore favored active government to help protect the environment. Republican George W. Bush attempted to display “compassionate conservatism” and promised to take power from the federal government and give it back to the states. He campaigned to cut taxes on rich people, increase military spending, fight environmental regulations, and privatize Social Security. How that platform ever resulted in an election that was too close to call and had to be decided by the Supreme Court should be featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. 

Before the attacks on September 11, 2001, Islamic militants had spent the 1990’s spreading terror around the world. US officials and its leaders had failed to understand that terrorism thrives in nations with weak governments that are unable to cope with population growth, scarce resources, widespread poverty, and huge numbers of unemployed men. Coincidentally, those same factors can also worsen internal race relations at home. After 9/11, America pulled together on a theme of “United We Stand”, a level of solidarity that could be used to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic if the country had the gumption. 

The economic policies and lack of regulation of the Bush era allowed people with insufficient means to take out mortgages and buy homes anyway. The housing bubble eventually burst, with banks going broke and having to be bailed out. Hurray for corporate welfare! Nevertheless, America entered the Great Recession. 

The floundering economy made Bush unpopular and paved the way for Democrats to win back the White House in 2008. President Barack Obama saw no choice but to continue the bank bail-out, which many people considered unfair to ordinary citizens. To help them, the government passed more stimulus with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Obama’s biggest project for the first year was healthcare reform. After all, America remains the only rich nation on Earth without universal healthcare, and its system is the most expensive. The Affordable Care Act eventually passed, but getting there was worse than pulling teeth. Its biggest obstacle was imposing a mandate on people to buy insurance. Too many Americans with their ideals of individual freedom and personal responsibility failed to realize that they might actually be helping others by entering into a collective system of cost coverage. 

The struggle to pass the ACA led to more political polarization. The parties suffered from a “crisis of mutual resentment”. Conservatives decried Obama as another “tax-and-spend” liberal. A stock trader named Graham Makohoniuk (and some people made fun Obama for having a strange name?) urged people to send tea bags to members of Congress, symbolizing the Boston Tea Party of 1773. This “tax revolt” led to the birth of the Tea Party movement, which remains nothing more than an interest group. Its members call themselves “very conservative” and are mostly white, male, married, middle-class Republicans over 45. 

Tea Party conservatives called the bail-outs “crony capitalism” for corporations that funded Bush and Obama’s campaigns. They also called for radical reduction in the size of federal government. In the 2010 mid-term elections, Republican candidates aligned with the Tea Party helped win back the majority in Congress. 

The Tea Party’s equivalent on the left was Occupy Wall Street. They were against the “tyrannical” power of Wall Street banks and claimed to represent the 99% of Americans suffering under the 1% who hold most of the wealth. The rest of Obama’s first term was marked by the debate over same-sex marriage and immigration reform, both of which were opposed by Republicans. 

The Supreme Court did its part to keep social issues controversial. It avoided giving same-sex couples the right to marry. It also whittled down part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Then came the Citizens United decision allowing corporations to spend as much money as they want on political campaigns. 

When the 2012 election rolled around, Obama defeated Republican Mitt Romney. Romney garnered 60% of votes from white people. Obama was supported by Hispanics, Asian Americans, and African Americans (the fastest-growing communities), plus college-educated women (white or not). 

By the time the 2016 general election was held, America was more polarized than ever. Some people were angry at the government because of cultural liberalism. Working-class whites supposedly had grievances because they felt left behind by the economic recovery under Obama. Those individuals didn’t realize that the economy had screwed over other races as well. Since they needed a scapegoat but didn’t feel like blaming rich, white people (crackers gotta stick together), they got mad at racial minorities whom they saw as being subsidized by the government thanks to welfare. All the while, they ignored the reality that the states receiving the most welfare are generally conservative red states of the south and west, precisely where people always seem to be complaining that the government spends too much on welfare. They also directed their anger towards low-wage immigrant workers. Another perennial target of their ire was the political “elite” in Washington, D.C. The economic angst and social resentment stoked the flames of white-supremacist retaliation against multiculturalism under Obama.

Donald Trump latched onto the populist nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment. His appeal to fears and prejudices earned him a cult following. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton failed to connect with white working-class and lower middle-class male voters in the Rust Belt. To make matters worse, too many voters stayed home on election night. If a candidate from the “Did Not Vote” Party had been running for President, that individual would have won the popular vote by a landslide. When the real estate developer and otherwise failed businessman garnered sufficient electoral votes to become President, he brought with him his “kitchen cabinet” of family members and rich, loyalist ideologues—old, white men with little government experience just like him. His closest aides have been leaders of the alternative right (alt-right) movement. The members of the cult of MAGA are hypernationalists who promote white supremacy, anti-immigrant nativism, and America-first trade policy. They also reject multiculturalism and political correctness. Those are their values, their ideology—a dogma of hate and fear.

The outgoing Oval Office occupant and his staff think it’s called the “White House” because only people with that skin color are meant to live there. This is a far cry from the words that inspired a revolution leading to the birth of a new nation. In his Gettysburg Address halfway through the country’s bloodiest period of division, Abraham Lincoln recalled those same words: “…all men are created equal.” Anyone promoting an ideology to the contrary cannot claim to belong to the same party as the President referred to as the “Great Emancipator”. In the 21^st century, some American politicians may call themselves Republican, but the stench of far-right, fascist politics by any other name would be just as repugnant.

 

 

Bibliography

 

Champagne, A., et al. Governing Texas, 4^th ed. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2019, pp. 130.

Shi, David. America: The Essential Learning Edition, Vol. 2. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2018, pp. 533–1211

Turner, Charles C., et al. Introduction to American Government, ed. 10. BVT Publishing, 2020, pp. 101–115.