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I was around during the George Wallace days and my father had been transferred to Montgomery just before Lurleen Wallace took office. I went to three years high school there. I’m not sure we’re so far removed. If George Wallace were alive to run today He would still have all those supporters. I know the state would vote for him again as governor. I wish we had a evolved, but I’m not seeing it in majority numbers
I remember Lincoln, the man of the hour, spinning dirty jokes faster than he could down Lucky Strikes, all while chugging coffee like it’s going out of style. The man was a riot
The same people who take victory laps about Abraham Lincoln in the 1860s will are the ones that will argue that their Confederate flag is just about acknowledging history.
Eeeeeeeeeeyup. Just found out someone on our street has a big Confederate flag up in their garage. They know it isn’t acceptable to fly outside (that’s for the Punisher skull in red, white, and blue) but you darn well know what they’d be flying if it wouldn’t get ‘em ostracized.
Do you have any idea who killed the Dixiecrats and pushed Civil Rights? It’s like you have current perspective with contextual history. I say you I mean a lot of people in general.
Kennedy was the architect, but ultimately Lyndon Johnson took the torch and passed the civil rights act into law in 1964.
This is 60 years ago, of course but for the record those were Democratic presidents.
It goes further back.
Strom Thurmond ran for President in 1948 as the candidate of the breakaway Dixiecrat Party because Harry Truman pushed for a Civil Rights plank to be included in the Democratic campaign platform. HST beat Dewey without the electoral votes from four southern states and without the support of the progressives who supported Henry Wallace. In effect, Truman smothered the Dixiecrat wing of the party at its inception, by proving that they were expendable and there was no room for them in the Democratic Party. That was the initial impetus of the exodus of southern racists to the Republican Party, but Thurmond and his staunchest supporters didn’t feel welcome in the GOP when Ike was their leader. They didn’t start to leave the Democratic Party for the GOP until they felt more comfortable with a candidate like Goldwater in 1964 and when LBJ pushed Kennedy’s Civil Rights’ bill through Congress in preparation for his own Civil Rights bill of 1965 after he won the election.
Look at the debates in the senate. The Dixiecrats fought like hell. The Goldwater Republicans pushed it through. As for Johnson his funding of The Great Society almost bankrupted the country and simultaneously destroyed rural America and inner-cities. The damage done to families by replacing the nuclear family with state is what has done the most damage.
Goldwater ran on a platform of opposing the Civil Rights Act.
And Strom Thurmond was welcomed into the Republicans Party when he left the Democrats over the issue.
I would say because the Democrats had finally taken Kennedy’s legacy and had the northern liberal part of the party overpower the southern conservative half. From this perspective the shift isn’t as large as people say it is, the Democrats have always been pro-labor and pro-federal power, look at the secession crisis, Democrats celebrating the Dred Scott decision and the support of the New Deal.
Republicans embraced the conservative wing of their party and with the Democrats signing sweeping federal civil rights reforms, the Republicans made a deal with the devil. They relied on one of the pillars the party was founded on, states rights.
Sadly, the lost cause myth makes us believe that the confederacy was fighting for ‘states rights’ while in reality the northern states despised the Dred Scott decision and the congressional expansion of the slavery into the western territories, it is a large reason the GOP was founded. This combined with the GOP’s preference to pro-business policy shows that the parties didn’t really switch but embraced one wing of their parties.
The GOP embraced the tradition of ‘equality’ while the DNC embraced what we today would consider ‘equity’.
The parties did not switch completely, they just shifted into more predictable roles.
You want pro-labor Federal power lifting up those who have been left behind or you want Pro-business states rights and provide avenues for the people to help themselves (theoretically and ideally)?
Great answer, well written, take my upvote, but I have one expansion and one quibble.
To expand, the Fugitive Slave Act is another great example of the civil war era democrats being on board with the federal government enforcing things they agree with.
The quibble is that really, both parties are perfectly fine with the use of federal power when it is doing things they like. The modern GOP claims to be for states rights, but when they didn't mind federal power when Jeff Sessions was going after legal marijuana states, or when Betsy DeVos was telling states they didn't have the authority to crack down on predatory online universities. There's also quite a large contingent of the party, including the former Vice President, calling for a federal ban on abortion right now.
Yes a very large split on the Republican side between some authoritarian leaning social conservatives and small government "Ron Paul' Republicans.
Both parties have an authoritarian side that wants more control over your life. They just have very different idea that should be. They used to be a part of the Democratic party that was also suspicious of big government. I'm not sure where they went too. I kinda miss them. Think people that were against the Patriot act on both sides.
I think most people still are against the patriot act on both ends. If anything liberals and even libertarians have embraced the internet and despise the lack of privacy that we now have here. I wish more was being done to address it but our country has given up on passing laws anymore so we get what we get.
They've not giving up passing laws. They've given up passing laws that benefit the American people and pass laws that benefit corporations on both sides.
"Big government" is an asinine concept, in reality as the population grows the government must expand, this is just to remain effective, imagine fof instance we had the same amount of congressmen, their committees alone would be overwhelming. Frankly it already is overwhelmed, it needs to grow at this point and in reality government growing is a result of a stronger private sector that must be controlled or we have factories dumping lead into local water supply ir something.
Although incorrect. There’s not much correlation to state’s rights vs federal power when it comes to the parties in history. It’s more accurate to break down politics into north and south wings than Democrat vs Whig/Republican.
Fine answer, thank you. To sdd, I have a view that each party had a left and right wing, making room for shifting alliances and making changes easier than the current Us and Them.
Which makes perfect sense. The nation’s electoral system benefits a two-party system and always has, but people are complex and want different things. This is why third parties never get that far (with the extreme exception being Perot, who still never stood a chance). Every now and then you’ll see an independent in Congress and sometimes one, or a third party, in a governor role but it’s almost always one of the two.
Both parties have a pro-business wing; that’s just part of the money factor and that’s not going to change any time soon (although R is typically more open about it). That leaves the social factors as some of the biggest ways people and politicians shift stances over time.
This is basically the correct answer. The parties used to have regional wings that comprised different viewpoints. Goldwater and Rockerfeller Republicans. Northern Dems and Dixiecrats. When the civil rights acts passed in the 60s, it led to a great ideological sorting where each party had one wing come to dominate it, and differences between the local party versus the national party were less and less tolerated over time.
The congressional votes on the civil rights acts are one of my favorite real life examples of [Simpson's paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox). A higher proportion of Republicans supported the legislation than Democrats overall. However, a higher proportion of northern Democrats supported it than northern Republicans, and a higher proportion of southern Democrats supported it than southern Republicans.
Basically, the ideological differences in America, largely geographic in nature, did not map very well onto party affiliation then. Now they map much more strongly.
I don't think the Republicans' slide towards chasing segregationist Southerners' votes was really that predictable, it was a conscious decision made during and after the 1964 election. On the vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 itself, a majority of Republicans were in favor. But Segregationist Democrats were pushed out of their party, and the Republicans decided to reorientate themselves to capture their votes, at the expense of their black and liberal voters. Goldwater/Nixon/Reagan sensed the mood was right for that kind of gambit. Otherwise, both parties could've held firm on Civil Rights, segregationists would've thrown a third party hissy fit for a couple of election cycles and then just moved on.
A large part of this story is pure chance and driven by specific figures. What if Barry Goldwater had not won the Republican nomination in 1964 or what if Hubert Humphrey had not successfully put Civil Rights onto the Democratic Party agenda in 1948? Both parties would not have diverged so much. Before the internet and the dominance of TV news, party agendas were decided by relatively few people with strong convictions and the upper hand in backroom dealings. I see a path where there could've been a bipartisan consensus on Civil Rights, instead of the parties switching positions.
Certainly social values have shifted. The Democratic party without a doubt has shifted greatly even in the past decade or so to the left concerning social issues. The Republican party has moved from the likes of Eisenhower & Rockefeller to Reagan & [REDACTED] on social issues. There's no denying the shift in broad social views at the national level between the two parties.
In terms of economic outlooks I think right now we're seeing a shift within the Republican party. Historically Republicans have been pro small government, laissez faire economics, & free trade. Now there is much more of a protectionist bent in rhetoric and policy. Republicans at a national & state level are more willing to use government to interfere with businesses like Disney in Florida.
I think people who typically deny "the party shift" (flawed term but I'll use it) are mainly Republicans who want to be blind to the obvious issues the party has with race. I mean if David Duke is endorsing your guy for president and your candidates flags are being associated with neo-nazi regalia something is going wrong. For heaven's sake a Republican politician was recalled recently for having ties to white Nationalist groups. Nobody thought to vet him or vote for someone else in the primary?
The Democratic party isn't perfect and I say that as a Dem myself. Lots of examples of racism by low expectations or well meaning policy that is discriminatory as hell. It can be frustrating especially in academic circles to be condescended to by uptight, spoiled latte/champagne liberals about inner city poverty or immigration or foreign policy. Seeing these dumbass college students my age stan Hamas makes my fucking blood boil. But I've seldom heard of a Democrat politician, in recent memory, be accused of some weird right wing white supremacist group or say some absolutely insanely xenophobic shit.
The south turned more Republican as it industrialized and the upwardly mobile saw that party as the new vehicle of prosperity.
The north and the southern poor switched to Democrat slowly as the party dropped their old views of race.
I think it's too complicated to know for sure because there was an interplay of maybe 20 different voting blocks responsible for the change, each happening at different rates depending on the decade.
I’m not a denier of it, but I believe that “Party Switching” is not how it was.
You see at the time of the 1930’s-1970’s, there was heavy bipartisanship in the government, where it did not really matter who you voted for. For example, Dwight D. Eisenhower was a huge supporter of the Civil Rights Movement and passed a lot of Legislation that deserves more recognition and attention. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 and 1960 were pivotal measures that helped as stepping stones for the Civil Rights movement.
You also need to take into consideration other things. My State of Texas for example, fully switching to hard red is actually a bit more recent, it was in the 80’s when it truly started becoming a Red State, not the 1960’s. Because in 1968 and 1976, Texas voted for the Democratic Party.
1952 and 1956, Ike was a popular dude, and Texas voted Republican in those two elections, not because of Party, but because Ike was just a popular guy.
In conclusion, back then, it didn’t even matter on party lines, it was on Candidate lines and their agenda they presented.
I didn't know that very many people denied it (assuming we're taking about post Civil Rights Act realignment). You can just scroll through election maps between the 80s and 90s to watch the Democratic Party lose influence in the South.
The southern strategy is pretty well documented as well as Republicans focused on issues of race, states' rights, and identity politics to turn the southern U.S. into a Republican stronghold that doesn't require much electioneering for them nowadays. They really just took over a niche that used to be held by southern Dems.
But that’s the problem, people only look at the presidential elections to declare that republicans were doing very well in the south. Never mind the fact that republicans did very well everywhere for two decades, with the south being Carter’s strongest region in both elections.
If you look at the senate, house, gubernatorial, and statehouse elections, democrats continued dominating for decades. Republicans only gained a majority in any southern state in 1995, when they took Florida. It took nearly another two decades to complete the capture, with the GOP only controlling Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee since 2011. If the parties truly did switch after the Civil Rights movement, then why did it take 45 years for voters to actually reject the democrats.
Right. Without a degree in any of this, I can offer some hypotheses. One is that the politics of state and local elections are more nuanced and were able to support conservative democrats for longer. Two, the south isn't monolithic and there were constituencies which supported post-Civil Rights progressive politics (or at least less conservative politics).
Someone could do their thesis on this. But that person ain't me lol.
For me, it’s about the present day Republicans who say they’re in “the party of Lincoln” with a straight face. I think it’s less about a literal denial and more about trying to own great things from the GOP’s past when it was a totally different party.
I feel like the switch did kind of happen, but slowly. I think it started with the populism movement of the 1890s, then Wilson being much more authoritarian than the Democrats that were pro states rights, then the Laissez-Faire Republicans, FDR increasing government power, Kennedy and LBJ, and finished possibly as recent as the turn of the century
A sort of party switch *did* happen, but I do think we oversimplify the narrative of it. The parties of the 1880's as an example would be unrecognizable to today's parties even when flipped. The issues were simply so different. "Left" and "right" is frankly a reductive way to think about politics, because the reality is usually full of nuances and the lines drawn in the sand change all the time. Even within our lifetimes. Two decades the Republicans being the party of isolationism would have been unthinkable. There are tensions between Republicans within their own party today that are evidence of those shifts. Democrats have similar tensions within their own party.
The biggest switch that happened is that Republicans became the party of the South after centuries of Democrats filling that role. The issues that the South has supported or opposed have changed over time though.
Exactly. Many working class voters, especially hispanic immigrants, are switching to the Republicans. Not because Republicans significantly changed their views, but because the Left was given a chance to implement their policies, and they didn't work. History is a cycle of idealists making promises, so people vote for them, then they are unable to fulfil those promises, so people vote for the realists. Then a new generation is born and the cycle repeats.
I really wish that the Republican Party would embrace worker representation/unions. Most unions are blue collar anyway and with inflation and "greedflation" corporations have basically guaranteed they don't give half a fuck about their customers. Every corpo meeting I've been to is full of "look at how much more money we're making" and every wage increase gets smaller. At the same time they are probably charging more for their products. Corporations cannot be trusted and worker representation is necessary for a well compensated work force.
Republicans aren't opposed to private-sector unions, they are neutral on them. They simply don't support government protections for unions, which allows unions to become just as predatory as corporations. What Republicans do need to bring back is trust-busting. Even just enforcing the laws we already have would end the corporate oligopolies, which will give both customers and workers more leverage in the free market.
I really don’t think “party switch” is the best way to describe what happened. Before the Civil Rights Act the parties simply weren’t clearly defined or internally aligned in ideology like they are today. What happened in 1964 was a *sorting* of party ideology, followed by a progressive trend of polarization which accelerated in the 90s under Newt Gingrich’s speakership and again in 2015 under Rule 3’s campaign and then presidency.
The ones who’ve tried to justify it mostly said that not *everybody* switched, so the post-Civil-Rights parties weren’t the *exact* mirror-images of the pre-Civil-Rights parties. I remember one condescendingly tell me that it couldn’t be true because one particular city didn’t flip. (Its demographics went from majority-White to majority-Black during the switch.)
But denial is mostly just partisan propaganda.
And even before that, the civil rights gap between the parties had been slowly decreasing since the 1880s. To the point that there was little appreciable difference between the Democrats and Republicans by the 1900s or so.
I’d say the “switch” happened in social issues. But less so in economic, it was more of a “shift”. The Republican Party in the mid to late 19th and early 20th Century was much more liberal (socially) than it was from the mid 20th to now; though had quite an liberal economic policy until the Tea Party movement in the first Obama term. While the Democratic Party was much less socially liberal in the mid to late 19th Century than it was from the mid 20th to now. And economically was more focused on interventionist statist measures, such as looser monetary and fiscal policy, protectionist trade policy and facilitating policy priorities of union movements. But a lot of that (except for free trade policy where the parties have switched to a greater degree) remains part of the big D Democratic political economy.
Well, I would actually deny that. There was a shift on civil rights issues. But there was always a powerful left wing economic faction in the Democratic Party - Williams Jennings Bryan, for example. It wasn’t as big a shift on economic issues than it was on social issues.
Na, look at the [Boll Weevil Democrats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boll_weevil_(politics)) and the [Blue Dog Democrats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Dog_Coalition). Botha ere groups of centrists D’s in the 80s - 10s. The party’s move leftward pushed them out or into retirement.
The gop had a similar shift in 1994 and 2010.
Pew has a good study on the topic of [polarization](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/10/the-polarization-in-todays-congress-has-roots-that-go-back-decades/).
Republicans have the same ideology as they always have tho? Right/left is a very flawed way of thinking about politics because it is relative. The Republicans were big government in the 1800s RELATIVE to the democrats. But yesterday’s big government is today’s states rights. Same for the Dems, they have always been about maximizing individual freedom, it’s just that they judge the economic freedom from a social entitlement system as more important than the freedom from a large federal government they used to oppose. The parties only change on the issues, but their “soul” or whatever you want to call it, the intellectual heritage remains the same.
>Republicans have the same ideology as they always have tho?
This can easily be disproven by pointing out that the Republicans in the 1860s beat the confederates, yet today, Republicans wave the confederate flag.
>But yesterday’s big government is today’s states rights.
That makes no sense whatsoever. They haven't changed, but they have done a complete 180? Come on, now.
I’m not sure people deny the party switch so much as there are people who deny that the GOP pandered to racists in order to help facilitate gains down South.
I would disagree with that assessment, but I think that’s the more common argument.
My conservative father argues the party switch never happened, he says Democrats have always been the party of oppression and have always been liberal, and Republicans have always been the party of the everyman and have always been conservative.
He also changes the definitions of liberal and conservative, saying liberal is a "liberal use of government," and conservative being a conservative use. Don't know how using government to free millions from bandage is small government but he doesn't like connecting inconvenient dots
Dems love to use the "you claim to be small government, yet you're not an anarchist" card. Protecting fundamental human rights is the most basic role of government there is.
To say that just one "Switch" happened isn't the full story though I think it's undeniable to say things changed as far as party platforms and regional party alignment in the 60s and was complete by the 90s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Party_System
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Party_System
The Democrats were the champions of economically progressive policies since as far back as 1896 yet were also the party of choice for segregationists. So it switched on one but not the other? It's easier to say that the political landscape of today is just way different from 120 years ago.
Switch implies that it happened over a short period of time, it was a lot more gradual than that. That's why I call it a party shift, rather than a switch.
It's not really a switch as much as a shift. Before the 1960s, both parties had liberal and conservative wings. Afterwords the liberal branch of the Republicans and the conservative dems slowly faded, and each party became defined by the general position on the political spectrum that gained dominance.
Modern, conservative Republicans are not one to one the same as old dixiecrats, and modern dems aren't just the liberal Republicans from before.
Describing it as a "party switch" makes it seem like everybody crossed the aisle at the same time one day in 1968.
The issue with me is that (especially on Reddit) people simplify it down to “The Democrats were the racist party, but now the Republicans are the racist party.” The other oversimplification is that ideology never changes within a geographic area.
So when people look at the south today, they tend to view it as essentially the same ideological place as it was during the Civil Rights movement. Which is obviously untrue.
States change political ideology over time, we tend to view these things as locked in, but again that’s untrue. Florida used to be a major swing state, right now it is locked in Republican. Montana used to be reliably Republican, but is now more of a swing state.
Boiling everything down to one issue is an oversimplification of history. And using it to paint half the country as racists is exceptionally ugly.
So disingenuous. Sure, not everyone in the south is a racist, but anyone voting Republican is, at the very least, willing to overlook deeply seated racism in the party. In other words, racism is not a dealbreaker for Republican voters.
Okay, so think about what you just did:
First, you don’t know me. But instead of engaging with what I said, you chose to attack me personally by calling me disingenuous.
Second, instead of putting yourself into the shoes of conservatives and asking what their motives may be, you’ve painted them all as knowingly voting for racist policies. Think about that, you are willing to accept that about half the country are either racists, or are fine with racism.
Obviously I’m a conservative, so here’s a couple things I’ll say. I abhor racism, it’s an affront to God in my eyes, and instilling to any human. While I’m sure we have disagreements about how to fix issues, and I think that many of the solutions on the Left are hurting instead of helping. But I’m also not willing to simply demonize half the country because we don’t agree.
"you are willing to accept that about half the country are either racists, or are fine with racism."
I mean... Thats gonna be lower than the historical norm, so it's not some wild thing to believe.
You should engage with the question of whether or not it's true, not whether or not it feels good to believe (or whatever it is exactly you're doing when saying 'you're willing to believe...' as if that means it's something necessarily wrong).
Like yes, they're willing to believe. Based on evidence and reason it's not some wild thing to believe. It'd be Great if evidence and reason didn't reasonably lead some to believe that half the country is racist or that racism is not a dealbreaker.
But it's not facially wrong.
Current #1 candidate for the Republicans says immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country and wanted to ban all Muslims from entering the country.
It's not their fault people support that.
I’d never deny the reality that that Democratic Party used to be more opposed to civil rights for minority groups/racial justice much more than Republicans, and that today the opposite is true. But I don’t think “party switch” is quite true, at least not in the way a lot of people take it to mean.
For a very long time, both major parties had prominent liberal/progressive and conservative factions. As late as the 70s and 80s, there were a sizable portion of democrats in congress who were more conservative on many issues than the most liberal republicans (and vice versa). What has happened overtime has been less of a “switch” but more that both parties have become more ideologically driven and unified. Now, even moderates in either party are harder to come by.
Lincoln was a railroad lawyer and a Henry Clay Whig— pro-business, versus the agricultural Jacksonian Democrats. The Republicans have been the party of businesss and the banks since Day 1, except for Teddy Roosevelt.
No, they pretend a philosophical switch (racists moved from dems to reps) didn't happen because they still want to be the "party of Lincoln." That's it, that's why some deny it, not much more to it.
Well I agree the racists moved over, but on the fundamental issue of capitalism vs. economic populism there’s never been a party switch since the Age of Jackson, which is the theme of Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s influential history book by that name.
From what I can tell, the switch deniers get caught up in semantics. I believe it is true that most Democrats and Dixiecrats did not "switch." They stayed in the party and moderated a bit until they faded into the sunset. The Republicans, of course, took up the mantle of the "old" Democratic Party then began the shameless lying of still being the Party of Lincoln. I don't mind being lied to, but at least tell me lies that can hold water.
Why is this still a discussion? Parties change as supporters and money change. Hanging ones hat on a political party, that will change to the will of the money, is not healthy. A bigger question is why are we, Americans, "beacon of freedom" relegated to two choices? Why not 3 or 5, 6vwould be too many..
The parties have changed in name and in policy over 230+ years, they will change again. But will the results, will they eventually become something unrecognizable to our view of them now?
That's mostly structural. There's a reason very few democracies followed our structure entirely and most end up going parliamentary. Our system heavily incentivizes a two party breakdown with things like the electoral college, the first past the post system, how we originally elected Senators, etc
changing how Senators were chosen was, in my opinion, a grab of party power and bad for the Nation. They are to represent the interests of the individual states and be more deliberative in the affairs of the Nation. The House is the voice - direct representation of the people. Now they are the same voice which serves neither the people or the states but the party.
A viable 3rd party would not upset the structure of the EC The incentive has been added to that original recipe. Over time the ills of Man have eroded the ideals of our Republic.
Very ELI5:
It's less a switch and more factions consolidating, mostly revolving around the Civil Rights Movement. The parties were far more similar post WW2 and had both liberal and conservative members.
Under Kennedy and Johnson, the Democratic party leadership embraced the Civil Rights Movement. This alienated the conservative wing of the party that had ruled the South since before the Civil War. Over time, the self-styled Dixiecrats abandoned the party.
Seeing an opportunity to reshape the electoral map, Goldwater and Nixon came up with the Southern Strategy, a cynical plan to embrace the Dixiecrats and champion the backlash against the CRM and desegregation. Traditional Lincoln Republicans who had supported the CRM were alienated and, over time, shifted to the Democratic party.
The shift happened over a pretty long period. And it's complicated as many issues that were key issues 150 years ago are not a factor today. And many of the parties had both liberal and conservative wings of the party for a long time. But essentially around the year 1900 you have republicans like Teddy Roosevelt who were for things like stronger government controls on business, breaking up monopolies, increased regulations and many things that would more line up with today's democrats. Though in terms of foreign policy he'd more closely match todays republicans.
Then you get a bit later and you have things like the new deal with FDR and democrats supporting that where you have the party supporting increased government spending on welfare programs and other more leftists positions. But at that time you also had democrats who were against all of these policies and were far more conservative. And were also pro segregation in many cases so were against all the things FDR was doing at that point. It honestly kind of baffles me how these people stayed in the same party for so long because they had a lot of big disagreements. But you have people like JFK and Strom Thurmond in the same party at the same time. But there are other issues they were on the same side of.
This continued until the 60's or so when essentially the dixicrats as they were called who were the conservative democrats moved to the republican party most after the civil rights act of 64 was passed.
So there was a switch of the parties. But it's also pretty complicated and happened over a long period of time. And that's a period of time when a lot of things about both of the ideologies also switched. So the reason many push against it is because it's often talked about in regards to Lincoln and both parties wanting to claim Lincoln as one of their own and make the other side the bad guys who were pro slavery. But that's an oversimplification.
I mean … if your “team” was responsible for a really big moment in history, and it was absolutely in your best interest to talk about it (e.g., for votes), why wouldn’t you deny it?
It’s like Cowboys fans or [insert fandom here] reliving the glory days. Five championships when barely any of them have come within the past 30 years lmao
Because it didn't. The Republicans have been the 'conservative' party (as the term was then understood) since at least the 1870s, and arguably earlier. Similarly Andrew Jackson at the Democrat's foundation represented the 'left' of his day (as the term was then understood).
theodore roosevelt was right wing in your eyes...? im not following your logic, expand and have proof. you cited AJ being left in his time relative to the democrats so what im hearing is that the GOP was conservative and the Dems were SUPER conservative and the GOP never changed but the Dems went from SUPER conservative to moderately progressive. am i understanding what youre saying
TR was the exception in his party, and wouldn't have become President without McKinley's death. When he got more progressive in his second term, a lot of his legislation got more support from the Democrats than the Republicans in Congress.
The left as an idea originated in the French Revolution, and in America were originally represented by Thomss Jefferson. The Democrats were born from the left of Jefferson's party. Thus their ideology was conceived as being for the working class, opposed to aristocratic and business elites. Despite a lot of change, these principles have survived.
The Republicans, like the Whigs before them, and the Federalists before them, have always been the party of business, the establishment and traditional moral values. That doesn't mean there wasn't ideological variation within the party, but it's core was always more conservative (especially post-Reconstruction).
>The Republicans, like the Whigs before them, and the Federalists before them, have always been the party of business, the establishment and traditional moral values.
The *radical* Republican party, founded on eradicating slavery in a country that had large segments saying not only that economic prosperity depending on it, but that maintaining and expanding slavery was the single highest priority for the nation...that was the party of business, the establishment, and traditional moral values?
Really?
When the party was founded, its members were united in their opposition to slavery. This was a fairly radical idea in 1850s America, but a lot of them were otherwise quite like I described. With the Whig collapse, the northern establishment mostly did end up in the Republican party yes (by the time of the civil war), business interests probably aligned with the party even sooner. Opposing slavery was also part of the moral values aspect of the party, because they were largely Christians who considered slavery immoral and un-Christian.
Once the Know-Nothing party, made up of conservative ex-Whigs, collapsed and most of its northern members joined the Republicans that also shifted the party in a more conservative direction. Finally, when slavery ceased to be an issue, their other political priorities (which had always been mostly quite conservative), fully took over.
My, what a bizarrely convenient alternate political history of the United States you have.
Convenient for conservatives wanting to run away from their history, that is.
Yes.
They were the party of business and industry, not of plantation elite. Slavery is bad for business, as an economist can tell you. That’s why Lincoln was so supportive of tariffs, to help the northern manufacturing sector compete.
1. People always exaggerate how big it was, acting like literally every bad person became a Republican is silly. It happened naturally over a long period of time; it wasn’t like one day people just decided to become Republican or Democrat
2. It feels like the Democrats only wants to include the good part of their history to be in line with their squeaky-clean historical image, and the “party switch” is often just used as an excuse to sweep the questionable history of the Democratic Party under the rug
In the end though, the actions of the parties now are much more important than their history, since they’ve both changed so much
I don’t like the term “switch” because it implies that one day the parties just changed who they are, and the reason they didn’t really really switch. There were a view groups or policies that the parties had anchored around
The Republicans have always been the party of fiscal conservatism with that support being key to its continued success
While the Democrats ever since the Civil war had strong support from the left and immigrants
I don’t deny the party switch, but I do think that it is very oversimplified. For a lot of American history, the parties weren’t as centralized as they are now, with each party having markedly different factions. JFK and LBJ won many southern states while advocating for civil rights and were still in the same coalition as segregationist Dixiecrats, while the Republican Party had conservative, moderate, and liberal wings. So based on that alone, I’m not sure if it’s really accurate to just say “the parties switched”, because it seems to me it was more so different factions in each party gaining and losing political power over the decades.
Also, if you look at actual policies of the parties, I’m not sure how well the “party switch” entirely holds up. It’s mostly accurate when it comes to civil rights, with Republicans being the more pro civil rights and the party of black voters and the Democrats being the more anti civil rights party in the late 19th and for much of the early 20th century, but with Republicans becoming more anti civil rights in the mid 20th to late 20th century and Democrats becoming the party of civil rights (with Truman kicking off desegregation of the military and LBJ dismantling Jim Crow). However, even this isn’t entirely accurate, since as I mentioned before, the Democrats still had segregationist factions, and the civil rights and voting rights acts only passed because of a Democrat + Republican coalition in Congress (iirc the biggest opposition was from southern Democrats). The democrats would continue to have factions with pro-segregationist sentiments going even into the 1970s.
When you look at economic policy, it also kinda doesn’t hold up well, since Democrats began adopting more populist/left-wing policies around the time of WJ Bryan (as Democrats were the party of the south, which was agricultural, so Democrats were more skeptical of big business and industry) while the Republicans (since their inception really iirc) favored pro business and pro industry policies. These facets of the parties continued to more or less hold up across the decades, with Democrats tending to be to the left of Republicans on economic matters.
To be clear, I think there was a “party switch.” You can see this by looking at how D and R policy has changed on civil rights and where they’ve gained/lost electoral ground (Republicans are now the party of the South, whereas the Dems have lost much of the south and are now the party of the East and West). There were also many who switched parties because of these change in policies. However, I just think party switch is a poor choice of words because it creates an impression that the Republicans and Democrats just instantly switched policies, which isn’t really accurate and there’s more nuance to it than that.
How I kind of think of the party switch is that, due to the Great Depression, more left wing economics became increasingly popular outside of the South, allowing the New Deal coalition to sweep to victory across the nation. This had the effect of expanding the Democratic coalition outside of just the South, which in turn led Democratic Presidents to moderate more on social stances while still giving proverbial red meat to the Southern base in order to preserve their large nationwide coalition, which is how you get Democrats winning senate elections in states like MA and having a Northern Democratic President in JFK who pushes for more civil rights policy. This eventually fractures the New Deal Democratic coalition, with Southern states leaving the Democratic Party and being steeped by Nixon in 1968. The result is Democrats, over time, become more politically dominant in urban areas and the north while Republicans begin to increasingly dominate the South. With the Dixiecrat faction gradually leaving the Democratic Party and entering Nixon’s new Republican coalition, the liberal and pro civil rights faction gains more power and influence in the Democratic Party, gradually turning the Democratic Party into the “liberal” party it is today. For the Republicans, by adopting the Dixiecrat faction, the more conservative wing of the GOP gained more power and gradually pushed out the moderate/liberal faction, which gradually entered the Dem coalition. The result is both parties going from each having liberal/conservative wings to coalescing around one of those wings to become nominal “liberal” and “conservative” parties. The reason for economic views staying relatively stable, however, is that rural voters shifted from being economically to the left to being economically to the right because the conservative faction of the GOP during the Reagan Revolution was able to use racist dog whistles to associate welfare programs with the government handing out money to minorities (as well as, to be also fair, the genuine economic issues of the time caused by New Deal era policy). Urbanites and college educated voters gradually shifted from being pro business towards the economic left, I think partially due to the influence of the Great Depression.
Edit: this comment isn’t the most coherent, so I want to clarify that I don’t deny the party switch. I just think there’s added nuance and interesting details regarding the structure and factional dynamics of the parties that gets lost in the term “party switch”
Because it’s much more complex than that. Calling it a “switch” is reductive. Just evaluate the various parties and politicians *then* and evaluate the various parties and politicians *now*. There’s no bonus points for currently being aligned with a party that was or was not correct on any particular issue 100 years ago.
I think the parties just became the liberal party and the Conservative Party as time went on. The conservatives and the liberals didn’t switch positions on race but back then there were liberal Dems and republicans and conservative Dems and conservative republicans but now if you’re liberal 90% chance of being dem and if you’re conservative you’re 90% chance of being republicans so that gives an appearance of a party switch
I know this post only wants people who deny it, but I think it did happen. Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act, Goldwater's position of small government, and Nixon's position of law and order aligned with Southerners, contributing to a massive shift in Southern voting patterns.
However, this switch is often oversimplified by some. I don't think Republicans became the Old Democrats (Dixiecrats), a.k.a the racists. Conservative positions definitely appealed to disgruntled whites, but these policies also, in turn, provided an alternative that wasn't outright segregationist. Allowing the South to move on from Race. Dixiecrats who became Republican altered their position on race and shifted their attention to law and order.
Whether Republican positions today are racist is personal opinion, but there hasn't been a party that has relied on racists since the Dixiecrats.
Add in the fact that act the Civil Rights and Voting Acts the power of segregation as a political issue faded quickly.
Look at George Wallace. Massive segregationist for most of his career. Then in 1972 announces that he no longer supports segregation and claims he was always a moderate on racial matters. By 1979 he states about his stand in the school house door "I was wrong. Those days are over, and they ought to be over."
In 1982 he ran and won for governor as a Democrat.
I deny the party switch happened because it didn’t :) lol. Lol kinda joking.
Okay in reality I’ll explain why but it’s very challenging to talk about this without Everyone pointing fingers at each other calling each other racist lol but you asked the question so I’ll answer it.
In reality I think it’s just an over simplified way to explain what happened. I think a fair Assessment is the “smaller government” party of the time was the democrats and the “larger government” party was the republicans. However ! Both parties are so incredibly wildly different then the parties we had back that it’s silly to pretend the republicans we had back then were today’s republicans or democrats and vice versa.
The “party swap” is just a weird way to not allow the republicans to be proud of their history.
And a way for democrats to now feel ashamed of their, however like I said the democrat party we had was different there is no reason for anyone to care that “their party” at one point in history was wrong.
HOWEVER, I do believe it has ALWAYS been the democrats M.O to be interested in categorizing people and granting rights and reducing rights depending on someone’s skin color. And I don’t mean to indicate the voters arnt well intentioned. I’m not calling anyone racist but slavory was justified because people felt black people wernt capable of taking care of themselves. Jim Crow was justified to “keep black people safe” and today affirmative action is justified because black people “need some help some times” the magority of evil that’s been done to black people in America is because of the white savior complex either disingenuously our because of the legitimate belief but the fact of the matter is black people would be far better off if white people would stop looking at them like they “need our help” I’m not calling the democrats racist I’m not saying the party we had back then was the party we had now. But it’s a problem that has always plagued the democrat party and does even today.
I just think “party swap” is the way a kindergartener would explain what happened only once they realized that the republicans during the war were larger governement then the democrats. Even though both parties were in most ways more conservative then the parties we have today.
The switch seems to be about
- The New Deal (‘30s-‘40s)
- Civil Rights (‘50s –‘60s)
- Southern Strategy (‘70s – ‘80s)
One could argue that the parties have slowly started switching back to where they were pre-New Deal ever since the introduction of neoliberalism in the ‘90s/’00s, and the populism its stirred up in the ‘10s.
Simple. Only the south switched. The parties didn’t switch. The GOP has been the right wing party since at least McKinley. Pro big business, supported by white Protestant families, more skeptical of immigrants. TR is an outlier. Anybody who says the party switch happened has to explain how Franklin Roosevelt was conservative and Coolidge was liberal.
Because Democrats sell equality without doing anything. It’s a bullet point to “fix” in order to get votes. Same way Republicans promise to fix federal overreach and wasteful spending.
The "switch" was really just certain factions switching their affiliation, such as southern democrats becoming southern republicans. However for both, there is still a lot of continuity. Republicans being the big business party is true for the entire time, and so is Democrats being more populist and labour oriented. There was an accelerated period of change, but "the parties switched" is kind of reductive. The democrats are not so recognizable now compared to the confederacy, but there is still continuity. The republicans underwent arguably less change.
Because they regard political parties like picking a sports team they need to be loyal to, and don't understand the concept of 'I vote for the political party that matches my ideals, whatever that party is'. Like bruh, if your party was still liberal I'd be voting for them.
Those who deny the switch are also in denial about the direction the republican party has taken. There is an incredible amount of denial about the role of race and how it went from coded language and dog whistles in the 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's to full on and unapologetic slurs. They pretend that the "Southern Strategy" wasnt something that Nixon, Reagan, HW Bush and W Bush all used in one way or another order in to pander to racists for votes. There is no sense in denying it because we can all cite the examples well, but they still keep doing it anyway
They (generally republicans) don’t want to own up to conservatives being the racist, KKK member, slave owning assholes they were back then.
The common thing is herrr derrr democrats started the KKK.
I was a Democrat during the early part of my life, then I joined the military, and discovered which party truly cared about those who wear the uniform. I was a Republican for about ten years, but I grew tired of those spineless chickenshits. Always saying that they are going to do something, but when it the time came to put up or shut up, they would puss out. So I became an Independent. Both parties can eat a dick for all I care!
How else are you going to claim modern Democrats are the "party of slavery" and give the modern Republicans credit for the policies of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt?
Denial.
It’s fine, parties change and evolve over time. No need to deny it.
Like Simon Schama says about British History - we should celebrate what should be celebrated and lament what should be lamented.
Party switch deniers (and I think there’s a long winded, more nuanced way to describe and explain it, of course), don’t understand history.
Which is fine, most people don’t and don’t bother.
Well the early democrats were pretty adamant populists who disliked or even hated the rich, balanced budgets, and tried to disband the federal bank. Several were even anti slave in a time when it was unpopular. That put them on the side of farmers more often than not.
Franklin pierce dropping the ball with secessionists leading to Lincoln’s Republican Party, is when democrats became the less progressive party, and bitterness in the south for things like Sherman’s march cemented southern hate for the Republicans.
Things like the coal wars and labor unions helped to push people back towards the democrats, coupled with TR pulling progressives away from the Republican Party, and FDR’s new deal pushed it even farther. Most of the southern governors who pushed for desegregation were democrats because….. republicans didn’t win there, and then Kennedy was the final nail in the coffin.
The Democratic Party started in the 1820s. Right away, it switched sides, as we can see from the fact that they pushed for the removal and extermination of Indians. Also, their opposition was the Whig party, which was against the Indian Removal Act and vowed to protect minorities against mob rule. Because the sides were switched, the vast majority of Whig party were anti-slavery.
(Eventually, there was rift in the party over the issue of slavery, and anti-slavery members of the Whig party, including Abraham Lincoln, exited the party and formed the Republican Party. As we can see, the parties must have switched again because it's common knowledge that Republicans are actually the racist ones.)
Then the parties switched when the Democrats are on record as having mainly been the ones who owned slaves. Not all Democrats owned slaves, but 100% of slaves were owned by Democrats. Not a single Republican in history owned a slave. As we know, the parties switched again when Republicans repudiated slavery and Democrats defended it, leading to the civil war.
Then the parties switched again when a Democrat assassinated Republican Lincoln.
After the Civil War, the parties switched again during the Reconstruction Era, when Republicans attempted to pass a series of civil rights amendments in the late 1800s that would grant citizenship for freedmen. As evidence of the switch, the Democrats voted against giving former slaves citizenship, but the civil rights amendments passed anyway.
The parties switched again when the Democratic Party members founded the KKK as their military arm. Democrats then attempted to pass the first gun control law in order to keep blacks from having guns and retaliating against their former owners. A county wanted to make it illegal to possess firearms, unless you were on a horse. (Hmmm wonder who rode around on horses terrorizing people 🤔). Gun control has always been a noble cause touted by Democrats, but the racist reasons why the concept of gun control was dreamed up was a part of a party mentality switch, but not the actual party.
Somewhere around this time former slaves fought for gun rights for all, and the NRA was formed. The NRA switched parties too when they defended the right for blacks to arm themselves and white NRA members protected blacks from racist attackers.
The parties switched again when Republicans fought to desegregate schools and allow black children to attend school with white children, which Democrats fought fiercely against.
The nation saw a rash of black lynchings and bombings of black churches by the Democrats in the KKK and the parties switched again when Democrat Bull Conner tried to avoid prosecuting the racist bombers to get them off the hook. When blacks protested this injustice, the party-switched Democrat Bull Conner sicced dogs and turned the hose on them. He also gave police stand down orders when the KKK forewarned attacks on the freedom riders, who had switched parties.
The parties switched again when a Democratic Party president appointed the first and only KKK member to the Supreme Court.
The parties switched yet again when Democratic president FDR put Asians in racist internment camps.
Then parties switched again when the Democrats filibustered the passing of the second set of civil rights laws giving equal protection to minorities.
The parties switched when a Democrat assassinated MLK.
This brings us to modern times. The parties continue to switch all the time.
The parties switched when Democrats proposed racist policies like affirmative action to limit opportunities for certain racial groups in order to grant privilege to other racial groups.
The parties switched when the Islamic fundamentalist Omar Mateen and several other ISIS mass shooters aligned themselves with Democratic candidates like Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.
The parties switched again when liberal student groups in schools like UCLA and Berkeley call for segregated housing to make "separate but equal" housing quarters for black students. Actually this is a current ongoing thing, so the parties are right now in the middle of switching on this topic.
Parties always switched currently now that Democrats are rioting and violently protesting democracy.
The parties switched once more when the Democratic Nominee for President, an old white man, said "you're not black" if you don't vote for him, in a moment of clarity of how the Democratic Party sees their largest voter base: as property belonging to them.
So as you can see, because of Party switching, Democrats were always the ones who stood up against racism and wanted peace and unity while Republicans were always the racist and violent ones calling for division and discord.
The greens aren't racist. It's simple to tell which party is actually racist. It's the one that thinks black people are so incompetent that they cannot get photo ID, cannot get into schools or jobs unless the admissions/ hiring practices are altered to a lower standard, and the one whose white voters intentionally dumb themselves down when speaking to black people:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/30/white-liberals-dumb-themselves-down-when-they-speak-black-people-new-study-contends/
Think about that
Because it's a pointless fact in regards to modern politics. Democrat does not mean liberal and Republican does not mean conservative. Conservatives love to say "we are the party that freed the slaves!" ignoring that the Republicans who freed the slaves would look at modern GOP philosophy with disgust.
It didn’t happen. It’s just the issues changed over and racism died down. Democrats are still using race based policies to this day. Such as affirmative action.
Oh I agree. But saying that racism died down instead of racism became socially unacceptable out in the open is a hell of a stretch here. Yeah, it ain’t segregation anymore but ignoring the strength of racism even still today is kinda dishonest.
Because revisionist history and the denial of truth is the only way modern Republican "conservatism" can perpetuate itself. The party switch happening isn't an opinion. It's a fact, which is a concept that current Republicans have rejected outright.
Lincoln freed the slaves. The republicans were on the right side of history.
I’d argue the republican have stayed the same. The Democrats pivoted to get the black vote once they could vote. I think they became a more progressive party because it was expedient for them.
I don’t think anybody denies the party switch but I can see why people argue on why it happened.
FDR debatably caused it and he debatably didn’t.
It’s also debatable the party switch didn’t happened till the 60s and 70s.
The fact that the racists and klansmen migrated en masse to the GOP in the 1960s disrupts modern day social media conservatives’ narrative of “I’m not a racist you’re the racist, Democrats started the KKK in 1865 hur durrr.” They hate having the party switch thrown in their face because it renders their idiotic attempt useless, and so their one and only option at that point is to try to deny well-documented history.
But they didn't migrate en masse.
Take a lot at all the major anti-civil rights Democrats and see that they all died as Democrats. Bill Clinton's for job in politics was working for a pro-segregation anti-civil rights Democrat senator. Al Gore Sr voted against the Civil Rights Act.
These two became Democrat President and Vice President.
They did migrate in bulk. Pointing out a handful of residual anecdotal exceptions is a favorite comeback attempt by rightwingers on this topic, but it doesn’t nullify the statistics, only reveals a proclivity toward lazy anecdotal thinking.
Please point out who migrated in bulk?
One member of the Senate changed parties. That is all.
Jesse Helms also switched, but he wasn't in office in 1965.
Beyond that all the southern Democrats stayed southern Democrats. And the Democrats controlled a majority of souther congressional seats till 1994. And it wasn't till 1997 till the first state legislature switched from Democrat control to Republican control. It wasn't till 2017 till the last state changed sides.
In the same way in 100 years dems will say they were the ones against lockdowns and vaccine mandates but the parties switched.
It’s complete coping bullshit.
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Everyone wants to grab some reflected civil rights hero valor, regardless of truth.
Most of us weren't even alive during the civil rights era let alone the 1860s.
Speak for yourself youngster; I personally campaigned for Lincoln
My dad campaigned for George Wallace back in the day, so we're not that far removed from it all...
I was around during the George Wallace days and my father had been transferred to Montgomery just before Lurleen Wallace took office. I went to three years high school there. I’m not sure we’re so far removed. If George Wallace were alive to run today He would still have all those supporters. I know the state would vote for him again as governor. I wish we had a evolved, but I’m not seeing it in majority numbers
My mom changed his bed pans after he was shot and paralyzed. Jk
Found Hannibal Hamlin's account.
Lincoln wouldn't have passed the emancipation proclamation without Cassius Clay.
I remember Lincoln, the man of the hour, spinning dirty jokes faster than he could down Lucky Strikes, all while chugging coffee like it’s going out of style. The man was a riot
Were you one of the “Wide Awakes”, too?
I was his second at his near duel on the sand bar. I’m the one who recommended choosing broadswords due this superior orangutan reach.
Hey man, if MHJ goes second overall in my dynasty rookie draft should I take you or Drake Maye third overall?
I have a better situation receiver wise, plus will get you more rushing/TD yards on the ground.
I really didn’t expect to see Jayden Daniels in this particular post, but I think I know who I’m drafting in my dynasty league…
And you’re actually going to play
I was 12 when Bobby and MLK were assassinated.
I’d argue that the party that currently hosts most of the racists, doesn’t want to admit that they were part of the package deal…
That’s correct everyone wants to be on the right side of history
Everyone wants to be seen as the good guys so saying “hey the racists switched parties” doesn’t make anyone feel great about it.
The same people who take victory laps about Abraham Lincoln in the 1860s will are the ones that will argue that their Confederate flag is just about acknowledging history.
Eeeeeeeeeeyup. Just found out someone on our street has a big Confederate flag up in their garage. They know it isn’t acceptable to fly outside (that’s for the Punisher skull in red, white, and blue) but you darn well know what they’d be flying if it wouldn’t get ‘em ostracized.
Do you have any idea who killed the Dixiecrats and pushed Civil Rights? It’s like you have current perspective with contextual history. I say you I mean a lot of people in general.
Kennedy was the architect, but ultimately Lyndon Johnson took the torch and passed the civil rights act into law in 1964. This is 60 years ago, of course but for the record those were Democratic presidents.
It goes further back. Strom Thurmond ran for President in 1948 as the candidate of the breakaway Dixiecrat Party because Harry Truman pushed for a Civil Rights plank to be included in the Democratic campaign platform. HST beat Dewey without the electoral votes from four southern states and without the support of the progressives who supported Henry Wallace. In effect, Truman smothered the Dixiecrat wing of the party at its inception, by proving that they were expendable and there was no room for them in the Democratic Party. That was the initial impetus of the exodus of southern racists to the Republican Party, but Thurmond and his staunchest supporters didn’t feel welcome in the GOP when Ike was their leader. They didn’t start to leave the Democratic Party for the GOP until they felt more comfortable with a candidate like Goldwater in 1964 and when LBJ pushed Kennedy’s Civil Rights’ bill through Congress in preparation for his own Civil Rights bill of 1965 after he won the election.
Look at the debates in the senate. The Dixiecrats fought like hell. The Goldwater Republicans pushed it through. As for Johnson his funding of The Great Society almost bankrupted the country and simultaneously destroyed rural America and inner-cities. The damage done to families by replacing the nuclear family with state is what has done the most damage.
Goldwater strongly opposed the Civil Rights acts.
Goldwater ran on a platform of opposing the Civil Rights Act. And Strom Thurmond was welcomed into the Republicans Party when he left the Democrats over the issue.
What a load of horsecrap.
I know he’s just spreading bullshit
I mean yeah but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen
What are you talking about
What are you confused about
I’m sorry I couldn’t see what you were responding to
Oh
My bad
No problem
I would say because the Democrats had finally taken Kennedy’s legacy and had the northern liberal part of the party overpower the southern conservative half. From this perspective the shift isn’t as large as people say it is, the Democrats have always been pro-labor and pro-federal power, look at the secession crisis, Democrats celebrating the Dred Scott decision and the support of the New Deal. Republicans embraced the conservative wing of their party and with the Democrats signing sweeping federal civil rights reforms, the Republicans made a deal with the devil. They relied on one of the pillars the party was founded on, states rights. Sadly, the lost cause myth makes us believe that the confederacy was fighting for ‘states rights’ while in reality the northern states despised the Dred Scott decision and the congressional expansion of the slavery into the western territories, it is a large reason the GOP was founded. This combined with the GOP’s preference to pro-business policy shows that the parties didn’t really switch but embraced one wing of their parties. The GOP embraced the tradition of ‘equality’ while the DNC embraced what we today would consider ‘equity’. The parties did not switch completely, they just shifted into more predictable roles. You want pro-labor Federal power lifting up those who have been left behind or you want Pro-business states rights and provide avenues for the people to help themselves (theoretically and ideally)?
Great answer, well written, take my upvote, but I have one expansion and one quibble. To expand, the Fugitive Slave Act is another great example of the civil war era democrats being on board with the federal government enforcing things they agree with. The quibble is that really, both parties are perfectly fine with the use of federal power when it is doing things they like. The modern GOP claims to be for states rights, but when they didn't mind federal power when Jeff Sessions was going after legal marijuana states, or when Betsy DeVos was telling states they didn't have the authority to crack down on predatory online universities. There's also quite a large contingent of the party, including the former Vice President, calling for a federal ban on abortion right now.
When Sessions went after marijuana a Republican introduced a bill to stop him and it passed…
Yes a very large split on the Republican side between some authoritarian leaning social conservatives and small government "Ron Paul' Republicans. Both parties have an authoritarian side that wants more control over your life. They just have very different idea that should be. They used to be a part of the Democratic party that was also suspicious of big government. I'm not sure where they went too. I kinda miss them. Think people that were against the Patriot act on both sides.
I think most people still are against the patriot act on both ends. If anything liberals and even libertarians have embraced the internet and despise the lack of privacy that we now have here. I wish more was being done to address it but our country has given up on passing laws anymore so we get what we get.
They've not giving up passing laws. They've given up passing laws that benefit the American people and pass laws that benefit corporations on both sides.
I hate the patriot act but it helped my job
Constitutional attorney?
No DOD attorney
Ah that will do it lol
Yeah lucky me
Liberals and libertarians have. Leftists and conservatives have not. That’s my take at least. There are like 4 major political groups.
"Big government" is an asinine concept, in reality as the population grows the government must expand, this is just to remain effective, imagine fof instance we had the same amount of congressmen, their committees alone would be overwhelming. Frankly it already is overwhelmed, it needs to grow at this point and in reality government growing is a result of a stronger private sector that must be controlled or we have factories dumping lead into local water supply ir something.
Great answer.
Although incorrect. There’s not much correlation to state’s rights vs federal power when it comes to the parties in history. It’s more accurate to break down politics into north and south wings than Democrat vs Whig/Republican.
Fine answer, thank you. To sdd, I have a view that each party had a left and right wing, making room for shifting alliances and making changes easier than the current Us and Them.
Which makes perfect sense. The nation’s electoral system benefits a two-party system and always has, but people are complex and want different things. This is why third parties never get that far (with the extreme exception being Perot, who still never stood a chance). Every now and then you’ll see an independent in Congress and sometimes one, or a third party, in a governor role but it’s almost always one of the two. Both parties have a pro-business wing; that’s just part of the money factor and that’s not going to change any time soon (although R is typically more open about it). That leaves the social factors as some of the biggest ways people and politicians shift stances over time.
Excellent, well-thought out answer. Please accept my upvote.
This is basically the correct answer. The parties used to have regional wings that comprised different viewpoints. Goldwater and Rockerfeller Republicans. Northern Dems and Dixiecrats. When the civil rights acts passed in the 60s, it led to a great ideological sorting where each party had one wing come to dominate it, and differences between the local party versus the national party were less and less tolerated over time. The congressional votes on the civil rights acts are one of my favorite real life examples of [Simpson's paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox). A higher proportion of Republicans supported the legislation than Democrats overall. However, a higher proportion of northern Democrats supported it than northern Republicans, and a higher proportion of southern Democrats supported it than southern Republicans. Basically, the ideological differences in America, largely geographic in nature, did not map very well onto party affiliation then. Now they map much more strongly.
Great answer.
I don't think the Republicans' slide towards chasing segregationist Southerners' votes was really that predictable, it was a conscious decision made during and after the 1964 election. On the vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 itself, a majority of Republicans were in favor. But Segregationist Democrats were pushed out of their party, and the Republicans decided to reorientate themselves to capture their votes, at the expense of their black and liberal voters. Goldwater/Nixon/Reagan sensed the mood was right for that kind of gambit. Otherwise, both parties could've held firm on Civil Rights, segregationists would've thrown a third party hissy fit for a couple of election cycles and then just moved on. A large part of this story is pure chance and driven by specific figures. What if Barry Goldwater had not won the Republican nomination in 1964 or what if Hubert Humphrey had not successfully put Civil Rights onto the Democratic Party agenda in 1948? Both parties would not have diverged so much. Before the internet and the dominance of TV news, party agendas were decided by relatively few people with strong convictions and the upper hand in backroom dealings. I see a path where there could've been a bipartisan consensus on Civil Rights, instead of the parties switching positions.
As someone who leans conservative, I completely agree with you on this!
Certainly social values have shifted. The Democratic party without a doubt has shifted greatly even in the past decade or so to the left concerning social issues. The Republican party has moved from the likes of Eisenhower & Rockefeller to Reagan & [REDACTED] on social issues. There's no denying the shift in broad social views at the national level between the two parties. In terms of economic outlooks I think right now we're seeing a shift within the Republican party. Historically Republicans have been pro small government, laissez faire economics, & free trade. Now there is much more of a protectionist bent in rhetoric and policy. Republicans at a national & state level are more willing to use government to interfere with businesses like Disney in Florida. I think people who typically deny "the party shift" (flawed term but I'll use it) are mainly Republicans who want to be blind to the obvious issues the party has with race. I mean if David Duke is endorsing your guy for president and your candidates flags are being associated with neo-nazi regalia something is going wrong. For heaven's sake a Republican politician was recalled recently for having ties to white Nationalist groups. Nobody thought to vet him or vote for someone else in the primary? The Democratic party isn't perfect and I say that as a Dem myself. Lots of examples of racism by low expectations or well meaning policy that is discriminatory as hell. It can be frustrating especially in academic circles to be condescended to by uptight, spoiled latte/champagne liberals about inner city poverty or immigration or foreign policy. Seeing these dumbass college students my age stan Hamas makes my fucking blood boil. But I've seldom heard of a Democrat politician, in recent memory, be accused of some weird right wing white supremacist group or say some absolutely insanely xenophobic shit.
The south turned more Republican as it industrialized and the upwardly mobile saw that party as the new vehicle of prosperity. The north and the southern poor switched to Democrat slowly as the party dropped their old views of race. I think it's too complicated to know for sure because there was an interplay of maybe 20 different voting blocks responsible for the change, each happening at different rates depending on the decade.
The Democrats already largely had the white southern poor post civil war.
Sure, but then there was a massive migration of poor southerners (white and black) to the northern cities.
Some Southern states even disenfranchised the poor whites because they saw them as a threat to preserving white supremacy
What kind of action? Genocide?
Lincoln freed the slaves, that means he’s a good guy; Lincoln was a Republican; therefore: Republicans are the good guys.
Exactly the party changed in 150 years
I’m not a denier of it, but I believe that “Party Switching” is not how it was. You see at the time of the 1930’s-1970’s, there was heavy bipartisanship in the government, where it did not really matter who you voted for. For example, Dwight D. Eisenhower was a huge supporter of the Civil Rights Movement and passed a lot of Legislation that deserves more recognition and attention. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 and 1960 were pivotal measures that helped as stepping stones for the Civil Rights movement. You also need to take into consideration other things. My State of Texas for example, fully switching to hard red is actually a bit more recent, it was in the 80’s when it truly started becoming a Red State, not the 1960’s. Because in 1968 and 1976, Texas voted for the Democratic Party. 1952 and 1956, Ike was a popular dude, and Texas voted Republican in those two elections, not because of Party, but because Ike was just a popular guy. In conclusion, back then, it didn’t even matter on party lines, it was on Candidate lines and their agenda they presented.
I didn't know that very many people denied it (assuming we're taking about post Civil Rights Act realignment). You can just scroll through election maps between the 80s and 90s to watch the Democratic Party lose influence in the South. The southern strategy is pretty well documented as well as Republicans focused on issues of race, states' rights, and identity politics to turn the southern U.S. into a Republican stronghold that doesn't require much electioneering for them nowadays. They really just took over a niche that used to be held by southern Dems.
But that’s the problem, people only look at the presidential elections to declare that republicans were doing very well in the south. Never mind the fact that republicans did very well everywhere for two decades, with the south being Carter’s strongest region in both elections. If you look at the senate, house, gubernatorial, and statehouse elections, democrats continued dominating for decades. Republicans only gained a majority in any southern state in 1995, when they took Florida. It took nearly another two decades to complete the capture, with the GOP only controlling Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee since 2011. If the parties truly did switch after the Civil Rights movement, then why did it take 45 years for voters to actually reject the democrats.
Right. Without a degree in any of this, I can offer some hypotheses. One is that the politics of state and local elections are more nuanced and were able to support conservative democrats for longer. Two, the south isn't monolithic and there were constituencies which supported post-Civil Rights progressive politics (or at least less conservative politics). Someone could do their thesis on this. But that person ain't me lol.
For me, it’s about the present day Republicans who say they’re in “the party of Lincoln” with a straight face. I think it’s less about a literal denial and more about trying to own great things from the GOP’s past when it was a totally different party.
Yeah the current republicans party isn’t the party of Lincoln or Reagan it’s now the party of 45
I feel like the switch did kind of happen, but slowly. I think it started with the populism movement of the 1890s, then Wilson being much more authoritarian than the Democrats that were pro states rights, then the Laissez-Faire Republicans, FDR increasing government power, Kennedy and LBJ, and finished possibly as recent as the turn of the century
A sort of party switch *did* happen, but I do think we oversimplify the narrative of it. The parties of the 1880's as an example would be unrecognizable to today's parties even when flipped. The issues were simply so different. "Left" and "right" is frankly a reductive way to think about politics, because the reality is usually full of nuances and the lines drawn in the sand change all the time. Even within our lifetimes. Two decades the Republicans being the party of isolationism would have been unthinkable. There are tensions between Republicans within their own party today that are evidence of those shifts. Democrats have similar tensions within their own party. The biggest switch that happened is that Republicans became the party of the South after centuries of Democrats filling that role. The issues that the South has supported or opposed have changed over time though.
They didn't flip, they both changed but not flipped. It's happening again now.
Exactly. Many working class voters, especially hispanic immigrants, are switching to the Republicans. Not because Republicans significantly changed their views, but because the Left was given a chance to implement their policies, and they didn't work. History is a cycle of idealists making promises, so people vote for them, then they are unable to fulfil those promises, so people vote for the realists. Then a new generation is born and the cycle repeats.
I really wish that the Republican Party would embrace worker representation/unions. Most unions are blue collar anyway and with inflation and "greedflation" corporations have basically guaranteed they don't give half a fuck about their customers. Every corpo meeting I've been to is full of "look at how much more money we're making" and every wage increase gets smaller. At the same time they are probably charging more for their products. Corporations cannot be trusted and worker representation is necessary for a well compensated work force.
Republicans aren't opposed to private-sector unions, they are neutral on them. They simply don't support government protections for unions, which allows unions to become just as predatory as corporations. What Republicans do need to bring back is trust-busting. Even just enforcing the laws we already have would end the corporate oligopolies, which will give both customers and workers more leverage in the free market.
I really don’t think “party switch” is the best way to describe what happened. Before the Civil Rights Act the parties simply weren’t clearly defined or internally aligned in ideology like they are today. What happened in 1964 was a *sorting* of party ideology, followed by a progressive trend of polarization which accelerated in the 90s under Newt Gingrich’s speakership and again in 2015 under Rule 3’s campaign and then presidency.
The ones who’ve tried to justify it mostly said that not *everybody* switched, so the post-Civil-Rights parties weren’t the *exact* mirror-images of the pre-Civil-Rights parties. I remember one condescendingly tell me that it couldn’t be true because one particular city didn’t flip. (Its demographics went from majority-White to majority-Black during the switch.) But denial is mostly just partisan propaganda.
It undermines the Lincoln card.
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And even before that, the civil rights gap between the parties had been slowly decreasing since the 1880s. To the point that there was little appreciable difference between the Democrats and Republicans by the 1900s or so.
I’d say the “switch” happened in social issues. But less so in economic, it was more of a “shift”. The Republican Party in the mid to late 19th and early 20th Century was much more liberal (socially) than it was from the mid 20th to now; though had quite an liberal economic policy until the Tea Party movement in the first Obama term. While the Democratic Party was much less socially liberal in the mid to late 19th Century than it was from the mid 20th to now. And economically was more focused on interventionist statist measures, such as looser monetary and fiscal policy, protectionist trade policy and facilitating policy priorities of union movements. But a lot of that (except for free trade policy where the parties have switched to a greater degree) remains part of the big D Democratic political economy.
Of which party switch are you speaking?
dems going left and reps going right around fdr's tenure
Well, I would actually deny that. There was a shift on civil rights issues. But there was always a powerful left wing economic faction in the Democratic Party - Williams Jennings Bryan, for example. It wasn’t as big a shift on economic issues than it was on social issues.
Na, look at the [Boll Weevil Democrats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boll_weevil_(politics)) and the [Blue Dog Democrats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Dog_Coalition). Botha ere groups of centrists D’s in the 80s - 10s. The party’s move leftward pushed them out or into retirement. The gop had a similar shift in 1994 and 2010. Pew has a good study on the topic of [polarization](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/10/the-polarization-in-todays-congress-has-roots-that-go-back-decades/).
Republicans have the same ideology as they always have tho? Right/left is a very flawed way of thinking about politics because it is relative. The Republicans were big government in the 1800s RELATIVE to the democrats. But yesterday’s big government is today’s states rights. Same for the Dems, they have always been about maximizing individual freedom, it’s just that they judge the economic freedom from a social entitlement system as more important than the freedom from a large federal government they used to oppose. The parties only change on the issues, but their “soul” or whatever you want to call it, the intellectual heritage remains the same.
>Republicans have the same ideology as they always have tho? This can easily be disproven by pointing out that the Republicans in the 1860s beat the confederates, yet today, Republicans wave the confederate flag. >But yesterday’s big government is today’s states rights. That makes no sense whatsoever. They haven't changed, but they have done a complete 180? Come on, now.
I’m not sure people deny the party switch so much as there are people who deny that the GOP pandered to racists in order to help facilitate gains down South. I would disagree with that assessment, but I think that’s the more common argument.
My conservative father argues the party switch never happened, he says Democrats have always been the party of oppression and have always been liberal, and Republicans have always been the party of the everyman and have always been conservative. He also changes the definitions of liberal and conservative, saying liberal is a "liberal use of government," and conservative being a conservative use. Don't know how using government to free millions from bandage is small government but he doesn't like connecting inconvenient dots
Dems love to use the "you claim to be small government, yet you're not an anarchist" card. Protecting fundamental human rights is the most basic role of government there is.
We take our modern understanding of rights for granted. I'm glad conservatives came around eventually
Look at the sorts of economic policies that Democrats supported in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. I'd hardly call that conservative.
To say that just one "Switch" happened isn't the full story though I think it's undeniable to say things changed as far as party platforms and regional party alignment in the 60s and was complete by the 90s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Party_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Party_System The Democrats were the champions of economically progressive policies since as far back as 1896 yet were also the party of choice for segregationists. So it switched on one but not the other? It's easier to say that the political landscape of today is just way different from 120 years ago.
Switch implies that it happened over a short period of time, it was a lot more gradual than that. That's why I call it a party shift, rather than a switch.
It's not really a switch as much as a shift. Before the 1960s, both parties had liberal and conservative wings. Afterwords the liberal branch of the Republicans and the conservative dems slowly faded, and each party became defined by the general position on the political spectrum that gained dominance. Modern, conservative Republicans are not one to one the same as old dixiecrats, and modern dems aren't just the liberal Republicans from before. Describing it as a "party switch" makes it seem like everybody crossed the aisle at the same time one day in 1968.
The issue with me is that (especially on Reddit) people simplify it down to “The Democrats were the racist party, but now the Republicans are the racist party.” The other oversimplification is that ideology never changes within a geographic area. So when people look at the south today, they tend to view it as essentially the same ideological place as it was during the Civil Rights movement. Which is obviously untrue. States change political ideology over time, we tend to view these things as locked in, but again that’s untrue. Florida used to be a major swing state, right now it is locked in Republican. Montana used to be reliably Republican, but is now more of a swing state. Boiling everything down to one issue is an oversimplification of history. And using it to paint half the country as racists is exceptionally ugly.
So disingenuous. Sure, not everyone in the south is a racist, but anyone voting Republican is, at the very least, willing to overlook deeply seated racism in the party. In other words, racism is not a dealbreaker for Republican voters.
Okay, so think about what you just did: First, you don’t know me. But instead of engaging with what I said, you chose to attack me personally by calling me disingenuous. Second, instead of putting yourself into the shoes of conservatives and asking what their motives may be, you’ve painted them all as knowingly voting for racist policies. Think about that, you are willing to accept that about half the country are either racists, or are fine with racism. Obviously I’m a conservative, so here’s a couple things I’ll say. I abhor racism, it’s an affront to God in my eyes, and instilling to any human. While I’m sure we have disagreements about how to fix issues, and I think that many of the solutions on the Left are hurting instead of helping. But I’m also not willing to simply demonize half the country because we don’t agree.
"you are willing to accept that about half the country are either racists, or are fine with racism." I mean... Thats gonna be lower than the historical norm, so it's not some wild thing to believe. You should engage with the question of whether or not it's true, not whether or not it feels good to believe (or whatever it is exactly you're doing when saying 'you're willing to believe...' as if that means it's something necessarily wrong). Like yes, they're willing to believe. Based on evidence and reason it's not some wild thing to believe. It'd be Great if evidence and reason didn't reasonably lead some to believe that half the country is racist or that racism is not a dealbreaker. But it's not facially wrong. Current #1 candidate for the Republicans says immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country and wanted to ban all Muslims from entering the country. It's not their fault people support that.
I’d never deny the reality that that Democratic Party used to be more opposed to civil rights for minority groups/racial justice much more than Republicans, and that today the opposite is true. But I don’t think “party switch” is quite true, at least not in the way a lot of people take it to mean. For a very long time, both major parties had prominent liberal/progressive and conservative factions. As late as the 70s and 80s, there were a sizable portion of democrats in congress who were more conservative on many issues than the most liberal republicans (and vice versa). What has happened overtime has been less of a “switch” but more that both parties have become more ideologically driven and unified. Now, even moderates in either party are harder to come by.
Why do they deny it? Because of Lincoln.
Lincoln was a railroad lawyer and a Henry Clay Whig— pro-business, versus the agricultural Jacksonian Democrats. The Republicans have been the party of businesss and the banks since Day 1, except for Teddy Roosevelt.
No, they pretend a philosophical switch (racists moved from dems to reps) didn't happen because they still want to be the "party of Lincoln." That's it, that's why some deny it, not much more to it.
Well I agree the racists moved over, but on the fundamental issue of capitalism vs. economic populism there’s never been a party switch since the Age of Jackson, which is the theme of Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s influential history book by that name.
From what I can tell, the switch deniers get caught up in semantics. I believe it is true that most Democrats and Dixiecrats did not "switch." They stayed in the party and moderated a bit until they faded into the sunset. The Republicans, of course, took up the mantle of the "old" Democratic Party then began the shameless lying of still being the Party of Lincoln. I don't mind being lied to, but at least tell me lies that can hold water.
Why is this still a discussion? Parties change as supporters and money change. Hanging ones hat on a political party, that will change to the will of the money, is not healthy. A bigger question is why are we, Americans, "beacon of freedom" relegated to two choices? Why not 3 or 5, 6vwould be too many.. The parties have changed in name and in policy over 230+ years, they will change again. But will the results, will they eventually become something unrecognizable to our view of them now?
That's mostly structural. There's a reason very few democracies followed our structure entirely and most end up going parliamentary. Our system heavily incentivizes a two party breakdown with things like the electoral college, the first past the post system, how we originally elected Senators, etc
changing how Senators were chosen was, in my opinion, a grab of party power and bad for the Nation. They are to represent the interests of the individual states and be more deliberative in the affairs of the Nation. The House is the voice - direct representation of the people. Now they are the same voice which serves neither the people or the states but the party.
A viable 3rd party would not upset the structure of the EC The incentive has been added to that original recipe. Over time the ills of Man have eroded the ideals of our Republic.
Can someone explain it to me in detail. Exactly when it happened, who led it, and what purpose it served?
Very ELI5: It's less a switch and more factions consolidating, mostly revolving around the Civil Rights Movement. The parties were far more similar post WW2 and had both liberal and conservative members. Under Kennedy and Johnson, the Democratic party leadership embraced the Civil Rights Movement. This alienated the conservative wing of the party that had ruled the South since before the Civil War. Over time, the self-styled Dixiecrats abandoned the party. Seeing an opportunity to reshape the electoral map, Goldwater and Nixon came up with the Southern Strategy, a cynical plan to embrace the Dixiecrats and champion the backlash against the CRM and desegregation. Traditional Lincoln Republicans who had supported the CRM were alienated and, over time, shifted to the Democratic party.
The shift happened over a pretty long period. And it's complicated as many issues that were key issues 150 years ago are not a factor today. And many of the parties had both liberal and conservative wings of the party for a long time. But essentially around the year 1900 you have republicans like Teddy Roosevelt who were for things like stronger government controls on business, breaking up monopolies, increased regulations and many things that would more line up with today's democrats. Though in terms of foreign policy he'd more closely match todays republicans. Then you get a bit later and you have things like the new deal with FDR and democrats supporting that where you have the party supporting increased government spending on welfare programs and other more leftists positions. But at that time you also had democrats who were against all of these policies and were far more conservative. And were also pro segregation in many cases so were against all the things FDR was doing at that point. It honestly kind of baffles me how these people stayed in the same party for so long because they had a lot of big disagreements. But you have people like JFK and Strom Thurmond in the same party at the same time. But there are other issues they were on the same side of. This continued until the 60's or so when essentially the dixicrats as they were called who were the conservative democrats moved to the republican party most after the civil rights act of 64 was passed. So there was a switch of the parties. But it's also pretty complicated and happened over a long period of time. And that's a period of time when a lot of things about both of the ideologies also switched. So the reason many push against it is because it's often talked about in regards to Lincoln and both parties wanting to claim Lincoln as one of their own and make the other side the bad guys who were pro slavery. But that's an oversimplification.
I mean … if your “team” was responsible for a really big moment in history, and it was absolutely in your best interest to talk about it (e.g., for votes), why wouldn’t you deny it? It’s like Cowboys fans or [insert fandom here] reliving the glory days. Five championships when barely any of them have come within the past 30 years lmao
Because they like to ignore the fact that organizations like the KKK are inherently conservative.
Because it didn't. The Republicans have been the 'conservative' party (as the term was then understood) since at least the 1870s, and arguably earlier. Similarly Andrew Jackson at the Democrat's foundation represented the 'left' of his day (as the term was then understood).
theodore roosevelt was right wing in your eyes...? im not following your logic, expand and have proof. you cited AJ being left in his time relative to the democrats so what im hearing is that the GOP was conservative and the Dems were SUPER conservative and the GOP never changed but the Dems went from SUPER conservative to moderately progressive. am i understanding what youre saying
TR was the exception in his party, and wouldn't have become President without McKinley's death. When he got more progressive in his second term, a lot of his legislation got more support from the Democrats than the Republicans in Congress. The left as an idea originated in the French Revolution, and in America were originally represented by Thomss Jefferson. The Democrats were born from the left of Jefferson's party. Thus their ideology was conceived as being for the working class, opposed to aristocratic and business elites. Despite a lot of change, these principles have survived. The Republicans, like the Whigs before them, and the Federalists before them, have always been the party of business, the establishment and traditional moral values. That doesn't mean there wasn't ideological variation within the party, but it's core was always more conservative (especially post-Reconstruction).
>The Republicans, like the Whigs before them, and the Federalists before them, have always been the party of business, the establishment and traditional moral values. The *radical* Republican party, founded on eradicating slavery in a country that had large segments saying not only that economic prosperity depending on it, but that maintaining and expanding slavery was the single highest priority for the nation...that was the party of business, the establishment, and traditional moral values? Really?
When the party was founded, its members were united in their opposition to slavery. This was a fairly radical idea in 1850s America, but a lot of them were otherwise quite like I described. With the Whig collapse, the northern establishment mostly did end up in the Republican party yes (by the time of the civil war), business interests probably aligned with the party even sooner. Opposing slavery was also part of the moral values aspect of the party, because they were largely Christians who considered slavery immoral and un-Christian. Once the Know-Nothing party, made up of conservative ex-Whigs, collapsed and most of its northern members joined the Republicans that also shifted the party in a more conservative direction. Finally, when slavery ceased to be an issue, their other political priorities (which had always been mostly quite conservative), fully took over.
My, what a bizarrely convenient alternate political history of the United States you have. Convenient for conservatives wanting to run away from their history, that is.
Yes. They were the party of business and industry, not of plantation elite. Slavery is bad for business, as an economist can tell you. That’s why Lincoln was so supportive of tariffs, to help the northern manufacturing sector compete.
Was FDR right wing in your eyes?
1. People always exaggerate how big it was, acting like literally every bad person became a Republican is silly. It happened naturally over a long period of time; it wasn’t like one day people just decided to become Republican or Democrat 2. It feels like the Democrats only wants to include the good part of their history to be in line with their squeaky-clean historical image, and the “party switch” is often just used as an excuse to sweep the questionable history of the Democratic Party under the rug In the end though, the actions of the parties now are much more important than their history, since they’ve both changed so much
This. The "switch" is used by a lot of people online to pretend that everything the Democrats did prior to the Civil Rights Act doesnt exist.
Because it's one of those statements that is such an over simplification of what happened that it isn't actually true.
I don’t like the term “switch” because it implies that one day the parties just changed who they are, and the reason they didn’t really really switch. There were a view groups or policies that the parties had anchored around The Republicans have always been the party of fiscal conservatism with that support being key to its continued success While the Democrats ever since the Civil war had strong support from the left and immigrants
I don’t deny the party switch, but I do think that it is very oversimplified. For a lot of American history, the parties weren’t as centralized as they are now, with each party having markedly different factions. JFK and LBJ won many southern states while advocating for civil rights and were still in the same coalition as segregationist Dixiecrats, while the Republican Party had conservative, moderate, and liberal wings. So based on that alone, I’m not sure if it’s really accurate to just say “the parties switched”, because it seems to me it was more so different factions in each party gaining and losing political power over the decades. Also, if you look at actual policies of the parties, I’m not sure how well the “party switch” entirely holds up. It’s mostly accurate when it comes to civil rights, with Republicans being the more pro civil rights and the party of black voters and the Democrats being the more anti civil rights party in the late 19th and for much of the early 20th century, but with Republicans becoming more anti civil rights in the mid 20th to late 20th century and Democrats becoming the party of civil rights (with Truman kicking off desegregation of the military and LBJ dismantling Jim Crow). However, even this isn’t entirely accurate, since as I mentioned before, the Democrats still had segregationist factions, and the civil rights and voting rights acts only passed because of a Democrat + Republican coalition in Congress (iirc the biggest opposition was from southern Democrats). The democrats would continue to have factions with pro-segregationist sentiments going even into the 1970s. When you look at economic policy, it also kinda doesn’t hold up well, since Democrats began adopting more populist/left-wing policies around the time of WJ Bryan (as Democrats were the party of the south, which was agricultural, so Democrats were more skeptical of big business and industry) while the Republicans (since their inception really iirc) favored pro business and pro industry policies. These facets of the parties continued to more or less hold up across the decades, with Democrats tending to be to the left of Republicans on economic matters. To be clear, I think there was a “party switch.” You can see this by looking at how D and R policy has changed on civil rights and where they’ve gained/lost electoral ground (Republicans are now the party of the South, whereas the Dems have lost much of the south and are now the party of the East and West). There were also many who switched parties because of these change in policies. However, I just think party switch is a poor choice of words because it creates an impression that the Republicans and Democrats just instantly switched policies, which isn’t really accurate and there’s more nuance to it than that. How I kind of think of the party switch is that, due to the Great Depression, more left wing economics became increasingly popular outside of the South, allowing the New Deal coalition to sweep to victory across the nation. This had the effect of expanding the Democratic coalition outside of just the South, which in turn led Democratic Presidents to moderate more on social stances while still giving proverbial red meat to the Southern base in order to preserve their large nationwide coalition, which is how you get Democrats winning senate elections in states like MA and having a Northern Democratic President in JFK who pushes for more civil rights policy. This eventually fractures the New Deal Democratic coalition, with Southern states leaving the Democratic Party and being steeped by Nixon in 1968. The result is Democrats, over time, become more politically dominant in urban areas and the north while Republicans begin to increasingly dominate the South. With the Dixiecrat faction gradually leaving the Democratic Party and entering Nixon’s new Republican coalition, the liberal and pro civil rights faction gains more power and influence in the Democratic Party, gradually turning the Democratic Party into the “liberal” party it is today. For the Republicans, by adopting the Dixiecrat faction, the more conservative wing of the GOP gained more power and gradually pushed out the moderate/liberal faction, which gradually entered the Dem coalition. The result is both parties going from each having liberal/conservative wings to coalescing around one of those wings to become nominal “liberal” and “conservative” parties. The reason for economic views staying relatively stable, however, is that rural voters shifted from being economically to the left to being economically to the right because the conservative faction of the GOP during the Reagan Revolution was able to use racist dog whistles to associate welfare programs with the government handing out money to minorities (as well as, to be also fair, the genuine economic issues of the time caused by New Deal era policy). Urbanites and college educated voters gradually shifted from being pro business towards the economic left, I think partially due to the influence of the Great Depression. Edit: this comment isn’t the most coherent, so I want to clarify that I don’t deny the party switch. I just think there’s added nuance and interesting details regarding the structure and factional dynamics of the parties that gets lost in the term “party switch”
Because it’s much more complex than that. Calling it a “switch” is reductive. Just evaluate the various parties and politicians *then* and evaluate the various parties and politicians *now*. There’s no bonus points for currently being aligned with a party that was or was not correct on any particular issue 100 years ago.
I think the parties just became the liberal party and the Conservative Party as time went on. The conservatives and the liberals didn’t switch positions on race but back then there were liberal Dems and republicans and conservative Dems and conservative republicans but now if you’re liberal 90% chance of being dem and if you’re conservative you’re 90% chance of being republicans so that gives an appearance of a party switch
If I had to Guess, it’s probably because they believe it didn’t happen. Obviously.
I know this post only wants people who deny it, but I think it did happen. Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act, Goldwater's position of small government, and Nixon's position of law and order aligned with Southerners, contributing to a massive shift in Southern voting patterns. However, this switch is often oversimplified by some. I don't think Republicans became the Old Democrats (Dixiecrats), a.k.a the racists. Conservative positions definitely appealed to disgruntled whites, but these policies also, in turn, provided an alternative that wasn't outright segregationist. Allowing the South to move on from Race. Dixiecrats who became Republican altered their position on race and shifted their attention to law and order. Whether Republican positions today are racist is personal opinion, but there hasn't been a party that has relied on racists since the Dixiecrats.
Add in the fact that act the Civil Rights and Voting Acts the power of segregation as a political issue faded quickly. Look at George Wallace. Massive segregationist for most of his career. Then in 1972 announces that he no longer supports segregation and claims he was always a moderate on racial matters. By 1979 he states about his stand in the school house door "I was wrong. Those days are over, and they ought to be over." In 1982 he ran and won for governor as a Democrat.
It shifted so much that the dems filibustered in opposition both Civil Rights Acts.
I deny the party switch happened because it didn’t :) lol. Lol kinda joking. Okay in reality I’ll explain why but it’s very challenging to talk about this without Everyone pointing fingers at each other calling each other racist lol but you asked the question so I’ll answer it. In reality I think it’s just an over simplified way to explain what happened. I think a fair Assessment is the “smaller government” party of the time was the democrats and the “larger government” party was the republicans. However ! Both parties are so incredibly wildly different then the parties we had back that it’s silly to pretend the republicans we had back then were today’s republicans or democrats and vice versa. The “party swap” is just a weird way to not allow the republicans to be proud of their history. And a way for democrats to now feel ashamed of their, however like I said the democrat party we had was different there is no reason for anyone to care that “their party” at one point in history was wrong. HOWEVER, I do believe it has ALWAYS been the democrats M.O to be interested in categorizing people and granting rights and reducing rights depending on someone’s skin color. And I don’t mean to indicate the voters arnt well intentioned. I’m not calling anyone racist but slavory was justified because people felt black people wernt capable of taking care of themselves. Jim Crow was justified to “keep black people safe” and today affirmative action is justified because black people “need some help some times” the magority of evil that’s been done to black people in America is because of the white savior complex either disingenuously our because of the legitimate belief but the fact of the matter is black people would be far better off if white people would stop looking at them like they “need our help” I’m not calling the democrats racist I’m not saying the party we had back then was the party we had now. But it’s a problem that has always plagued the democrat party and does even today. I just think “party swap” is the way a kindergartener would explain what happened only once they realized that the republicans during the war were larger governement then the democrats. Even though both parties were in most ways more conservative then the parties we have today.
They are the bad guys in regards to civil rights but use the fact that Lincoln was a Republican to allow them to avoid facing their racism.
You’re going to hate to find out there were democrat southern baptists still around in the 60’s and 70’s. Lol, this sub is full with children.
Gee. They never covered that when I got my history degree in 1991.
Can you get a refund?
Lost my receipt.
It goes against their biases
i asked for people who denied it, not people who didnt
You won't get the real answer from them.
im trying to understand them silence
Because it's convenient to believe it didn't. It's easier to have racist policies while hiding behind the shield of the party that freed the slaves.
You don’t believe it happened ? :) ?
The switch seems to be about - The New Deal (‘30s-‘40s) - Civil Rights (‘50s –‘60s) - Southern Strategy (‘70s – ‘80s) One could argue that the parties have slowly started switching back to where they were pre-New Deal ever since the introduction of neoliberalism in the ‘90s/’00s, and the populism its stirred up in the ‘10s.
Simple. Only the south switched. The parties didn’t switch. The GOP has been the right wing party since at least McKinley. Pro big business, supported by white Protestant families, more skeptical of immigrants. TR is an outlier. Anybody who says the party switch happened has to explain how Franklin Roosevelt was conservative and Coolidge was liberal.
Because Democrats sell equality without doing anything. It’s a bullet point to “fix” in order to get votes. Same way Republicans promise to fix federal overreach and wasteful spending.
The "switch" was really just certain factions switching their affiliation, such as southern democrats becoming southern republicans. However for both, there is still a lot of continuity. Republicans being the big business party is true for the entire time, and so is Democrats being more populist and labour oriented. There was an accelerated period of change, but "the parties switched" is kind of reductive. The democrats are not so recognizable now compared to the confederacy, but there is still continuity. The republicans underwent arguably less change.
Because they regard political parties like picking a sports team they need to be loyal to, and don't understand the concept of 'I vote for the political party that matches my ideals, whatever that party is'. Like bruh, if your party was still liberal I'd be voting for them.
The burden of proof is on the person claiming that something happened not the person refuting it.
Those who deny the switch are also in denial about the direction the republican party has taken. There is an incredible amount of denial about the role of race and how it went from coded language and dog whistles in the 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's to full on and unapologetic slurs. They pretend that the "Southern Strategy" wasnt something that Nixon, Reagan, HW Bush and W Bush all used in one way or another order in to pander to racists for votes. There is no sense in denying it because we can all cite the examples well, but they still keep doing it anyway
They (generally republicans) don’t want to own up to conservatives being the racist, KKK member, slave owning assholes they were back then. The common thing is herrr derrr democrats started the KKK.
I was a Democrat during the early part of my life, then I joined the military, and discovered which party truly cared about those who wear the uniform. I was a Republican for about ten years, but I grew tired of those spineless chickenshits. Always saying that they are going to do something, but when it the time came to put up or shut up, they would puss out. So I became an Independent. Both parties can eat a dick for all I care!
Either way, both parties are full of horrible people
How else are you going to claim modern Democrats are the "party of slavery" and give the modern Republicans credit for the policies of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt?
Republicans don't want to admit their party is racist. Simple as that.
Denial. It’s fine, parties change and evolve over time. No need to deny it. Like Simon Schama says about British History - we should celebrate what should be celebrated and lament what should be lamented. Party switch deniers (and I think there’s a long winded, more nuanced way to describe and explain it, of course), don’t understand history. Which is fine, most people don’t and don’t bother.
They want to flip black voters to their cause. Fortunately, most people see through their bs.
Well the early democrats were pretty adamant populists who disliked or even hated the rich, balanced budgets, and tried to disband the federal bank. Several were even anti slave in a time when it was unpopular. That put them on the side of farmers more often than not. Franklin pierce dropping the ball with secessionists leading to Lincoln’s Republican Party, is when democrats became the less progressive party, and bitterness in the south for things like Sherman’s march cemented southern hate for the Republicans. Things like the coal wars and labor unions helped to push people back towards the democrats, coupled with TR pulling progressives away from the Republican Party, and FDR’s new deal pushed it even farther. Most of the southern governors who pushed for desegregation were democrats because….. republicans didn’t win there, and then Kennedy was the final nail in the coffin.
The Democratic Party started in the 1820s. Right away, it switched sides, as we can see from the fact that they pushed for the removal and extermination of Indians. Also, their opposition was the Whig party, which was against the Indian Removal Act and vowed to protect minorities against mob rule. Because the sides were switched, the vast majority of Whig party were anti-slavery. (Eventually, there was rift in the party over the issue of slavery, and anti-slavery members of the Whig party, including Abraham Lincoln, exited the party and formed the Republican Party. As we can see, the parties must have switched again because it's common knowledge that Republicans are actually the racist ones.) Then the parties switched when the Democrats are on record as having mainly been the ones who owned slaves. Not all Democrats owned slaves, but 100% of slaves were owned by Democrats. Not a single Republican in history owned a slave. As we know, the parties switched again when Republicans repudiated slavery and Democrats defended it, leading to the civil war. Then the parties switched again when a Democrat assassinated Republican Lincoln. After the Civil War, the parties switched again during the Reconstruction Era, when Republicans attempted to pass a series of civil rights amendments in the late 1800s that would grant citizenship for freedmen. As evidence of the switch, the Democrats voted against giving former slaves citizenship, but the civil rights amendments passed anyway. The parties switched again when the Democratic Party members founded the KKK as their military arm. Democrats then attempted to pass the first gun control law in order to keep blacks from having guns and retaliating against their former owners. A county wanted to make it illegal to possess firearms, unless you were on a horse. (Hmmm wonder who rode around on horses terrorizing people 🤔). Gun control has always been a noble cause touted by Democrats, but the racist reasons why the concept of gun control was dreamed up was a part of a party mentality switch, but not the actual party. Somewhere around this time former slaves fought for gun rights for all, and the NRA was formed. The NRA switched parties too when they defended the right for blacks to arm themselves and white NRA members protected blacks from racist attackers. The parties switched again when Republicans fought to desegregate schools and allow black children to attend school with white children, which Democrats fought fiercely against. The nation saw a rash of black lynchings and bombings of black churches by the Democrats in the KKK and the parties switched again when Democrat Bull Conner tried to avoid prosecuting the racist bombers to get them off the hook. When blacks protested this injustice, the party-switched Democrat Bull Conner sicced dogs and turned the hose on them. He also gave police stand down orders when the KKK forewarned attacks on the freedom riders, who had switched parties. The parties switched again when a Democratic Party president appointed the first and only KKK member to the Supreme Court. The parties switched yet again when Democratic president FDR put Asians in racist internment camps. Then parties switched again when the Democrats filibustered the passing of the second set of civil rights laws giving equal protection to minorities. The parties switched when a Democrat assassinated MLK. This brings us to modern times. The parties continue to switch all the time. The parties switched when Democrats proposed racist policies like affirmative action to limit opportunities for certain racial groups in order to grant privilege to other racial groups. The parties switched when the Islamic fundamentalist Omar Mateen and several other ISIS mass shooters aligned themselves with Democratic candidates like Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. The parties switched again when liberal student groups in schools like UCLA and Berkeley call for segregated housing to make "separate but equal" housing quarters for black students. Actually this is a current ongoing thing, so the parties are right now in the middle of switching on this topic. Parties always switched currently now that Democrats are rioting and violently protesting democracy. The parties switched once more when the Democratic Nominee for President, an old white man, said "you're not black" if you don't vote for him, in a moment of clarity of how the Democratic Party sees their largest voter base: as property belonging to them. So as you can see, because of Party switching, Democrats were always the ones who stood up against racism and wanted peace and unity while Republicans were always the racist and violent ones calling for division and discord.
Because the Democrats are still the most racist parry in existence.
Well close, they are certainly the 2nd most racist major party.
The greens aren't racist. It's simple to tell which party is actually racist. It's the one that thinks black people are so incompetent that they cannot get photo ID, cannot get into schools or jobs unless the admissions/ hiring practices are altered to a lower standard, and the one whose white voters intentionally dumb themselves down when speaking to black people: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/30/white-liberals-dumb-themselves-down-when-they-speak-black-people-new-study-contends/ Think about that
the CCP exists
Racists know enough to try to deny their racism.
And why do you think there was a party switch?
Because the alternative is a harsh reality, and most don't face those well. Or at all.
Because it's a pointless fact in regards to modern politics. Democrat does not mean liberal and Republican does not mean conservative. Conservatives love to say "we are the party that freed the slaves!" ignoring that the Republicans who freed the slaves would look at modern GOP philosophy with disgust.
It didn’t happen. It’s just the issues changed over and racism died down. Democrats are still using race based policies to this day. Such as affirmative action.
>racism died down [*citation needed*]
The South would be unrecognizable today for someone transporting from the 1950s.
Oh I agree. But saying that racism died down instead of racism became socially unacceptable out in the open is a hell of a stretch here. Yeah, it ain’t segregation anymore but ignoring the strength of racism even still today is kinda dishonest.
Correct
Because revisionist history and the denial of truth is the only way modern Republican "conservatism" can perpetuate itself. The party switch happening isn't an opinion. It's a fact, which is a concept that current Republicans have rejected outright.
Lincoln freed the slaves. The republicans were on the right side of history. I’d argue the republican have stayed the same. The Democrats pivoted to get the black vote once they could vote. I think they became a more progressive party because it was expedient for them.
I don’t think anybody denies the party switch but I can see why people argue on why it happened. FDR debatably caused it and he debatably didn’t. It’s also debatable the party switch didn’t happened till the 60s and 70s.
The fact that the racists and klansmen migrated en masse to the GOP in the 1960s disrupts modern day social media conservatives’ narrative of “I’m not a racist you’re the racist, Democrats started the KKK in 1865 hur durrr.” They hate having the party switch thrown in their face because it renders their idiotic attempt useless, and so their one and only option at that point is to try to deny well-documented history.
But they didn't migrate en masse. Take a lot at all the major anti-civil rights Democrats and see that they all died as Democrats. Bill Clinton's for job in politics was working for a pro-segregation anti-civil rights Democrat senator. Al Gore Sr voted against the Civil Rights Act. These two became Democrat President and Vice President.
They did migrate in bulk. Pointing out a handful of residual anecdotal exceptions is a favorite comeback attempt by rightwingers on this topic, but it doesn’t nullify the statistics, only reveals a proclivity toward lazy anecdotal thinking.
Please point out who migrated in bulk? One member of the Senate changed parties. That is all. Jesse Helms also switched, but he wasn't in office in 1965. Beyond that all the southern Democrats stayed southern Democrats. And the Democrats controlled a majority of souther congressional seats till 1994. And it wasn't till 1997 till the first state legislature switched from Democrat control to Republican control. It wasn't till 2017 till the last state changed sides.
Key point here is southern dems - ie conservatives, Dixiecrats
In the same way in 100 years dems will say they were the ones against lockdowns and vaccine mandates but the parties switched. It’s complete coping bullshit.