The Great Switch: How the Repub & Demo Parties Flipped Ideas

[admin]

The Great Switch: How the Republican & Democratic Parties Flipped Ideologies
by studentsofhistory.com
Accessed 2/6/24
https://www.studentsofhistory.com/ideol ... an-parties

-- The Party of Lincoln is the Party That Shot Lincoln

-- Republicans and Democrats: What’s the Difference?, by Pete Dolack

The Democratic and Republican Parties have not always had the same ideals that they have today. In fact, America's two dominant political parties have essentially flipped ideologies in the time since they were founded.

The Democratic Party was founded in 1828 while the Republican Party dates back to 1854.

In its early years, the Republican Party was considered quite liberal, while the Democrats were known for staunch conservatism. This is the exact opposite of how each party would be described today.

This change did not happen overnight, however. Instead, it was a slow set of changes and policies that caused the great switch.

Ideologies of the Past



At the outbreak of the Civil War, Republicans controlled the majority of northern states. The party sought to expand the United States, encouraged settlement of the west, and helped to fund the transcontinental railroad and state universities. Additionally, because of growing tension over slavery, many Republicans became abolitionists who argued against slavery.

Democrats represented a range of views but shared a commitment to Thomas Jefferson's concept of an agrarian (farming) society. They viewed the central government as the enemy of individual liberty. Because most Democrats were in southern states, they fought to keep slavery legal.

Post-Civil War Policy

As the war came to a close, the Republican Party controlled the government and used its power to protect formerly enslaved people and guarantee them civil rights. This included the three Reconstruction Amendments, which won Republicans the loyalty (and vote) of America's Black population. Unsurprisingly, most Democrats disapproved of these measures.

However, a change had begun in the Republican Party following the Civil War. Northern industrialists had grown rich from the war, and many entered politics afterwards.

These new wealthy politicians did not see much sense in supporting the rights of Black Americans when the nation was still largely white. By the 1870s, many in the Republican Party felt that they had done enough for Black citizens and stopped all efforts to reform the southern states.

The south was left to the white Democrats and their oppressive policies towards Black citizens after the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction. With the end of Reconstruction, the "Solid South" voted for Democratic presidential candidates for the next 44 years.

A New Century



Almost 60 years later, the Great Depression became a catalyst for a massive political shake up. The Republican Party had continued to be dominated by wealthy businessmen, which meant that they had come to favor laissez-faire policies that supported big business.

These policies were effective when the economy was booming, but were disastrous when it wasn’t.

When the economy crashed in 1929, the Republican president, Herbert Hoover, opted not to intervene, earning him and his party the ire of the American public. Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, sensed the need for change.

He campaigned on a promise of government intervention, financial assistance, and concern for the welfare of the people. He won the 1932 election by a landslide. It was FDR’s campaign policies that caused a major shift in party ideologies.

Republicans opposed everything about FDR’s government. Primarily, they saw the growth of large government as harmful to the federalist foundation of the nation. This too has come to define the ideals of the Republican Party.

The Civil Rights Movement

Race and equality began to return to the center of politics in the 1950s and 1960s. Race did not necessarily fall into a party viewpoint at this point; instead, it was more of a regional issue. Southern Democrats and Republicans both opposed the early Civil Rights Movement, while Northern Democrats and Republicans began to support legislation as the movement picked up steam.

In 1964, Democratic president Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. In the 1964 election, Republican candidate Barry Goldwater publicly opposed the new law, arguing that it expanded the power of the federal government to a dangerous level.

It was this argument that led to a final, decisive switch. Black voters, who had historically been loyal to the Republican Party because of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, had already been switching to the Democratic Party.

However, upon hearing Goldwater’s argument against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the majority of Black voters left the Republican Party in favor of the Democrats. They saw the Democratic Party as advocates for equality and justice, while the Republicans were too concerned with keeping the status quo in America.

As the 60s and 70s continued, Democrats sought reform in other places, such as abortion and school prayer. White southern Democrats began to resent how much the Democratic Party was intervening into the rights of the people.

By the 1980s, white southern Democrats had become Republicans, and the majority of the south was now Republican. The Republican Party now is solidly conservative while the Democratic Party is the liberal one.

[admin]

When did Democrats and Republicans switch platforms?
by Natalie Wolchover
livescience.com-little-mystery
October 17, 2022
https://www.livescience.com/34241-democ ... forms.html

When did Democrats and Republicans switch platforms, changing their political stances — and why? The Republicans used to favor big government, while Democrats were committed to curbing federal power.


Abraham Lincoln, the 16th U.S. President and a Republican (left), and Franklin Roosevelt, the 32nd U.S. President and a Democrat. The Republican and Democratic parties effectively switched platforms between their presidencies. (Image credit: Public Domain)

The Republican and Democratic political parties of the United States didn't always stand for what they do today. The more liberal Democrats and the right-wing Republicans each have a defined set of belief systems, but these were once very different. So when did Democrats and Republicans switch platforms? And why?

FIRST REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRATIC PLATFORMS

During the 1860s, Republicans, who dominated northern states, orchestrated an ambitious expansion of federal power, described by the Free Dictionary as "a system of government in which power is divided between a central authority and constituent political units." This helped to fund the transcontinental railroad, the state university system and the settlement of the West by homesteaders, and instating a national currency and protective tariff. The Democrats, who dominated the South, opposed those measures. Indeed, according to the author George McCoy Blackburn ("French Newspaper Opinion on the American Civil War," (Greenwood Press, 1997) the French newspaper Presse stated that the Republican Doctrine at this time was "The most Liberal in its goals but the most dictatorial in its means."

RECONSTRUCTION ERA TO THE NEW DEAL


Portrait of Abraham Lincoln. The Republican Party expanded federal power in the 1860s. (Image credit: National Archives / Handout via Getty Images)

After the United States triumphed over the Confederate States at the end of the Civil War, and under President Abraham Lincoln, Republicans passed laws that granted protections for Black Americans and advanced social justice (for example the Civil Rights Act of 1866 though this failed to end slavery). Again Democrats largely opposed these apparent expansions of federal power.

Sounds like an alternate universe? Fast forward to 1936.

Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt won reelection that year on the strength of the New Deal. This was a set of reforms designed to help remedy the effects of the Great Depression, which the FDR Presidential Library and Museum described as: "a severe, world -wide economic disintegration symbolized in the United States by the stock market crash on "Black Thursday," October 24, 1929." The reforms included regulation of financial institutions, the founding of welfare and pension programs, infrastructure development and more. It was these measures that ensured Roosevelt won in a landslide against Republican Alf Landon, who opposed these exercises of federal power.

So, sometime between the 1860s and 1936, the (Democratic) party of small government became the party of big government, and the (Republican) party of big government became rhetorically committed to curbing federal power.


Franklin D. Roosevelt, pictured in 1936. (Image credit: Keystone Features / Stringer via Getty Images)

HOW DID PARTY SWITCH HAPPEN?

Eric Rauchway, professor of American history at the University of California, Davis, pins the transition to the turn of the 20th century, when a highly influential Democrat named William Jennings Bryan (best known for negotiating a number of peace treaties at the end of the First World War, according to the Office of the Historian) blurred party lines by emphasizing the government's role in ensuring social justice through expansions of federal power — traditionally, a Republican stance.

But Republicans didn't immediately adopt the opposite position of favoring limited government.

"Instead, for a couple of decades, both parties are promising an augmented federal government devoted in various ways to the cause of social justice," Rauchway wrote in an archived 2010 blog post for the Chronicles of Higher Education. Only gradually did Republican rhetoric drift toward the counterarguments. The party's small-government platform cemented in the 1930s with its heated opposition to Roosevelt’s New Deal.

But why did Bryan and other turn-of-the-century Democrats start advocating for big government?


The highly influential Democrat William Jennings Bryan. (Image credit: Shutterstock)

BIG GOVERNMENT

According to Rauchway, they, like Republicans, were trying to win the West. The admission of new western states to the union in the post-Civil War era created a new voting bloc, and both parties were vying for its attention.

Democrats seized upon a way of ingratiating themselves to western voters: Republican federal expansions in the 1860s and 1870s had turned out favorable to big businesses based in the northeast, such as banks, railroads and manufacturers, while small-time farmers like those who had gone west received very little.

Both parties tried to exploit the discontent this generated, by promising the general public some of the federal help that had previously gone to the business sector. From this point on, Democrats stuck with this stance — favoring federally funded social programs and benefits — while Republicans were gradually driven to the counterposition of hands-off government.

From a business perspective, Rauchway pointed out, the loyalties of the parties did not really switch. "Although the rhetoric and to a degree the policies of the parties do switch places," he wrote, "their core supporters don't — which is to say, the Republicans remain, throughout, the party of bigger businesses; it's just that in the earlier era bigger businesses want bigger government and in the later era they don't."

In other words, earlier on, businesses needed things that only a bigger government could provide, such as infrastructure development, a currency and tariffs. Once these things were in place, a small, hands-off government became better for business.

Originally published on Live Science on Sept. 24, 2012. This article was updated on Oct. 17, 2022.

Natalie Wolchover

Natalie Wolchover was a staff writer for Live Science from 2010 to 2012 and is currently a senior physics writer and editor for Quanta Magazine. She holds a bachelor's degree in physics from Tufts University and has studied physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Along with the staff of Quanta, Wolchover won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory writing for her work on the building of the James Webb Space Telescope. Her work has also appeared in the The Best American Science and Nature Writing and The Best Writing on Mathematics, Nature, The New Yorker and Popular Science. She was the 2016 winner of the Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award, an annual prize for young science journalists, as well as the winner of the 2017 Science Communication Award for the American Institute of Physics.