When did the Republican/Democrat flip flop happen?

[diabeticman]

Okay my wife and I rented Lincoln tonight and as we watched it a question came up for us.

When did the "radical" republicans who passed the 13th amendment ending slavery disappear and the "liberal" Democrats who passed the civil rights act appear.

Basically 100 years seperated the these two wings from different parties.

[Lasher]

1. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, I suppose.

Then the racist Dixiecrats left the Democratic Party, and were welcomed by the GOP. When I try to think of one turning point, that's it.

[CakeGrrl]

6. +1

[Egalitarian Thug]

10. First answer out of the gate.

Traditionally, and we've seen the return to tradition, the Democratic Party has been the thoroughly corrupt Money Party.

The Robber Barons started buying republican politicians shortly after the American Civil War, but the populism that was that party's bread and butter kept producing individual politicians that thwarted them through Roosevelt. The parasites kept their money with the Democratic Party while continuing to make inroads with the republicans and reached their zenith during prohibition.

FDR was allowed the Presidency because he was a previously reliable, old money patrician whom they never suspected would betray them (which is a big part of my theory the Eleanor was the brains of that outfit). Prior to his Presidency, FDR was the bush/Rmoney of his day.

[reformist2]

2. The progressive Dems emerged with FDR, but were still a minority.

They didn't become a majority, really, until the Civil Rights Act of '64 passed, and the Southern Dems started switching parties. The Repubs welcomed them with open arms in a cynical effort to regain majority status, and they ended up losing their character in the process.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. The switch started in the 1880s

During the Gilded age both parties were beholden to business.

Then a couple third parties had a good showing (yup the third largest block were the Grangers who never ran a candidate for POTUS, the real power was in Congress).

By the 1910s the progressives, who were both parties were in full swing and the final switch was with FDR's election who adopted Social Security, a socialist idea, into the platform.

The end of the FDR evolution was the 1965 civil rights act.

We are in the same process again. The Rs are on the way out, the Ds will become a Conservative party, already are at th national level, and a new left wing party will emerge. When, good question.

[Rowdyboy]

4. Pretty much started under FDR and Eleanor. Hubert Humphrey stood tall at the Democratic convention

of 1948 and things pretty much snowballed from there. By 1964 when the Rethugs nominated Goldwater the die was cast.

[Scootaloo]

5. You're actually asking several questions.

Those "Radical" Republicans actually vanished during Grant's presidency; between his and T. Roosevelt's administrations, there were no appreciable differences between the two parties; they both had the exact same hard-capitalist, ultra-nationalist platform. The only difference was that the Republicans were selling it to the Urban population while the Democrats tended to go for the more rural population; elections hinged less on policy and more on demographics (and mostly on bribery)

T. Roosevelt started the major split of the 20th century - he became a rock in the capitalist policy river, splitting off a scream that would be more, well, progressive in economic policy. By sheer happenstance, this happened to be Democrats more than Republicans, and hte Republicans cleaved more tightly to the ultra-capitalist model (Harding, Coolidge, etc).

After FDR went further left and instituted stronger progressive policies than any president before, the Democrats achieved the upper hand - Eisenhower was more a reflection of the "new reality" of Democrats and Republicans agreeing on the soundness of the New Deal, paired with his status as a war hero, than with any strong pro-Republican sentiment at the time.

Though often portrayed as such, what happened in the 60's was not a "flip-flop." it was a split. At the time the Democratic party was large and strong, politically dominant, and Republicans were mostly Bircher "also-ran's." However, as you know the Democrats banked heavily on the south, owing to those rural roots laid down during Reconstruction. And as you also know, southern democrats (and southern Republicans, let's not pretend here) were largely racist.

When the civil rights act hit, it did not cause these southern democrats, and those like them around hte nation to "flip" - they split from the main body of the Democrats, forming a sub-party. The Republicans - the politically weaker of the two parties (but still stronger than the nascent Dixiecrats) simply enveloped these splitters, increasing its size and political power greatly, in large part through the "Southern Strategy."

[Warpy]

7. Once the war was over and slavery was finished

the progressives in the party got apathetic, even though the whole abolitionist struggle had awakened women to their own sorry, powerless plight. Apathy allowed the wealthy to take it over and turn it into a Hamiltonian party. Teddy Roosevelt came as a shock to them, a traitor to his class who managed to ram trust busting legislation through and break the Robber Barons. After that, they pretty much went back to what the wealthy wanted: a big talking, do nothing party who lied their way into office and then didn't bother to govern, letting corruption run rampant.

For his part, Teddy Roosevelt got disgusted with the rest of the party and tried to form his own.

[Faryn Balyncd]

11. Here is platform T.R. ran on in 1912 when he left the Republican Party :

Progressive Party Platform of 1912

Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people.

From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare, they have become the tools of corrupt interests which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.

The deliberate betrayal of its trust by the Republican party, the fatal incapacity of the Democratic party to deal with the new issues of the new time, have compelled the people to forge a new instrument of government through which to give effect to their will in laws and institutions.


http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/progressive-platform-of-1912/

You are right. He came as a shock to them.


Before leaving the GOP, T.R. had used the Sherman Antitrust Act to dismantle the (Hill/Harriman/Morgan/Rockefeller) Northern Security Railroad Trust in 1904.

[LeftInTX]

8. It started with FDR. He was the first liberal Dem president.

FDR came from a family of Republicans and chose to become a Democrat because there were "too many Republicans in the family".

Up until the 1970s the Republicans were mostly "pro-business" types such as Ike, Nixon, Ford and Rockefeller. The full blown rabies started in 1980 when Reagan recruited the southerners and evangelicals.

[loyalsister]

9. One of the most interesting characters throughout that conversion

is Robert Byrd. Once a member of the Klan, he filibustered the civil Rights Act, and he was eulogized by President Obama.

All the while he was one of the most respected Democratic Senators.

[Lasher]

12. Byrd did not join the Dixiecrat exodus.

Last edited Fri Jun 14, 2013, 01:17 PM - Edit history (1)

Like Strom Thurmond did, for example. He was later forgiven by the NAACP for his transgressions.

[loyalsister]

18. I know that

He was a southern Democrat who, unlike many, evolved with the party.

[1-Old-Man]

13. Ever hear of Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy"? Well, that's where it happened

The beginning of the conversion of the south from conservative-Democrats to a solid block of conservative-Republican. It was done almost exclusively by race-bateing. The Klan never actually went away, it just went Republican.

[FarCenter]

14. The Republican Party has always been the party of morality and money

The opposition to slavery was driven largely by northern religous leaders who argued the moral case for the abolition of slavery. This was materially aided by northern business interests who supported the war for economic reasons.

I don't see Civil War Republicans as "radical" in the "progressive" sense. They were more like facists imposing their moral concepts on the South. A progressive would have respected the minority rights of the slaveholding southern plantation owners, even if they disagreed with the morality of slavery.

Robert Fogel

Robert Fogel, who has died aged 86, was a controversial winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economics, which he shared with Douglass North, for his work in applying quantitative methods to the study of economic history.

Indeed Fogel, who had been a Marxist in his youth, saw the forces of morality trumping economic logic as a major cause of historical development. In The Fourth Great Awakening (2000), he argued that repeated cycles of religious evangelism in American history had played a crucial role in pushing and shaping social and political change. The first “Great Awakening” began in the 1730s and ripened into the American Revolution; the second began around 1800 and spawned the antislavery movement that precipitated the Civil War; the third began at the end of the 19th century, leading to the Social Gospel movement and the rise of the welfare state. A conservative fourth awakening which began around 1960 was still being played out, though he predicted that its legacy would be voluntarism, “self-realisation” and a commitment to equality of opportunity for all.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10118804/Robert-Fogel.html

[RainDog]

15. The modern era started with the repeal of prohibition

Rural white democrats lost a lot of power when FDR was elected. He won his election by aligning with the "wets" in the party - who were urban and non-Protestant, largely. Italians, Irish, etc. had created political power blocs.

FDR included African-Americans in New Deal jobs projects and the white rural Democrats didn't like that, but segregation was still in place, so their economic populism was stronger than their racism.

WWII saw many African-American men fight for this nation. This created a conscience in many white males who served alongside - including Eisenhower. Eisenhower sent National Guard troops to Arkansas to enforce laws against segregation.

While Democrats and Republicans told African-Americans to "be patient" and not rock the boat too much in their insistence on the nation honoring the Constitutional protection of equal rights, it was a Democrat who passed the Civil Rights Act - and part of the reason it was passed is because Kennedy was assassinated and Johnson appealed to Congress based upon Kennedy's legacy as a supporter.

The next presidential election saw a majority of whites in the south in support of segregationist George Wallace. He won almost every state's electoral college votes in the deep south.

That's when Kevin Phillips helped Nixon to develop "the southern strategy" that was a direct Republican appeal to racists in the south to win their electoral college votes.

And the racists in the south have carried the south for the Republican Party ever since.

[geek tragedy]

16. 1960s. When LBJ and Northern Democrats pushed through

the Civil Rights Act, Southern Democrats started defecting to the GOP en masse.

There's a reason why the slave states of 150 years ago are today's red states.

[RainDog]

17. Here's how Republican strategist Lee Atwater explained it

Atwater:

You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."

But the reality is that the Republican Party is still saying what they said in 1954, just pretending they're not saying that same thing, over and over and over.

Kevin Phillips now notes that the Republican Party has now been taken over by the Religious Right. So, basically, the story in America is that southern white protestant fundamentalists comprise the largest racist political faction in this nation.

Phillips also now notes that neither party represents the middle class (not to mention the poor.) Both parties are now aligned to protect the interests of the wealthy. We've seen this during the last two Democratic presidencies.

The difference between the two parties now lies in "culture war" issues - i.e. the issues of the religious right that are reactions to equal rights for females, blacks, gays, and non-religious or "other" religious believers.