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Thread: How Democrats and Republicans switched beliefs

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    Registered User LAGC's Avatar

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    Arrow How Democrats and Republicans switched beliefs

    Strangely, over a century, America's two major political parties gradually reversed identities, like the magnetic poles of Planet Earth switching direction.

    When the Republican Party was formed in 1856, it was fiercely liberal, opposing the expansion of slavery, calling for more spending on public education, seeking more open immigration and the like. Compassionate Abraham Lincoln suited the new party's progressive agenda.

    In that era, Democrats were conservatives, partly dominated by the slave-holding South. Those old-style Democrats generally opposed any government action to create jobs or help underdogs.

    Through the latter half of the 19th century, the pattern of Republicans as liberals, Democrats as conservatives, generally held true. In 1888, the GOP elected President Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901) on a liberal platform seeking more social services.

    Then in 1896, a reversal began when Democrats nominated populist firebrand William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), "the Great Commoner."

    "He was the first liberal to win the Democratic Party presidential nomination," political scholar Rich Rubino wrote. "This represented a radical departure from the conservative roots of the Democratic Party."

    Meanwhile, the GOP began shifting to conservative. Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) - a vice president who took the top office after William McKinley was assassinated in 1901 - was a Republican liberal who supported a "Square Deal" for working families. He broke up monopolistic trusts of rich corporations. He championed pure food and drugs. He created national parks and forests for the enjoyment of everyone. He won the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for helping end war between Russia and Japan.
    https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opi...fs-9226115.php

    Interesting read.

    The Republican Party really did start out as the pro-Federal party, opposite of what generally holds true now with the Democrats generally being pro-Federal and the Republicans being more pro-states' rights.

    According to James A. Haught, Teddy Roosevelt was the last Republican liberal, and was shifting by the time his Democratic nephew-in-law, FDR, pushed the New Deal through.
    "That tyranny has all the vices both of democracy and oligarchy is evident. As of oligarchy so of tyranny, the end is wealth; (for by wealth only can the tyrant maintain either his guard or his luxury). Both mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms." -- Aristotle, Book V, 350 B.C.E

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    Team GunsNetwork PLATINUM 10/2012 rci2950's Avatar

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    This article is from 2016 and has been debunked.

    https://newstalk1130.iheart.com/feat...mocrat-switch/

    When faced with the sobering reality that Democrats supported slavery, started the Civil War when the abolitionist Republican Party won the Presidency, established the Ku Klux Klan to brutalize newly freed slaves and keep them from voting, opposed the Civil Rights Movement, modern-day liberals reflexively perpetuate rather pernicious myth--that the racist southern Democrats of the 1950s and 1960s became Republicans, leading to the so-called "switch" of the parties.

    This is as ridiculous as it is easily debunked.

    The Republican Party, of course, was founded in 1848 with the abolition of slavery as its core mission. Almost immediately after its second presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln, won the 1860 election, Democrat-controlled southern states seceded on the assumption that Lincoln would destroy their slave-based economies.

    Once the Civil War ended, the newly freed slaves as expected flocked to the Republican Party, but Democrat control of the South from Reconstruction until the Civil Rights Era was near total. In 1960, Democrats held every Senate seat south of the Mason-Dixon line. In the 13 states that made up the Confederacy a century earlier, Democrats held a staggering 117-8 advantage in the House of Representatives. The Democratic Party was so strong in the south that those 117 House members made up a full 41% of Democrats' 283-153 advantage in the Chamber.

    Likewise, throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, Democratic governors and overwhelmingly Democratic State Legislatures controlled the South, which steadfastly opposed the push for civil rights. In contrast, Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, openly praised school desegregation in the Brown v. Board of Education decision and sent federalized Arkansas National Guard troops to Little Rock to protect nine black students after Democratic Governor Orval Faubus threatened to keep them out of a previously all-white high school.

    Eisenhower was a phenomenally popular war hero when he was elected in 1952, and even though only one Republican had ever before won any southern states in the Electoral College (Herbert Hoover in 1928), Eisenhower began to make inroads for the Republican Party; winning Florida, Texas, Virginia, and Tennessee. In his landslide victory four years later, Eisenhower picked up Louisiana and Kentucky.

    His personal appeal, though, didn't transcend the Democratic Party's hold on the South, and when he left office in 1961, that hold was arguably stronger than it had been in decades. As Southern Democrats clung to traditional segregation, though, the rest of the country was changing, and the push for civil rights had begun.

    After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy--a strong proponent of civil rights--in late 1963, Southern Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson saw it as his mission to pass the Civil Rights Act as a tribute to Kennedy, who had first proposed the bill five months before he was killed. Democrats in the Senate, however, filibustered it.

    In June of 1964, though, the bill came up again, and it passed...over the strenuous objections of Southern Democrats. 80% of House Republicans voted for the measure, compared with just 61% of Democrats, while 82% of Republicans in the Senate supported it, compared with 69% of Democrats.

    Nearly all of the opposition was, naturally, in the South, which was still nearly unanimously Democratic and nearly unanimously resistant to the changing country. One thing that most assuredly didn't change, though, was party affiliation. A total of 21 Democrats in the Senate opposed the Civil Rights Act. Only one of them, "Dixiecrat" Strom Thurmond, ever became a Republican. The rest, including Al Gore, Sr. and Robert Byrd--a former Exalted Cyclops in the Ku Klux Klan--remained Democrats until the day they died.

    Moreover, as those 20 lifelong Democrats retired, their Senate seats remained in Democrat hands for several decades afterwards. So too did the overwhelming majority of the House seats in the South until 1994, when a Republican wave election swept the GOP into control of the House for the first time since 1952. 1994 was also the first time Republicans ever held a majority of House seats in the South--a full 30 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

    From there, Republicans gradually built their support in the South until two more wave elections in 2010 and 2014 gave them the overwhelming majorities they enjoy today.

    If this was a sudden "switch" to the Republican Party for the old Democrat segregationists, it sure took a long time to happen.

    The reality is that it didn't. After the 1964 election--the first after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the opportune time for racist Democrat voters to abandon the party in favor of Republicans--Democrats still held a 102-20 House majority in states that had once been part of the Confederacy. In 1960, remember, that advantage was 117-8. A pickup of 12 seats (half of them in Alabama) is hardly the massive shift one would expect if racist voters suddenly abandoned the Democratic Party in favor of the GOP.

    In fact, voting patterns in the South didn't really change all that much after the Civil Rights era. Democrats still dominated Senate, House, and gubernatorial elections for decades afterward. Alabama, for example, didn't elect a Republican governor until 1986. Mississippi didn't elect one until 1991. Georgia didn't elect one until 2002.

    In the Senate, Republicans picked up four southern Senate seats in the 1960s and 1970s, while Democrats also picked up four. Democratic incumbents won routinely. If anything, those racist southern voters kept voting Democrat.

    So how did this myth of a sudden "switch" get started?

    It's rooted in an equally pernicious myth of the supposedly racist "Southern Strategy" of Richard Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign, which was accused of surreptitiously exploiting the innate racism of white southern voters.

    Even before that, though, modern-day Democrats point to the 1964 presidential campaign of Republican Barry Goldwater, who refused to back the 1964 Civil Rights Act as proof that the GOP was actively courting racist southern voters. After all, they argue, Goldwater only won six states--his home state of Arizona and five states in the deep south. His "States' Rights" platform had to be code for a racist return to a segregated society, right?

    Hardly. Goldwater was actually very supportive of civil rights for black Americans, voting for the 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights Acts and even helping to found Arizona's chapter of the NAACP. His opposition to the 1964 Act was not at all rooted in racism, but rather in a belief that it allowed the federal government to infringe on state sovereignty.

    The Lyndon B. Johnson campaign pounced on Goldwater's position and, during the height of the 1964 campaign, ran an ad titled "Confessions of a Republican," which rather nonsensically tied Goldwater to the Ku Klux Klan (which, remember, was a Democratic organization).

    The ad helped Johnson win the biggest landslide since 1920 and for the first time showed Democrats that accusing Republicans of being racist (even with absolutely no evidence to back this up) was a potent political weapon.

    It would not be the last time they used it.

    Four years later, facing declining popularity ratings and strong primary challenges from Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy, Johnson decided not to run for re-election. As protests over the Vietnam War and race riots following the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. raged in America's streets, Republican Richard Nixon, the former Vice President, launched a campaign based on promises of "restoring law and order."

    With the southerner Johnson out of the race and Minnesota native Hubert Humphrey as his opponent, Nixon saw an opportunity to win southern states that Goldwater had, not through racism, but through aggressive campaigning in an area of the country Republicans had previously written off.

    Yet it didn't work. For all of Nixon's supposed appeals to southern racists (who still voted for Democrats in Senate and House races that same year), he lost almost all of the south to a Democrat--George Wallace, who ran on the American Independent ticket and won five states and 46 electoral votes.

    It shouldn't have been surprising that Nixon ran competitively in the South, though. He carried 32 states and won 301 electoral votes. Four years later, he won every state except Massachusetts. Was it because of his racism? Had he laid the groundwork for racist appeals by Republicans for generations to come?

    Of course not. The supposedly racist southern Republicans who voted for Nixon in 1972 also voted to re-elect Democrat Senators in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. Republicans gained only eight southern seats in the House even though their presidential candidate won a record 520 electoral votes.

    After Nixon resigned in disgrace in 1974, Democrat Jimmy Carter swept the South en route to the presidency in 1976. Did Carter similarly run on racist themes? Or was he simply a stronger candidate? After Ronald Reagan carried the south in two landslides (including the biggest in U.S. history in 1984) and George H.W. Bush ran similarly strongly in 1988 while promising to be a "third Reagan term," Democrat Bill Clinton split the southern states with Bush in 1992 and with Bob Dole in 1996.

    All the while, Democrats kept winning House, Senate, and gubernatorial elections. Only in 2000 did southern voters return to unanimous Electoral College support for a Republican presidential candidate.

    Since then, the south has voted reliably Republican (with the exception of Florida and North Carolina) in every presidential election as it has consistently voted for Republicans in Senate, House, and Governor's races.

    Yet this shift was a gradual, decades-long transition and not a sudden "shift" in response to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Racism didn't turn the South Republican--if it did, then why did it take 30 years for those racist voters to finally give the GOP a majority of southern House seats? Why did it take racist voters in Georgia 38 years to finally vote for a Republican governor? And why did only one southern Democrat ever switch to the Republican Party?

    The myth of the great Republican-Democrat "switch" summarily falters under the weight of actual historical analysis, and it becomes clear that prolonged electoral shifts combined with the phenomenal nationwide popularity of Republicans Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 were the real reason for the Republican strength in the south.

    Reagan in particular introduced the entire nation to conservative policies that it found that it loved, sparking a new generation of Republican voters and politicians who still have tremendous influence today.

    Racism had nothing to do with it. That is simply a Democratic myth.
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    Team Gunsnet Platinum 06/2016 ltorlo64's Avatar

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    Quote Originally Posted by rci2950 View Post
    This article is from 2016 and has been debunked.

    https://newstalk1130.iheart.com/feat...mocrat-switch/
    Thanks. I thought I was going to have to do this.
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    Guns Network Lifetime Member #2

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    Please LAGC, you're getting quite old now, The craps just found the 10th amendment when Trump was elected, before that Obama had all the power in the world to do anything. You forget Arizona don't you? It was federal province under Obama to arbitrarily decide which Federal immigration laws the states could enforce..... Now it's suddenly the opposite, You are dependable in the clear hypocrisy of the moment.

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    Registered User LAGC's Avatar

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    I don't see anything in that "debunking" that contradicts the argument laid out in the OP.

    I agree it wasn't a sudden switch, like SOLELY because of LBJ's passage of the Civil Rights Act that turned the south red, but definitely a gradual flipping of the poles over time.

    And we may be seeing the beginning of them flipping back -- look at how Trump ran on a "populist" message of economic nationalism, promoting tariffs and other protectionist measures over free trade.

    Seems it's now many Democrats who are the champions of Wall Street, while the Republicans focus more on "America First" -- promoting manufacturing here at home.

    The whole "evolution of the parties" is making for interesting bedfellows, if nothing else... where even the Koch Brothers are threatening to stop supporting Republicans if they continue to turn their backs on free trade.
    Last edited by LAGC; 10-15-2018 at 12:58 AM.
    "That tyranny has all the vices both of democracy and oligarchy is evident. As of oligarchy so of tyranny, the end is wealth; (for by wealth only can the tyrant maintain either his guard or his luxury). Both mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms." -- Aristotle, Book V, 350 B.C.E

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    Team GunsNetwork PLATINUM 10/2012 rci2950's Avatar

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    Quote Originally Posted by LAGC View Post
    IF(arguement.exe="stops working")
    {Run 'Republicansaretherealracists.exe'}
    NPC detected
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    Senior Member jet3534's Avatar

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    Both parties have changed by simply drifting in the same direction, i.e., left.

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    Team GunsNet Silver 03/2014 sevlex's Avatar

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    Quote Originally Posted by rci2950 View Post
    NPC detected






    Last edited by sevlex; 10-18-2018 at 05:59 PM.
    Telling the truth is treason in an empire of lies.

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    Registered User LAGC's Avatar

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    Twitter suspends 1500 accounts for ‘coordinated’ far-right trolling campaign

    https://nypost.com/2018/10/18/twitte...ling-campaign/

    "That tyranny has all the vices both of democracy and oligarchy is evident. As of oligarchy so of tyranny, the end is wealth; (for by wealth only can the tyrant maintain either his guard or his luxury). Both mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms." -- Aristotle, Book V, 350 B.C.E

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    Team GunsNetwork PLATINUM 10/2012 rci2950's Avatar

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    Quote Originally Posted by LAGC View Post
    Twitter suspends 1500 accounts for ‘coordinated’ far-right trolling campaign

    https://nypost.com/2018/10/18/twitte...ling-campaign/

    Good thing this isn't twitter.
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    Senior Member Full Otto's Avatar

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    For peace of mind, resign as general manager of the universe

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    Team Guns Network Silver 04/2013 alismith's Avatar

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    Quote Originally Posted by sevlex View Post
    :





    Wow. It's impossible to reason with people who are so wrong about everything. The scary part is they believe what they're saying. They are beyond "re-education."
    "Valar morghulis; valar dohaeris."

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    Team Guns Network Silver 04/2013 alismith's Avatar

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    Quote Originally Posted by Full Otto View Post
    A true Dimocrat in every way.
    "Valar morghulis; valar dohaeris."

    Commucrats are most efficient at converting sins and crimes to accidents or misunderstandings.-Oswald Bastable

    Making good people helpless won't make bad people harmless.

    Freedom isn't free.

    "Attitude is the paintbrush that colors our world." TV Series, Haven.

    My Spirit Animal has rabies.

    I'd rather be an American than a Democrat.

    "If you can make a man afraid, you can control him" Netflix Series, The Irregulars

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    Registered User LAGC's Avatar

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    Quote Originally Posted by rci2950 View Post
    Good thing this isn't twitter.
    Indeed. GunsNet: where the memes flow freely.
    "That tyranny has all the vices both of democracy and oligarchy is evident. As of oligarchy so of tyranny, the end is wealth; (for by wealth only can the tyrant maintain either his guard or his luxury). Both mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms." -- Aristotle, Book V, 350 B.C.E

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    Senior Member raxar's Avatar

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    Quote Originally Posted by LAGC View Post
    Twitter suspends 1500 accounts for ‘coordinated’ far-right trolling campaign

    https://nypost.com/2018/10/18/twitte...ling-campaign/

    Most flak when you're over the target.

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    Registered User LAGC's Avatar

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    Quote Originally Posted by raxar View Post
    Most flak when you're over the target.
    It is pretty funny seeing Twitter overreacting to such a harmless meme.

    All those social media giants (including Facebook and YouTube) are still smarting from all those Russian bots and trolls who threw the 2016 election, so they've been banning accounts left and right to try to "preserve election integrity" this time around.
    "That tyranny has all the vices both of democracy and oligarchy is evident. As of oligarchy so of tyranny, the end is wealth; (for by wealth only can the tyrant maintain either his guard or his luxury). Both mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms." -- Aristotle, Book V, 350 B.C.E

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    Team Guns Network Silver 04/2013 alismith's Avatar

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    Quote Originally Posted by LAGC View Post
    It is pretty funny seeing Twitter overreacting to such a harmless meme.
    Overreacting is what all liberals do best.


    Quote Originally Posted by LAGC View Post
    All those social media giants (including Facebook and YouTube) are still smarting from all those Russian bots and trolls who threw the 2016 election, so they've been banning accounts left and right to try to "preserve election integrity" this time around.
    What?!?!?! NOBODY "threw" the 2016 election. It was a fair and just election. Your candidate lost, fair and square. PERIOD.

    Just so you'll listen, even obama stated, orally, that it was impossible to anyone to hack into our elections.

    That's right from your hero's own mouth..... obama said it was IMPOSSIBLE.
    "Valar morghulis; valar dohaeris."

    Commucrats are most efficient at converting sins and crimes to accidents or misunderstandings.-Oswald Bastable

    Making good people helpless won't make bad people harmless.

    Freedom isn't free.

    "Attitude is the paintbrush that colors our world." TV Series, Haven.

    My Spirit Animal has rabies.

    I'd rather be an American than a Democrat.

    "If you can make a man afraid, you can control him" Netflix Series, The Irregulars

  18. #18
    Registered User LAGC's Avatar

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    Quote Originally Posted by alismith View Post
    Overreacting is what all liberals do best.
    It's also been said that leftists have no sense of humor. As we covered in that Last Man Standing thread...

    What?!?!?! NOBODY "threw" the 2016 election. It was a fair and just election. Your candidate lost, fair and square. PERIOD.
    Yes, Gary Johnson lost, but he never had a chance. They never let him debate.

    Just so you'll listen, even obama stated, orally, that it was impossible to anyone to hack into our elections.

    That's right from your hero's own mouth..... obama said it was IMPOSSIBLE.
    No one hacked anything. We have enough checks and balances to guard against that, even with our electronic voting machines.

    But there was a spectacular propaganda campaign in those final weeks of the 2016 election season that really brought the rural voters out of the woodwork against Hillary.

    They hit on all the effective memes, pushed all the right buttons. All 100% of it focused on those swing states that Trump barely won, giving him the edge in the electoral college, even though he still lost the popular vote by 3 million.

    Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube took a lot of heat for allowing that happen, so they're cracking down now on obvious coordinated trolling behavior this close to the election.
    Last edited by LAGC; 10-20-2018 at 02:43 AM.
    "That tyranny has all the vices both of democracy and oligarchy is evident. As of oligarchy so of tyranny, the end is wealth; (for by wealth only can the tyrant maintain either his guard or his luxury). Both mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms." -- Aristotle, Book V, 350 B.C.E

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    Team GunsNetwork PLATINUM 10/2012 rci2950's Avatar

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  20. #20
    Team Guns Network Silver 04/2013 alismith's Avatar

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    Quote Originally Posted by LAGC View Post
    It's also been said that leftists have no sense of humor. As we covered in that Last Man Standing thread...



    Yes, Gary Johnson lost, but he never had a chance. They never let him debate.



    No one hacked anything. We have enough checks and balances to guard against that, even with our electronic voting machines.

    But there was a spectacular propaganda campaign in those final weeks of the 2016 election season that really brought the rural voters out of the woodwork against Hillary.

    They hit on all the effective memes, pushed all the right buttons. All 100% of it focused on those swing states that Trump barely won, giving him the edge in the electoral college, even though he still lost the popular vote by 3 million.

    Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube took a lot of heat for allowing that happen, so they're cracking down now on obvious coordinated trolling behavior this close to the election.
    I wonder if it will be so "obvious" to them when Dimocrats do the same thing.....we'll have to wait and see....
    "Valar morghulis; valar dohaeris."

    Commucrats are most efficient at converting sins and crimes to accidents or misunderstandings.-Oswald Bastable

    Making good people helpless won't make bad people harmless.

    Freedom isn't free.

    "Attitude is the paintbrush that colors our world." TV Series, Haven.

    My Spirit Animal has rabies.

    I'd rather be an American than a Democrat.

    "If you can make a man afraid, you can control him" Netflix Series, The Irregulars

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