Search

Nov 30, 2020

Myth: The Republican and Democrat Parties Flipped

I have been hearing a lot of Liberals talk about how today’s Republicans are really the Democrats of our past and vice versa, how the Democrats who supported slavery are actually today’s Republicans, how Republicans were actually the ones who started the Civil War because they did not want to give up their slaves, How they were actually the ones who established the Ku Klux Klan to brutalize newly freed slaves and keep them from voting, and how they opposed the Civil Rights Movement. More specifically to this debate is the concept that President Abraham Lincoln would have been a Democrat today. Why? Well, because obviously the president who freed the slaves would side with the party that has all of the diversity policy promises today. Right? After all, how could Lincoln possibly be of the same party as a racist Republican since that is what Republicans apparently are?

After extensive research on this topic, I have come to the conclusion with some basic facts that prove this theory to be a baseless myth by the Democrats. To start, President Abraham Lincoln was the first registered Republican president, according to history scholars. This in itself presents issues as there would have to be an actual ideology flip for the parties to actually have switched. The reason I do not see this as a possibility is that the ideologies of the Republican party have not changed since the birth of the country.

“But wait, you just said that President Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president.” While it is true that Lincoln was the first “registered” Republican president, I have found that the Republican party actually started with Thomas Jefferson. He is currently labeled as being in the Democratic-Republican party, but in his letters, he talked about his beliefs being that of a Republican who opposed the beliefs of the Federalist party. His party were not Anti-Federalists who opposed the original Constitution, but believers in a less hands-on government that the Federalists ended up becoming.

Labels aside, the most significant factor that defined the two parties of the time was that the Federalist party advocated for a strong central government and that the Democratic-Republican party advocated for a small, limited government. This foundational belief that still exists today suggests that the Federalists were today’s Democrats in origin and that the Democratic-Republicans were today’s Republicans in origin.

In a conversation with a French ambassador, Thomas Jefferson confirmed his belief that “a perfect government should not be felt or seen.” This unchanged ideology between the parties alone is why I have such a big issue with the idea that the parties switched.

As an example of the Federalist’s move to a stronger central government, Alexander Hamilton, as the Secretary of Treasury, implemented tax policies to pay back the debts of the Revolutionary War that the Democrat-Republicans, or just Republicans as Jefferson called it, thought was an overstep. One, in particular, was the Whiskey tax which led to the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. President George Washington himself led an army to the rebellion lines in Pittsburgh but decided to leave early as, in his mind, a president should not be leading an army against his own people. As the army approached, the rebels scattered, and the conflict ended.

It is unfortunate that Hamilton did not recognize the parallels of this to the Boston Tea Party, happening so early in this young government.

The Southern Strategy

Leading into the ideology of the flip, the myth from the Democrats seems to come from the concept surrounding Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign and how he supposedly could not win by appealing to the better nature of the country, so he focused on appealing to “the worst” with his Southern Strategy. The Southern Strategy focused on winning the states below the Mason-Dixon line, essentially the “southern states” from Virginia to Missouri and south.

In 1960, Democrats held every Senate seat in the South. The key strategy of the day was to win the South in order to win the election. And in order to win the election, Nixon apparently appealed to racists according to the Left. This is where the Democrats say the party switched from the moral “good-natured” Republicans to a party of racist rednecks. Even with my argument of the party’s strong belief in limited government removed from the equation, there are still many issues with this argument from the Left.

The fact is that a transition of the South becoming Republican dates all of the way back to 1928. Republican Herbert Hoover won over 47% of the South’s popular vote in the presidential race against Al Smith. In 1952 Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who won Florida, Texas, Virginia, and Tennessee, openly praised school desegregation in the Brown v. Board of Education decision. In his second term, he picked up Louisiana and Kentucky. This was a first for a Republican to win the South, but it was only a temporary hold by the Republicans as Southern Democrats clung to traditional segregation, even though the rest of the country was changing.

In 1963, Southern Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson supposedly saw it as his mission to pass the Civil Rights Act as a tribute to President John F. Kennedy after his assassination. Kennedy had first proposed the bill five months before he was killed, but Democrats in the Senate filibustered it. The bill was passed in 1964, getting no help from the strenuous objections of Southern Democrats. Of the 21 southern Democrat senators who opposed the Civil Rights Act, only one, “Dixiecrat” Strom Thurmond, changed parties to become a Republican. It would be over two and a half decades before any of those remaining 20 seats changed to Republican in the 80s. 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.

The theory that Nixon’s Southern Strategy was appealing to racists in the South falls apart with the fact that Nixon actually lost all of the deep South states in 1968. Furthermore, Democrat Jimmy Carter won almost all of the South in 1976, showing that the South still was not owned by the Republicans after Nixon.

Additionally in 1992, Democrat Bill Clinton also won a large portion of the South. Republicans did not hold a majority of seats in the South until 1994. Why is this significant? It was a full 30 years after the Civil Rights Act.

Kevin Williamson of the National Review said, “If southern rednecks ditched the Democrats because of a civil-rights law passed in 1964, it is strange that they waited until the late 1980s and early 1990s to do so. They say things move slower in the South—but not that slow.”

Voting patterns in the South did not change very much in the post-Civil Rights era either. For example, Alabama did not elect a Republican governor until 1986; for Mississippi, it was 1991; and Georgia did not elect a Republican governor until 2002. America’s history is very important for understanding context. There are some who claim history is not relevant today. Maybe that is just because history destroys their argument.

Prager University has a good short video on the subject of the Southern Strategy.

Defaming Goldwater

Another argument that I have seen the Left make is that Republican Presidential Candidate Barry Goldwater refused to back the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This is seen by the Left as proof that the GOP was actively tempting racist southern voters. As a presidential candidate, Goldwater only won six states in total. One was his home state of Arizona, and the five other states happen to be in the deep South. I can see why the Left would make assumptions about Goldwater.

However, Goldwater was actually very supportive of civil rights for Black Americans. He voted for the 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights Acts and was even a founder of Arizona’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). His opposition to the 1964 Act was not about racism but rather a belief that the Act allowed the federal government to infringe on state sovereignty. Sound familiar? This idea of limited government seems to be a common trend for Republicans.

Two other things to note is that Goldwater lost so badly because Lyndon Johnson and the media teamed up to tarnish Goldwater’s name. They used his rejection of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to link Goldwater to the KKK falsely. This tactic would become a trend for the Left for years to come.

Secondly, Lyndon Johnson has been accused of pushing Kennedy’s Civil Rights Act, not actually out of tribute to our deceased president, but because he wanted the Black vote. He is quoted by an assistant to have said, “I’ll Have Those N*****s Voting Democratic for 200 Years,” to two governors and Richard Russell, a fellow Democratic Senator from Georgia, during a conversation on the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

While this quote is considered “unconfirmed” from sources, those same sources admit that a quote like this would not be out of character for Johnson. That said, this mentality seems to be the same one that the Democrats in office share today as made clear by some of their ridiculous antics.

Industrial Revolution

On the flip side, little information as to why some of the northern states became Democrat comes up when researching. This is probably due to the South being the main focus for the debate, but I like a balanced argument. I have been able to come to two conclusions that are based on the Industrial Revolution.

The first is that the North became heavily industrialized, leading to the county’s majority of job openings to be in the North. Since slavery was abruptly stopped in the South after the Civil War, causing the southern economy to falter, it would be fair to assume that Southerners would have flocked to the North for work.

Additionally, the second conclusion is that when the North became heavily industrialized, it quickly became a hot bed for unionization. While there is a fair amount of the Republican working class that enjoy their union benefits today, the culture behind unions is mostly favored by Democrats. A majority of Republicans take issue with the restrictions that unions put on all industries and the type of apathetic behavior that it promotes in its workers. It is also no secret that unions are in bed with politicians, which is why the government has its hands in so many job-related laws.

Things like minimum wage, taxable benefits, work environment laws, health care, job security laws for bad employees, etc., are all signs of “more government control,” a very Democrat belief. With so many of these union-run industries residing in America’s biggest cities, it makes sense that big cities tend to be mostly Democrat, even in very conservative states like Texas.

American Rights and Foundation

Some argue that Lincoln’s Republican party acted like a “big government” by not letting states leave the union, forcing them to stay and give up their slaves. Here is why that is the wrong viewpoint. First, ending slavery was not about forcing the South to give up their “property.” It was about honoring the words of Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” By these words alone, every man born in American soil is free to pursue the American principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and no “slave owner” may infringe on that. It was simply a matter of enforcing that belief at the right time in history, as much as it may have hurt the South economically to do so.

The second part of this is that it was incredibly important to the stability of America for the union to stay whole as a unified country, just as it is today. Separated into individual states ruled by their own unchecked government would make America vulnerable to foreign attack.

Focused on holding the Union together, Lincoln refused to address Jefferson Davis under his so-called title of President of the Confederacy, thereby refuting the legitimacy that the South was its own entity. He would go as far as to refuse and return any letters from Davis labeled as president. By fighting for a country still whole, he did not allow the constituting of the southern states to become their own nation. The union would fight to maintain its integrity, not against a succeeding nation.

You may be asking, “But then why did the Founding Fathers not do away with slavery at the birth of our Country if that was their intention?” The simple answer is that they tried. Both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson especially tried to fight slavery as young lawyers before the Revolutionary War, unfortunately failing on all accounts.

When it came to writing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson’s first draft included the abolishment of slavery, but it was omitted by Congress before being approved for signing. Until the end of George Washington’s presidency, they tried and tried again, but they already had faced the threat of states seceding from the new union for unrelated reasons of wanting to be sovereign. The idea of giving up slaves for states like Georgia and the Carolinas would have put their reservations of staying a part of the union over the edge.

In addition to fears of a French invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte, had the states become their own individual nations at such an early age of our country, there was also concern that Britain would have surely reconquered the Americas. After all, they did try a second time in 1812. As hard of a decision as it was to drop the slavery issue, it was more important that our country stood united at the time.

Jefferson and Adams agreed that it would be the responsibility of a future great leader of America to subjugate the slavery issue. Enter Abraham Lincoln. While John Adams never owned slaves, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington did through inheritance but gave them their freedom through their last Will and Testament upon their deaths. They hoped that it would inspire a precedent among other Americans. In his final address to Congress as our 3rd President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson said, “Considering the extraordinary character of the times in which we live, our attention should unremittingly be fixed on the safety of our country.”

Segregation

The only argument that the Democrats may have is that states like South Carolina still have “segregation.” Well, that is only true to an extent. It is true that 14% of schools in states like South Carolina are attended by student populations of 90% minority or 90% white. However, this does not seem to be due to racism but rather based on geographical factors.

In a class of 300, 20 are black. But let us compare that to somewhere like California, where racism and segregation never existed. According to the Census Bureau, the Black community of 1,428,796 make up 28% of South Carolina’s population, making them the 15th largest community in America. Black children account for 15% of public-school students. In California, one of the largest states, the black community only makes up 8% of the population with 3,011,021 Blacks and is ranked as the fifth largest black community in the United States. In a California class of 300, 15 are black students. That almost makes North Carolina appear more progressive. At the same time, 55% of California students are actually Hispanic, making white students the minority.

Looking back at my own experience in school, we had a small percentage of black students at every school I went to in Orange County. I do not think it was even close to the 20 out of 300 that South Carolina has. But guess what? No one thought anything of them. They were not looked down upon; they were seen as any other person. In fact, a good majority of them were probably the most popular kids in school. There just happened to be fewer black families in the area.

In an article by Ariel Gilreath of The Greenville News, she argues that school segregation is affecting the poverty of families in minority schools. I will point back to geographical factors and say that if the focus is on poverty in minority communities, then maybe the goal should be to lift up the small businesses in those communities. Forcing students to drive across the county just to mix up the diversity in schools does not seem productive unless the student really wants to go to that school. I think a coveted high-school sports team or extracurricular program that could help with entry into a great college would be the only real reason to do this.

The point is that just because “segregation” appears to still exist in certain southern states that now vote Republican, that does not mean that racism still exists there as a whole.

So, what does this all mean? Well, since the truth of the argument is that the values and moral principles of the people changed rather than the states having had swapped residents, an argument can be made that no party is the party of racism or the party of the KKK in today’s world. America as a whole is not racist.

That is not to say that racists do not exist today, but they have their own belief system and are better categorized as a middle-of-the-roader or a “flip-flopper.” They might have fought as a Democrat in the Confederacy, but today might vote Republican because they see certain benefits from that, but I guarantee that they’ll flip Democrat once the party offers something better. These types of people are depraved and vote inconsistently with a lack of morals. They will never be loyal to either party, be it Democratic or Republican.

“Moral Superiority”

The last thing that I will add is that this idea of “race issues” still seems to remain with the Democrat party, although the narrative acts like it has flipped. Based on some writings by Shelby Steele, the majority of Republicans see their Black neighbor as any other person. They’re not special, and they’re not inferior. They’re just like anyone else with the same opportunities in life to get ahead or fall behind based on their decisions. Democrats, on the other hand, play this game of “racial victimization.”

Steele states that on one side, as “Black Americans, in the last 60 years since the ‘60s, we have made our racial victimization our primary source of power. If we are victims of racism, then that gives us a moral leverage in society to ask for all sorts of things, to introduce political correctness here, to have diversity programs there, to have affirmative action, public housing extended, well on and on. We can ask for all sorts of things based on the fact that we are victims of racism. This is a dark thing because if you define yourself as a victim, you define yourself as impotent. Every time you go out to protest, you are putting your fate in the hands of the people who you claim discriminate against you. You’re letting them run your life. You’re letting them say what is true and what is not true, and you continue to be in the same position that we were when we were formally oppressed in slavery and segregation."

On the other side, Steele talks about how the Democrats “live in, for a lack of a better term, a white guilt world.” They use a “white guilt exploitation of Black pain,” to promote promises of policy action opposed by Republicans who do not promise government “action,” but promise support. Again, Republicans like limited government.

Steele discusses the idea that because the Left continually pushes these ideas of “white guilt” with their constant “social programs” and policies catered to diversity that go nowhere, they must see Blacks as inferior to themselves, which creates this vicious cycle. Just look at the “anti-racist reforms,” “anti-bias,” and “social justice” training for educators and district administrators that force all employees to attend training on how to act around people of color in Liberal counties. It is demeaning to the Black community to suggest that they need to be treated differently than the rest of us.

In an interview on FOX News, Steele said that there has “never been a better opportunity for African Americans in the United States ... opportunities absolutely everywhere. The segregation and racism I experienced growing up in Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s is over with.” It may be “reversed,” but if you are going to talk about a party of racism, Steele makes a good argument for the Democrat party.

Limited Government VS More Government Control

Wrapping back to my blanket theme as to why the Republican party and the Democrat party have not switched, limited government vs more government control is the obvious measurement of what the foundations of the parties are.

A founder of the Republican party’s ideals, James Madison, spoke of Republicans as retaining faith in the people and running government by consent. The best keepers of the people’s liberties are the people themselves. In contrast, he warned that the Federalists, today’s Democrats, believed that mankind is incapable of governing themselves. It follows with them that government can only be carried on with the pageantry of rank, influence of money, and terror of military force. Arguably an exaggeration against Hamilton’s party at the time, but an accurate depiction of today.

I have heard the explanations that the two parties are viewed like this: Republicans believe in Liberty and that Americans should be governed from a distance relying on self-discipline to control society, being free from restrictions, and having the right of self-determination. On the other hand, Democrats believe that Americans are too stupid to make decisions on their own and need to be told what to do in order to create a utopian society.

What I find funny about this goal of a utopian society is that the utopia in fiction has always been the reason for distress in literature and often times the main villain of the story. If the ideology of both parties is this extreme on both ends, it is no wonder that they clash so much in both verbal and violent ways. Let us hope that we can work our way toward coming back to unity before the foundation of America goes beyond a breaking point.

This has been an excerpt from History vs Leftist Myths: America’s War on Information. To read more on this subject as well as other controversial topics, please check out our book available on Amazon. Your Amazon review is also greatly appreciated.