Southern Republicans
Dec. 8th, 2014 06:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacThe U.S. used to have this thing called "Southern Democrats", and the post-election news, with the runoff defeat of Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, has been that there aren't any, any more.
In a broad sense, this is true. Before the Civil War, both national parties, the Democrats and the Whigs, were torn apart by regional divisions over the slavery issue. After the war, the Democrats knit themselves together, but the new party of the Republicans - northern anti-slavery men of both Whig and Democratic origin - which had prosecuted the war under Lincoln, in the South consisted mostly of ex-slaves, a few carpetbaggers (northerners, some of them black, who'd come south to exploit the ruins economically as well as politically), and a few anti-secession scalawags and mountain men.
For a while, the Republicans reigned due to Reconstruction, which included military enforcement of laws allowing blacks to vote and keeping ex-Confederates out (on grounds of treason), but that faded after the troops were withdrawn as part of the settlement over the stolen presidential election of 1876. Then the Republicans made a resurgence in alliance with the Populist farm rebellion of the 1890s. After that, Jim Crow laws were passed to keep blacks systematically out of the polls to make sure that never happened again, and the Solid South was born.
For sixty years, you couldn't elect a Republican in the South. The name was still anathema there. These Southern Democrats were all deeply conservative on most issues, though some were economic populists as long as it didn't help the blacks too much. Northern Democrats tended to be liberals, though, and as that tendency grew, another regional faultline formed. A few more-liberal "national Democrats" got elected in the marginal Southern states. (It's hard to define them; in the Senate, Lyndon Johnson posed as one in national media but as a Southern Democrat at home in Texas. Estes Kefauver, elected in Tennessee in 1948, same year as Johnson, may have been the first true "national Democrat" Southern senator.) The Southern conservatives gradually got over their ancestors' revulsion at the name "Republican", started voting for Republicans for President with Goldwater in 1964 (they'd already staged a 3rd-party rebellion against national Democratic liberalism in 1948), after which Nixon began wooing them (his "Southern strategy") and they began switching to Republican in Congressional and local races. Later, the few liberal Northern Republicans began giving up on the party, and the current alignment of left = Democrat, right = Republican, unprecedented in the U.S.'s historically coalition-oriented party system, set into place.
Since the 60s, the notion of the old-fashioned conservative Southern Democrat has been making less and less sense, and, in the Senate, Landrieu was the last one.
I thought I'd examine the statistics on the Senate. The news reports say the Democrats are gone from the Deep South Senate seats, but they require a slightly creative definition of the Deep South to do it. Historically the South was the 11 states that seceded in 1861. But there's still a Democratic senator in Florida and two in Virginia, both states with strong infusions of liberals from the north. The rest are gone, though, and Landrieu's seat, now to be Cassidy's, was the last one of any of the 22 Southern seats that had never elected a Republican since at least Populist days.
The last Populist-era Republican in a Southern Senate seat disappeared in 1903. All 22 seats were continuously Democratic from then on - all of them - until John Tower (a former Democrat who'd switched parties partly due to his admiration of the U.K. Tories) was elected to fill Lyndon Johnson's vacated seat in 1961. Strom Thurmond, the most rebellious Southern Democrat in the Senate (he's the only one who'd refused to mute his opposition to the toothless Civil Rights Act of 1957) switched Republican to support Goldwater in 1964, and the tide was on. It actually crossed the median twenty years ago, but it's close to max now. Here's the statistics on number of Republicans in those 22 seats:
In a broad sense, this is true. Before the Civil War, both national parties, the Democrats and the Whigs, were torn apart by regional divisions over the slavery issue. After the war, the Democrats knit themselves together, but the new party of the Republicans - northern anti-slavery men of both Whig and Democratic origin - which had prosecuted the war under Lincoln, in the South consisted mostly of ex-slaves, a few carpetbaggers (northerners, some of them black, who'd come south to exploit the ruins economically as well as politically), and a few anti-secession scalawags and mountain men.
For a while, the Republicans reigned due to Reconstruction, which included military enforcement of laws allowing blacks to vote and keeping ex-Confederates out (on grounds of treason), but that faded after the troops were withdrawn as part of the settlement over the stolen presidential election of 1876. Then the Republicans made a resurgence in alliance with the Populist farm rebellion of the 1890s. After that, Jim Crow laws were passed to keep blacks systematically out of the polls to make sure that never happened again, and the Solid South was born.
For sixty years, you couldn't elect a Republican in the South. The name was still anathema there. These Southern Democrats were all deeply conservative on most issues, though some were economic populists as long as it didn't help the blacks too much. Northern Democrats tended to be liberals, though, and as that tendency grew, another regional faultline formed. A few more-liberal "national Democrats" got elected in the marginal Southern states. (It's hard to define them; in the Senate, Lyndon Johnson posed as one in national media but as a Southern Democrat at home in Texas. Estes Kefauver, elected in Tennessee in 1948, same year as Johnson, may have been the first true "national Democrat" Southern senator.) The Southern conservatives gradually got over their ancestors' revulsion at the name "Republican", started voting for Republicans for President with Goldwater in 1964 (they'd already staged a 3rd-party rebellion against national Democratic liberalism in 1948), after which Nixon began wooing them (his "Southern strategy") and they began switching to Republican in Congressional and local races. Later, the few liberal Northern Republicans began giving up on the party, and the current alignment of left = Democrat, right = Republican, unprecedented in the U.S.'s historically coalition-oriented party system, set into place.
Since the 60s, the notion of the old-fashioned conservative Southern Democrat has been making less and less sense, and, in the Senate, Landrieu was the last one.
I thought I'd examine the statistics on the Senate. The news reports say the Democrats are gone from the Deep South Senate seats, but they require a slightly creative definition of the Deep South to do it. Historically the South was the 11 states that seceded in 1861. But there's still a Democratic senator in Florida and two in Virginia, both states with strong infusions of liberals from the north. The rest are gone, though, and Landrieu's seat, now to be Cassidy's, was the last one of any of the 22 Southern seats that had never elected a Republican since at least Populist days.
The last Populist-era Republican in a Southern Senate seat disappeared in 1903. All 22 seats were continuously Democratic from then on - all of them - until John Tower (a former Democrat who'd switched parties partly due to his admiration of the U.K. Tories) was elected to fill Lyndon Johnson's vacated seat in 1961. Strom Thurmond, the most rebellious Southern Democrat in the Senate (he's the only one who'd refused to mute his opposition to the toothless Civil Rights Act of 1957) switched Republican to support Goldwater in 1964, and the tide was on. It actually crossed the median twenty years ago, but it's close to max now. Here's the statistics on number of Republicans in those 22 seats:
1961 1 1975 6 1989 7 2003 13 1963 1 1977 5 1991 7 2005 18 1965 2 1979 6 1993 10 2007 17 1967 3 1981 10 1995 13 2009 15 1969 4 1983 10 1997 15 2011 16 1971 5 1985 9 1999 14 2013 16 1973 7 1987 5 2001 13 2015 19(Who were the four remaining Democrats when the Republicans hit 18 in 2005? Bill Nelson, the Floridian who's still there now; the two Arkansas seats, both occupied by desperate straddlers between national and Southern Democrat, who've both since been defeated; and ... Mary Landrieu.)
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no subject
Date: 2014-12-08 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-08 06:28 pm (UTC)Blacks started becoming Democratic after their migration to northern cities. The change started in the 1920s and got really going in the 30s. Democratic city machines, used to helping minorities, scooped them up and earned their gratitude. Republicans didn't care much. Southern blacks still tended Republican until the 60s when the civil rights issue became a core Democratic cause.
Meanwhile, the white Southern Democrats began balking at liberal national policies in Roosevelt's second term and seriously rebelling in 1948. By the 1970s, it had gotten to the point where heritage Southern Democrats could openly support Republican presidential candidates and not get chastized for it.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-08 07:12 pm (UTC)It's also noteworthy that the people whose views would now be called "libertarian" used to be called "Cleveland Democrats." H.L. Mencken was one, and I've read that Ayn Rand cast her first presidential vote for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had run on a platform of free enterprise and balanced budgets. After his first term all those people turned against him and started voting Republican, to the point where "Goldwater Republican" was a more recent near synonym for "libertarian" (the founders of the Libertarian Party largely came out of the Goldwater campaign, for example). So there you have a fairly short period when two blocs of voters realigned fairly quickly.
The period from 1932 to 1960 was politically weird in that it had blacks and Southern whites solidly in the same party. Talk about strange bedfellows! Now that I think of it, Allan Drury's series that began with Advise and Content is probably about the Democrats, as the unnamed political party's leaders include both a Southern white man and a black man. . . .
no subject
Date: 2014-12-08 08:46 pm (UTC)Cleveland Democrats, more usually known to historians as Bourbon Democrats (originally an insult, but then so were Whig and Tory) were laissez faire 19C liberals, so they're who a libertarian (if there had been any at the time) would have supported, but that's more a distant ancestor of libertarianism than the thing itself.
There were still plenty of black Republicans in the 1960s, and still some now too. It's for more general reasons - including the presence of venerable Southern whites, as well as the general spread of issues, political strength, and geography - that it's clear that Drury's Majority Party in Advise and Consent is the Democrats and the Minority the Republicans.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-08 10:18 pm (UTC)More specifically, the draft. I see too many "historians" who talk about the "anti-war movement" as if it were separate from the protests over the draft. That split the FDR coalition, as a lot of conservative whites felt patriotic and a lot of liberal blacks felt they were being used as cannon fodder. The riots in the 60s were not only about Black Power, but it felt that way to many. That's where Nixon's "Law and Order" campaign came in, and was the beginning of the Southern Strategy.
The US has always had a cohort of voters who are batshit insane. For many years, the evangelicals (who were SURE that Jesus was going to come back TOMORROW and the righteous would go to heaven and everyone else didn't matter) and the racists (who were SURE that slavery was not only okay, but allowed for in the Bible and part of the Southern "heritage"). When these two delusional groups were in different parties, they tended to balance out on the national level. The Southern Strategy brought both groups under the wing of the Republicans, leading to Reagan and the shift from Democratic conservatives to Republican conservatives.
Ah, but Reagan and GHWBush were pretty bad presidents: Corrupt, dishonest and didn't help the working stiffs. So Clinton got in. Which infuriated the newly-empowered racist AND evangelicals Republican party. So they started harping on class and social issues, even if they were to the detriment of the voter. The Sphincter Republicans who voted out of fear. And this worked. You can see that in your chart.
Be careful what you wish for. Republicans successfully courted the batshit insane voter... which has led to batshit insane legislators. Democrats have their faults, but at least the behave like adults... most of the time. Worse, Democrats just can't admit to themselves that their opponents are NOT The Loyal Opposition. Democrats expect the voter to make clear headed choices, when Republicans are suppressing millions of votes and allowing massive amounts of money to determine the message in elections.
I'm not sure what will come out of this mess, but it's already too late to prevent much climate change and several other issues have just destroyed the American Dream. Reagan and co. may have won elections and Cheney & co. may have stolen trillions of taxpayer dollars, but they've left this country in shambles, and in the hands of the worst elements.