Have the Democratic and Republican Parties Switched Platforms?

Introduction: The Stereotypes and Misconceptions of Party Switching

For the past half-century, two parties: the Republican and Democratic parties have dominated American politics. The common stereotype is that the Democratic party looks out for the minorities while the Republicans are against them. Although examples like Abraham Lincoln go against this notion, many believe the two parties switched and support different stances. The argument of the ‘Southern Strategy’ is popular in the academic field as a reasoning for the prevailing parties. However, this theory does not explain the full story behind the South becoming more Republican and the North becoming Democratic because of the origins of the two parties, how the ‘Southern Strategy’ is flawed at the core and current examples.

Origins and Early Platforms of the Democratic and Republican Parties

The origins of the Democratic and Republican party are very similar, at the same time, very different. The Democratic Party was formed in 1792 when supporters of Thomas Jefferson began using the name ‘Democratic-Republicans’ to emphasize its anti-aristocratic policies. A split between the Democratic-Republican Party in the mid-1820s gave rise to two factions: the Whigs and the Democrats. This would happen after Andrew Jackson’s loss to John Quincy Adams in the election of 1824, Jackson's supporters created their organization called the Democratic party to get him elected. Their platform would consist of many ideas, but during the 19th and early-20th century, the Democratic Platform was broken up into four ideas: the belief in the American working class, regulation towards big business, expansion of executive power, and defense of slavery.

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Jackson would be the first Democrat supported primarily by the American working class and rural farmers. Jackson was the first populist president at the time with a slogan that attracted many poor folks toward the Democratic Party for many centuries to come. The idea that the government should be more direct was another concept being uprooted at the time. To protect the working class, many regulations towards businesses and banks would be signed. Democrats believed that corporations had too much influence in civil affairs affecting the common man, Jackson would say, “It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government”. This fight against laissez-faire caused an expansion in Executive Power never seen before. Democrats like Jackson would abuse the powers granted to him by the constitution. In the 1820s, it would go as far as ripping apart treaties made by Thomas Jefferson and the forceful removal of Indians between Georgia and Oklahoma. Andrew Jackson and the Democrats did not care; they saw this as protecting the middle class by redistributing land as they saw fit. Jackson would make him and his followers a fortune during his presidency by seizing land and making it government-owned. They would either sell it to the highest bidder or keep the land for themselves.

However, the main platform which would symbolize the Democratic party during the antebellum era was the defense of slavery. The party was able to win the South by supporting the economic system at the time. All the figures who upheld and defended American slavery—Senators John C. Calhoun and Stephen Douglas, President James Buchanan, Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, the architect of the Dred Scott decision, and the main leaders of the Confederacy—were Democrats. They believed in the idea of ‘positive good’, believing that slavery was positive for both the slave and the slave owner. Democrats, like George Fitzhugh, argued: “isn't slavery the same thing as what we are reading about among European socialists”. Fitzhugh essentially argued that it was an effective form of socialism. Fitzhugh argued that “in slavery, unlike in capitalism, the slaves who cannot provide for themselves are looked after from their cradle to their grave”. The idea is that the slave plantation is an extended family that “from each according to his abilities to each according to his need”.

On the other side, the Republican Party traces its roots to the 1850s, when anti-slavery leaders from former members of the Democratic, Whig, and Free-Soil parties joined forces to oppose the extension of slavery into the Kansas and Nebraska territories by the proposed Kansas-Nebraska Act. The Republican Party grew out of opposition to the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which was signed into law by President Franklin Pierce in 1854. Anti-slavery Northerners viewed this change as an aggressive maneuver by the slave-owning South. Its platform during the 19th and early-20th centuries consisted primarily of ending slavery in the U.S., preserve the constitution, deregulate the economy, and limit immigration. Their first president would be Abraham Lincoln, who would describe the evil of slavery at its core: “You work and earn bread, and I'll eat it”. For Lincoln, the sin of slavery was not its racial aspect, but the fundamental immorality is theft because it says: “You work you toil, I will take the benefits of that”. Lincoln pointed out how Northern Democrats had even worked together with Southern Democrats to justify taking away the “fruit of other people's labor”. Their response was to conserve the founding principles through the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence, and embodied in the Federal Constitution are essential to the preservation of our republican institutions, and that the Federal Constitution, the rights of the States, and the Union of the States, must and shall be preserved. These were essential to preserve as at that time, many white republicans believed that if the liberty of blacks could be taken away, so could theirs. Most of the support would come from Northern Quakes and evangelicals like Henry Wilson, a congregational layman, declaring that the Republican party “contained more moral worth than was ever embodied in any political organization in any land”, as they pushed for equal rights under the law. Due to the support from the North, many people would favor deregulation and the promotion of the free-market system to support manufacturing jobs in the North. This would lead many industrialists to lobby in favor of Republicans, making them the party of big business throughout the 19th and early 20th century. Also, many ideas of the Free Land Party and the Whigs were implemented to protect the national welfare, for example, reducing the immigration of European servants to decrease cheap labor and tariffs to protect U.S. industry.

The Myth of the 'Southern Strategy' and the Post-War Era

In the post-war era, here is what many historians claim, “the Democrats may have been the party of slavery, but now they are better and different now”. They claim that in the 1960s, Richard Nixon's ‘Southern Strategy’ converted racist Democrats into Republicans. In short, today, Democrats are perceived as the 'good guys', and Republicans are considered to be the 'bad guys’. They even protest that Nixon used drugs and crime as a code for racism; however, Nixon's opposition was aimed against the hippies. Nixon did not have ‘Southern Strategy’, for he had a Sun Belt Strategy, which consisted of the attempt to appeal to more urban and wealthy voters in the Upper South. He ended up winning the Sun Belt, but losing the Deep South to George Wallace, a Democratic segregationist. When he took office in 1969, he introduced America's first affirmative action program. Nixon was helping minorities through his entrepreneurship program, which contradicts his racist image by the Left. Furthermore, the Dixiecrats who became Republicans were only two people: Strom Thurmond and Albert Watson. All the others died as Democrats.

In fact, as the South became less racist, the Republican party started to dominate. In the book ‘The End of Southern Exceptionalism’ by Byron Shafer uses data to show that the poor racist whites never switched. It was non-racist southerners during the ’80s when the republican message of opportunity, prosperity, and upward mobility would attract voters as more industries moved down South. Similarly, Blacks didn’t switch for reasons of race because the Democratic Party was, in the 1930s, the home of racism. It remained so until at least the 1960s. The reason why Blacks moved over to the Democratic party was based on the promises of the New Deal. Many reluctantly moved because they knew they were leaving the party of Lincoln for the party of segregation. In both cases, it had nothing to do with racism and everything to do with economics. Fast forward to the present, and the Democrats use Charlottesville riots as an example. White supremacists and neo-Nazis are wearing Trump hats, proving that the conservatives are the racists. Jason Kessler, who organized the Charlottesville rally, is made out to be a right-winger, but The Southern Poverty Law Center took a peek into his records. They found an Obama supporter, who was part of the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement. Also, the poster boy of white supremacy and founder of the ‘alt-right’ movement, Richard Spencer, said, “I would be happy to open the door to white South Africans, but we don't want people from Africa or Barbados”. This is different from what Republicans are saying. Republicans are drawing no racial line but between the legal and the illegal immigrant. Richard Spencer went on saying, “men are not created equally… we do not have God-given rights, but the state gives it to us… I don't think we should pledge allegiance to legal documents like the constitution... Reagan was one of the worst presidents”. They call him conservative, but he is not a conservative; he is a figure used to pin the white supremacists on the Republican Party.

Current Examples and Modern Misunderstandings

As we approach the 2020 election, many issues as different as they are related to the 1860s and the original platforms of the two parties. The problems of illegal immigration, abortion, and welfare strike resemble issues in the 1860s. The first issue of illegal immigration, the Democratic and Republican solutions, can go back to the antebellum era. Abraham Lincoln defended the idea of upward. Lincoln’s Republican Party tried to remove government obstacles that restricted it. In his time, the main obstacle was slavery. Slavery, Lincoln knew, hurt the value of people’s work because it placed them in competition with slaves who worked for nothing. Today’s Republicans make a similar point about illegal immigrant labor. Illegal immigrants don’t have to pay taxes. For this, they can price their labor below that of a U.S. citizen. Making illegal immigration a force that harms the upward mobility for American workers. Today’s Democrats say that such rhetoric is racist, but since racial inferiority is not implied, they make it only because they get political benefits from illegal immigration. The second issue of abortion can go further back to the Lincoln-Douglas debates. In the debates, Stephen Douglas professed to be indifferent to whether slavery was voted up or down. To the degree he confessed to an option, he implied he was ‘personally opposed’ to slavery and would not have slaves himself. Even so, Douglas contended that popular sovereignty was a democratic solution to something that threatened the nation. For Douglas, the moral question of slavery came not from its merits but its affirmation through a democratic process. This is a resemblance to the Democrats’ cotemporary pro-choice argument. Both are efforts to take something that destroys the life and liberty of another and make it a political good. Lastly, the third issue of welfare can be traced back to the features of slavery. If one goes today to the Democratic-controlled inner-city entirely dominated by the Democratic Party.

One could argue that you can see the five elements of the slave plantation outlined in Kenneth Stampp’s ‘The Peculiar Institution’. In the description of the plantation, Kenneth Stampp identifies five things that you would see on a slave plantation. Number one: broken-down dilapidated and unsafe housing. Number two: broken up families, under slavery, there was a confusion of who's the real father mulattos running around in the plantation the family structure in decay. Number three: a high degree of violence required to hold the place. Number four: everybody gets the basic provision of food, of health care (they call the doctor), but nobody gets ahead there's no opportunity. And number five: nihilism and despair... a feeling that there is no future (Donald). All these five features can be traced directly to inner-city Oakland and inner-city Baltimore. This has been going on since the 60s under the ‘Great Society Program’, the United States has spent trillions of dollars to fix these places. The Democrats have been in charge of fixing it. Yet, many of these places are no better off than they were in 1967.

Conclusion: Debunking the Myth of Party Switching

In conclusion, in response to the question of have the Democratic and Republican party switched platforms? The answer is that the two parties have maintained a similar platform since the 1860s. Sure, the idea that if a politician today would have the same political party as in the 19th century is something that can never be known, but because of their original platforms, the ‘Southern Strategy’ myth, and current-day examples. The idea that both the parties have switched platforms is not valid; instead, they have held on too many of the same ideas that concerned them 160 years ago.

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