# What caused the polar shift between Lincoln republicans and today's modern republicans? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 19, 2013, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739 "2013-12-19T17:46:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2013, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739/21 "2013-12-19T23:06:02Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > The irony of this post will be lost here but I will point it out. Military occupation of the South is categorized as “socially progressive”. Can you not see that there is **no** irony in that, historically? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2013, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739/22 "2013-12-19T23:12:12Z")
At the beginning, the GOP was pretty radical and perceived as more radical still. [This](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/1856-Republican-party-Fremont-isms-caricature.jpg) is how the Republican agenda was viewed when they got started: Negro equality, vegetarianism, free love, women’s suffrage, redistribution of wealth, and . . . **popery!** :eek: There actually were some Marxists in the early GOP, BTW; Lincoln appointed several to high military or executive offices. And that great Republican Horace Greely’s _New York Tribune_ ran a regular column by Karl Marx. You can read the story in [_The S Word: A Short History of an American Tradition . . . Socialism,_](http://www.amazon.com/The-Word-American-Tradition-Socialism/dp/184467679X) by John Nichols. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2013, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739/23 "2013-12-19T23:17:52Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Could you specify what you’re talking about? If you’re discussing gay marriage, I’m pretty sure that Abraham Lincoln never spoke out in favor of it. Though well he might have . . . ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739/24 "2013-12-20T03:35:07Z")
The Republicans have always broadly been the party of industry and finance. That was radical in 1860 and is conservative today. It’s also worth remembering that abolition in the 1860s was less a matter of what we would now call “civil rights” as it was a conflation of two things: First, an evangelical revival that condemned slavery on religious grounds- southerners routinely referred to abolitionists as “fanatics”, and they often were. These proto-fundamentalists found a home in the Republican party. Secondly, the political reality that after the Civil War every newly enfranchised freedman was a guaranteed Republican vote. So it’s inaccurate to equate nineteenth century Republicans with modern humanist liberalism. It was really the Democrats who changed more, moving away from the dead horse of States Rights (except for a hard core of “Dixiecrat” segregationists until the 1950s) and embracing Progressivism beginning with the Wilson administration. What’s different about the Republicans since the late 1970s is that they changed from being _conservative_ to being _reactionary_; making political hay from the backlash against social changes such as abortion, gay rights and the decay of former moral values. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739/25 "2013-12-20T10:44:52Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > So it’s inaccurate to equate nineteenth century Republicans with modern humanist liberalism. It was really the Democrats who changed more, moving away from the dead horse of States Rights (except for a hard core of “Dixiecrat” segregationists until the 1950s) and embracing Progressivism beginning with the Wilson administration. Yea, I think this is the answer. The shift was caused by the Dems managing to move outside the South and capture not only their traditional, limited base of rural whites but also become the party of immigrants, urban laborers, civil rights voters and progressives in the New Deal coalition. This basically knocked the GOP out of power for forty years, and they were only able to move back in by abandoning their traditional base of Northern Progressives in favor of whites in the South and High-planes. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739/26 "2013-12-20T12:37:46Z")
> [@DragonAsh](#): > > My mid-teens cousin was shocked to realize after watching Lincoln (excellent movie, btw, for those that haven’t seen it) that Lincoln was a republican. Rand Paul thought that black college students would be amazed to learn this. Everyone has pretty much covered it. The Nixon Southern Strategy, coupled with the Republican embracement of the right wing evangelical anti-abortion vote in the wake of Roe. Now the purge of moderate Republicans, at least on the national level, is complete. You either have to be a right wing racist whack-a-doodle, pay lip service to their rhetoric, or you’re going to lose a primary to a True Believer. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739/27 "2013-12-20T15:37:46Z")
The end of reconstruction did not cause a shift in the Republican party. The Democrat party was still the party of Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion and the GOP was still waiving the bloody shirt for fifty years after the end of reconstruction. What realigned the parties was the New Deal. Black people started moving to the northern cities for economic and social reasons in the early part of the 20th century. Cities were dominated by the political machines. Since there was very little point in opposing the machines, blacks were assimilated into the machines. Thus the Democrat pary was bifurcated between the solid south where blacks were not allowed to vote and the urban ethnic machines of the north. Hoover was the last Republican candidate to get a majority of the black vote. The New Deal coalition built by FDR was able to merge the two poles into a governing coalition by essentially nationalizing the machine style of politics. The federal government sent money into communities and the communities responded by voting Democrat. The southern democrats were bought off by excluding the predominantly black vocations from social security, anti-black legislation such as the minimum wage, and price supports for agriculture which helped white farmers at the expense of the sharecroppers. As the racism which tied the south to the Democrat party abated Republicans were more and more succesful in the south and Democrats switched from racism to the traditional machine style of exchanging votes for targeted money. In the north the traditionally democratic ethnic groups, such as the italians and irish started to make more money, move to the suburbs and vote republican. This has not yet happened to blacks. Thus overtime the racial makeup of the parties switched. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739/28 "2013-12-20T16:05:40Z")
What’s the Democrat Party? ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739/29 "2013-12-20T16:08:38Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > What’s the Democrat Party? It’s what right wingers call the Democratic Party when they think they’re being clever. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739/30 "2013-12-20T16:34:31Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > It’s what right wingers call the Democratic Party when they think they’re being clever. Any education in writing that they had should have told them that people tend to discount written pieces that are filled with grammatical errors. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739/31 "2013-12-20T16:42:28Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > What’s the Democrat Party? [This.](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Democrat_Party) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739/32 "2013-12-20T16:45:18Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > . . . anti-black legislation such as the minimum wage . . . :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739/33 "2013-12-20T16:47:14Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > It’s what right wingers call the Democratic Party when they think they’re being clever. The less partisan, but correct, answer is that “Democrat Party” is a common and understandably easy-to-make error, especially when the party is made up of people calling themselves “Democrats.” ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739/34 "2013-12-20T16:52:13Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > The less partisan, but correct, answer is that “Democrat Party” is a common and understandably easy-to-make error, especially when the party is made up of people calling themselves “Democrats.” But the people who say/type “Democrat Party” have heard “Democratic Party” from the media all their lives, and, moreover, have repeatedly been called on the error and persist. They are not doing so innocently. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739/35 "2013-12-20T17:05:41Z")
It’s OFTEN noted that the Republicans pursued a strategy of appealing to disaffected blue-collar white Americans, including (but not limited to) Southerners. What’s not talked about often is that just as the Republicans started pursuing blue-collar whites, the Democratic Party leadership made a deliberate and conscious decision to jettison them. In 1972, George McGovern and Fred Dutton made a decision to scrap the old New Deal coalition and rebuild the party as a colaition of ethnic minorities, women, and highly educated white urbanites. That decision proved disastrous in 1972, but has proven sound and even prescient since. Before 1972, the Democrats were fairly conservative on social issues, hawkish on foreign policy, and liberal in economics. They depended heavily on white unionized workers. Bill Clinton’s “It’s the economy, stupid” adage summed up the philosophy of the New Deal coalition. After 1972, they were no longer interested in appealing to their former core voters, and the economy was no longer their major concern. Social issues, like abortion, were. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739/36 "2013-12-20T17:09:03Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > Rand Paul thought that black college students would be amazed to learn this. > > Everyone has pretty much covered it. The Nixon Southern Strategy, coupled with the Republican embracement of the right wing evangelical anti-abortion vote in the wake of Roe. Now the purge of moderate Republicans, at least on the national level, is complete. You either have to be a right wing racist whack-a-doodle, pay lip service to their rhetoric, or you’re going to lose a primary to a True Believer. People like you have been saying for decades, “The GOP is so extreme now, a moderate can’t get elected.” And yet the GOP always ends up nominating moderates for President. Mitt Romney, precisely the kind of liberal Repubican you insist can’t succeed in today’s ultraconservative Republican Party, DID get the nomination lat year, without working up a sweat. The extremists you insist control the party could never rally around a candidate, and ended up flirting impotently with loads of them. The country club set controls the party, not the 700 Club set. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739/37 "2013-12-20T17:16:18Z")
The country club set controls the presidential nominees. They don’t seem to have much control over the congressional nominees. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739/38 "2013-12-20T17:17:32Z")
> [@Bozuit](#): > > Oh come on. You know what **Shakes** is talking about, even if you think it’s wrong/over-simplified/whatever. > > In the 1860s, the Republicans were seen as the progressive side. Now they’re the opposite. What **Shakes** said was “It used to be the republicans that were all for equal rights among minorities. Now, not so much.” Well, here’s how Abraham Lincoln felt about equal rights for minorities: I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position, the negro should be denied everything. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never had a black woman for either a slave or a wife. - from the fourth of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, Sept. 18, 1858 Now there’s certainly no Republican politician today who opposes the right of blacks to vote, serve on a jury, or marry interracially. So the truthful understanding would be that Lincoln Republicans opposed equal rights for all races while today’s Republicans favor the same. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739/39 "2013-12-20T17:18:48Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But the people who say/type “Democrat Party” have heard “Democratic Party” from the media all their lives… So? I still hear people use the construction “I seen it” even though they’ve heard the correct term all their lives. If you take an honest and somewhat more charitable view of human behavior you’ll find the world is actually a bit less partisan and mean than you think it is. And I again have to point out that “Democrat” is an actual word used to describe members of the Democratic Party. The party itself uses the website [www.democrats.org](http://www.democrats.org). There is no equivalent term for the GOP; the Republican party is made up of Republicans. If you cannot honestly see how the Democratic/Democrat error could be innocently made, well, you’re kidding yourself. ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739/40 "2013-12-20T17:23:27Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > What **Shakes** said was “It used to be the republicans that were all for equal rights among minorities. Now, not so much.” Well, here’s how Abraham Lincoln felt about equal rights for minorities: > > I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position, the negro should be denied everything. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never had a black woman for either a slave or a wife. > > - from the fourth of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, Sept. 18, 1858 > > Now there’s certainly no Republican politician today who opposes the right of blacks to vote, serve on a jury, or marry interracially. So the truthful understanding would be that Lincoln Republicans opposed equal rights for all races while today’s Republicans favor the same. Are you being intentionally coy? Do you not understand the contrast between now and then? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-caused-the-polar-shift-between-lincoln-republicans-and-todays-modern-republicans/676739.md?page=3)