Lessons from 1920s On Political Party Transformations, Realignments, Principles

Political parties change. There have been at least six, possibly seven, major political party realignments in American history, in which states that consistently voted for one political party shifted to vote consistently for the other political party. So the idea of pledging eternal loyalty to one political party for a lifetime makes little sense to students of history who try to adhere to consistent principles rather than simply advancing raw political power. 7 Phases of American Political Party Systems.

What are your highest political principles? They might be equality of opportunity, free market “laissez faire” economics, protecting the public, decentralized or limited government, a strong military, muscular foreign policy or peaceful coexistence. You would choose different political parties at different times in history to advance these principles.

Third Parties Place Principle Above Pragmatism

In the 20th century, several elections have included viable third parties that placed principle above party loyalty. Teddy Roosevelt ran on the Progressive “Bull Moose” Party in 1912 because he felt the Republicans, led by William Howard Taft, did not go far enough on progressive party principles. This caused the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson. After the election, Wilson appealed to progressives to try to bring them into his coalition.

In 1948, a democratic socialist, Henry Wallace split from the Democratic Party, as did segregationists, led by Strom Thurmond on the Dixiecrat Party. Even so, Harry Truman won re-election so neither candidate had a discernible impact on the outcome.

In 1968, Alabama Governor George Wallace split off from the Democratic Party on civil rights issues, and garnered 12 percent of the vote, insuring the election of Republican Richard Nixon. After the election, Nixon and the Republicans sought to woo these Dixiecrats into the Republican Party with a Southern strategy.

In 1980, progressive Republican congressman John Anderson of Illinois ran as a third candidate, appealing to Rockefeller Republicans, independents, liberal intellectuals, and college students.and won 6.6 percent of the vote, against Ronald Reagan’s 50.7 percent and Jimmy Carter’s 41 percent. Anderson made no discernible difference in the outcome. Even if all of his supporters voted for Carter, the incumbent president would have lost the election.

In 1992, concerned about the two parties’ lack of commitment to deficit reduction, and the lack of business principles in government,  businessman Ross Perot of Texas self-financed a bid for president and won nearly 20 percent of the vote. He attempted to start a third party, but by 2000 it had failed completely. After the election, Clinton committed to stringent deficit reduction and promoted a “reinventing government” scheme to glean efficiency out of bloated federal budgets.

In 2000, consumer advocate Ralph Nader ran on the progressive Green Party ticket, winning about two percent of the vote and insuring the election of Republican George W. Bush. If he weren’t in the race, Green Party voters would have most definitely preferred Democrat Al Gore. Rigid adherence to principle can lead to political losses. This election proved the old adage that a half a loaf of bread is better than no loaf.

It’s possible that in 2016, the combined third party vote — Greens, Libertarians, minor parties — threw the election to Donald Trump, as Hillary Clinton only lost the election by 80,000 votes in three states.

History of Co-opting Third Parties

Over time, as the political winds or markets have changed, in an attempt to co-opt third parties, Democrats and Republicans have reversed themselves on the role of the military, civil rights, tax cuts as economic stimulus, investments in a social safety net, economic regulations, the environment, health care reform, free trade, fair trade, open borders, tax hikes for deficit reduction, affirmative action and civil rights quotas, nation-building abroad, Medicare and Social Security, women’s rights, crime and welfare. Tracking Policy Reversals by Conservatives and Liberals

These reversals can be defended by the idea that rigid adherence to political principle in light of new evidence that such a principle is not in tune with the times and not applicable to currently needed policies demonstrates a lack of pragmatism.

Loyalty to dogma over facts — forcing a complex world to fit in a tiny box of dogma can lead to tyranny. The Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin, for example, believed in a rigidly planned, controlled national economy and would not accept the news that interim goals were not being met, and that five-year plans for the Russian economy were impossible. Advisers who dared to challenge or tell him what he did not want to hear were terminated so he did not have to face unpleasant facts. Stalinists left people to suffer and die so that (in the words of Stalin biographer Adam Ulam) “life should prove the truth of dogma.” To such zealots, the real world must be seen through the prism of ideology, rather than the reverse:

Ideology should be shaped, flexibly and pragmatically, by what occurs in the real world.

Americans have historically been pragmatists rather than rigid ideologues. “As our case is new, so must we think and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves,” said Abraham Lincoln, a Republican. Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, believed in ‘bold, persistent experimentation … Take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”

No Democrat today would embrace the Democratic Party of 1924, which allowed a demonstration by the Ku Klux Klan at its national convention. The Democrats that year received just 29 percent of the popular vote and only the support of Southern states, the former Confederacy.

Few Republicans today would embrace the Republican Party of 1912, dominated by Progressives who advocated stringent federal government regulations of business. Back then, they backed eight hour work days, 40-hour work weeks, and a progressive federal income tax system. But even the Progressive Movement, a strong national force beginning in 1900, particularly in the Republican Party, ran out of steam by 1920. It didn’t recover until 1932, making a home not in the Republican Party but in the Democratic Party.

Most Democrats today would embrace Fighting Bob LaFollette‘s Progressive Party in the 1924 election. However, LaFollette won only his home state of Wisconsin, and 16.6 percent of the vote. (See 1923 presidential election.)

Civil rights used to be a stronger platform in the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. Civil rights bills of the 1950s and 1960s received more votes from Republican senators than Democratic senators. Southern Democratic senators engaged in a long filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In his 2003 book, Back to Basics for the Republican Party, Michael Zak recalls that the Democratic Party started in the South as the party of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. It represented Southern secessionists, slavery proponents, segregationists and Klu Klux Klansmen, and fought against equality for African Americans until the 1960s.  The Republican Party represented northern industrialists, businessmen and abolitionists. The CRA of 1964, which ended segregation in businesses, was supported by more than 80 percent of Republicans in Congress and less than 65 percent of Democrats.

Regional Realignments: 1950s through 1980

When the Democratic Party in the 1960s embraced the Civil Rights Movement, Southern segregationists such as Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Jesse Helms of North Carolina who had been Democrats switched to the Republican Party and were welcomed by presidential candidates Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, who developed a “Southern Strategy” appeal to former segregationists, supporters of the Vietnam War, military veterans. and evangelical Christians. Code words such as “traditional values,” “duty and honor,” “Christian nation,” “prayer in schools” were what turned Democrats into Republicans in the South.

“It wasn’t that the Civil Rights Act was what turned the South against the Democrats or minorities against Republicans,” wrote Harry J. Enten in The UK Guardian. “Those patterns, as Trende showed, had been developing for a while. It was, however, a manifestation of these growing coalitions. The South gradually became home to the conservative party, while the north became home to the liberal party. Today, the transformation is nearly complete. President Obama carried only 18% of former Confederate states, while taking 62% of non-Confederate states in 2012. Only 27% of southern senators are Democrats, while 62% of Union state senators are Democrats. And 29% of southern members in the House are Democrats compared to 54% in states or territories that were part of the Union.”

Leaders of Party Realignments

Thurmond and Helms led a movement of “Dixiecrats” or former Democratic segregationists from the Carolinas and Deep South states to the Republican Party in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Intellectuals such as Kevin Phillips, an architect of the Republican Southern Strategy, analyzed shifting voting patterns and predicted a decades-long conservative realignment with his 1970 book, “The Emerging Republican Majority.” In 2006, he offered American Theocracy, a devastating critique of what the coalition he helped build wrought on America: ” ideological extremism, catastrophic fiscal irresponsibility, rampant greed and dangerous shortsightedness.”

Ben Wattenberg and Richard Scammon, authors of “The Real Majority” in 1970, switched from Democratic consultants in the 1960s to become “Reagan Democrats.”

Demographers are predicting another major realignment of political parties as whites shift toward a minority of the American population; Latinos and African Americans increase political power, particularly in the South; as workplaces are increasingly led by women; and as females make up a majority of students at colleges and universities.

During and after the 2016 election, a group of “Never Trump” Republicans started making rumblings about a realignment.  They included Rick Wilson, Republican political consultant in Florida and author of “Everything Trump Touches Dies”; Max Boot, author of “The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right”; and Senator Ben Sasse, author of “Them: Why We Hate Each Other and How to Heal.” (Review.) Whether these books are just expressions of discontent or harbingers of the future, time will tell.

What we do know is that third parties made a significant difference in the elections of 1912, 1968, 1992, winning more than 13 percent of the vote each time, and in 2000 as the Ralph Nader Green Party “spoiled” Al Gore’s election by winning 2.7 percent of the vote. The historical pattern suggests another significant third-party challenge is likely at least once a generation in American political history, ushering in a realignment of the parties.

Drill Deeper:

• 7 Phases of American Political Party Systems.
• Tracking Policy Reversals by Conservatives and Liberals