The GOP's Liberal History

The Republican Party wanted to raise the minimum wage, let immigrants into the country and expand Social Security benefits. Those days are long gone, and we're pretty sure the Republicans of the 1950s would be pissed to know that Donald Trump has a prominent role in their party.

[SevenFootPelican]

Yeah, there used to be liberals in the Republican party. But not anymore. People act like this is a crazy thing, but it's not. It wasn't until recently that both parties had a pure monopoly on the two dominating ideologies. In the past, there was always a healthy mix... and so people were able to see the other side's point and get some things accomplished...

[Dab]

The problem is that the Republicans were relatively liberal because the Democrats were much more so. The 1930s to the 1970s was a time where economic liberalism was the consensus.

[ShaldowB]

Democrats also used to be conservative.

[immaculatesquid]

Wow 4 minutes of republicans mostly in an era from 1930-1980 renowned for when republicans basically agreed with democrats about economic policy. Please discuss Warren G Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan.

[SarcasmGuy]

I come from a long line of progressives, who voted and were staunched Republicans. After the 1964 GOP Convention, the Republican party slowly started to shift away from it's progressive roots. Cut to today, the party is the party of Trump. I am awaiting for a candidate, who identifies her/himself as a Republican and take back the party to where it was. Will it happen, NO, but I have hope.

[AnonymousLaughters]

"Pro-war" interventionism is bipartisan AJ+.

[crazyjoedevola]

AJ+ is run by the house of al-Thani, the ruling family of Qatar. The country espouses Wahhabism/salafism, the most fundamental and literal interpretation of Islam and Qatari laws are based on shariah. Qatar has the highest GDP of any country in the world, yet they keep foreign workers as slaves and have taken in 0 refugees, their own Muslim brothers and sisters. Recently a Dutch woman was arrested for BEING raped.

I really wonder, what is a news agency operated by a brutal and totalitarian theocracy doing in USA? Why so interested in US politic? And the hypocrisy of having a liberal and progressive stance while taking funds from the same family that funds ISIS is just too much.

[sogghartha]

An entire video about the liberal past of the GOP, and not a single word about the Southern Strategy? This is shoddy work. A failing grade.

[bilalc]

Civil rights was the catalyst. One side promoted it and the other side capitalized on the opposition to it. Then the social issues expanded upon it. School prayer, abortion, gay rights, etc...

[LooxeY]

Islam wasn't always this way, Al Jazeera. Oh wait, yes it was.

[eazyethan]

Just like there's not anymore conservative democrats. Let's face it both Democrat and Republican parties had a mix of Liberalism and Conservatism. For example Bill Clinton and John F Kennedy were conservative democrats while Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter were more liberal. As for the GOP, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford were more conservative while Richard Nixon and George H W Bush were more liberal. All changed in the 2000s when honestly both parties just went in the opposite direction to divide this country. In the 1980s and 1990s there were liberals and conservatives on both sides whereas now there's very few.

[krazykris]

There are somethings that have stayed consistant with the Republican party. For most of their existence they were the party of big bussiness (with the exception of Teddy Roesevelt).

[berkancelebi]

I'd say the only reason the USA is still full on capatilist is because Pollitics is capatilised and it's too late now just like religion meanwhile in the UK where it wasn't capatilised and is against lobbyism, the polliticans aren't full on capatilist and religion is the state and is seen as boring therfore more athiests while in the USA it's advertises Bible stories in films

[jamesmiller]

Gosh, even Nixon looks like a decent man compared to modern republicans

[ggates]

Both of the parties changed. The republicans favored environmentalism and progressive taxation. The Democrats favored states’ rights. The parties flopped.

[albertromas]

If republicans now would choose Abraham or trump

They would choose trump

[themaestro]

I did my graduate thesis on political polarization. Both parties had non-cohesive ideologies: separate factions. The reason the parties sorted in to specific, well defined homogenous ideological cohesion is because of the rise of campaign finance laws and tracking of PACs by party leadership that began in the 70s. The party candidates then relied more and more on national fundraising from the leadership which made them then lockstep with whatever the leadership wanted. Various reasons why PAC money really became inventive around that time, but there were groups on both sides that behaved in different ways.

[johnweber]

Part I:

The first thing to get out of the way that any political party in America or otherwise has been an absolute monolith is of course and oversimplification. But talking about the record of the foundational Republican and Democratic Parties do think there is an underlying dynamic that never changed in spite of some evolution in their policy positions and shifts in their constituencies. For the most part I won’t be talking about “Dixiecrat” politicians who very much acted like their own force in many ways even back to the Founding. Though the voting blocks they had influence over did have some considerable overlap with support for the platform of the Democratic Party proper, particularly early on. And even into the 20th Century they were able to garner support from several if not a majority of Southern segregationists for Left-wing economic projects like the New Deal and the War on Poverty. It’s when socially progressive initiatives became more prevalent that the coalition became more irreconcilable and industry coming to the South made the pro-business party all the more alluring. And somewhat problematically the South does wind up taking up a lot of the conversation for whatever party they’ve sided with given how the electoral college is set up.

The Republicans, as well as their precursors among the Federalists and the Whigs, historically tended to be the business friendly party that promoted character building while the Democrats, as well as their predecessors among the Anti-Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans, have historically claimed to be the party that spoke for the common man and led the charge against economic elites on their behalf.

You just need to look at major conflicts that were framed as being “The Elites versus The People” during each party system even before the 20th Century. Prominent examples including Alexander Hamilton versus Thomas Jefferson on the issue of the Revolutionary War debt speculators, Henry Clay versus Andrew Jackson on the issue of the National Bank and William McKinley versus William Jennings Bryan on the issue of the Free Silver movement. It was the Republican forerunners Hamilton, Clay and McKinley who defended the interests of economic elites including speculators, bankers and industrialists while it was the Democratic forerunners Jefferson, Jackson and Bryan who claimed the mantle of sticking up for the exploited common American.

Class angst has always been a driving force for the Democratic Tradition. Back at the time of the Founding before the establishment of sizable minority communities, the full development of urban centers and the sharp decline in the agricultural population it was poorer often rural whites who were portrayed as the oppressed underclass in in a system rigged to the benefit of more well off city folk and wealthy business moguls in the Northeast. The kind of rhetoric they employ now is similar but with the lines delineating the systemically oppressed and covert oppressors being redrawn over time as the party and their constituency evolved. Republicans for the most part while fighting oppression rarely blamed the American system of give at large or called it rather than some misguided laws as oppressive.

Men like Alexander Hamilton, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley and Calvin Coolidge operated within the tradition of the American School of economics. Adopting mostly from Classical economics supplemented by some not socialist but critically applied mercantilist policy meant to bolster and protect the national economy. So that the country would not become dependent on its foreign rivals for manufacturered goods and incentivize a more industrious society. All in all, creating a thriving modern economy. That is why business owners large and small supported them and their interventionist policies like tariffs and infrastructure. It should also be stressed that during the 19th Century, those kinds of policies were commonly supported by conservative parties. Unless one wants to do something like argue that Benjamin Disraeli’s Tories were to the Left of William Gladstone’s Liberal Party in England. Which would be quite a contested take. It should be noted that they also tended to promote self-improvement, discipline, personal responsibility and lawfulness as virtues in what have some come to refer to as the “Whig Ethic”.

The Democrats historically have tended to exhibit unease if not disdain towards the modern industrial capitalist economy as something that allows for the oppression of corporations to be inflicted on the common person. That is why early in America’s history you had men like Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson romanticized the agrarian lifestyle. They believed that it was easier to maintain relative equality in a world of yeoman farmers held to a particular plot of land rather than one filled with corporations that could transcend state if not national lines. They also saw urbanization as an alienating and corruptive force. And that the people without such influences would exhibit their natural goodness. Ultimately, the innovation of an industrialized society was not worth the more complex social hierarchies that would emerge. Therefore, they opposed the interventionist policies their rivals were championing. Claiming that they were more to the benefit of big business than the people.

It would be true to argue that there were socialistic people who supported Lincoln and the Republicans. But they were about as relevant as the white nationalists who by default support Republicans today. They aligned on certain issues but a fringe that in each case is often exaggerated nowadays order to slant the narrative about what the Party was then and is now.

And now for a long discursion on the turn of the 20th Century as it’s a key but often foggy subject that is often used to make certain points. A major being two key figures often being removed from context. Them being Grover Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt. Meant to create the image that the Democrats were at the time the party of big business and that it was the Republicans who took a stand against them. Which for starters ignores everything I’ve brought up previously. Cleveland is often used as the face of the Gilded Age when it was already under way during a time of largely Republican controlled federal government following the Civil War including four presidents between Andrew Johnson and Cleveland. Even most of the oft-derided robber barons were Republicans. Arguably, Cleveland and the “Bourbon Democrats” were the forerunners to Bill Clinton and the third way “New Democrats”. An adjustment in the Democratic Party to the Gilded Age as the latter seemed to be to the Reagan Revolution. Both veering into Classical Liberalism and making inroads with big business. Much to the chagrin of radicals in the party. Although it should be noted that there was an important difference between him and the Gilded Age Republicans in that Cleveland thought the government should stay out of the economy altogether while they thought that it should pro-actively support industrial development. Anyway, another interesting parallel tough is that out of each movement you got a scholarly politician, Woodrow Wilson from the Bourbon Democrats and Barack Obama from the New Democrats, who would win the presidency and actually become one of the most Progressive presidents if not the most up until that point when economic tensions started running high. Taking a more deliberate approach in implementing the kinds of ideas the radicals wanted.

Which brings us to TR. The most glaring omission in the narrative most often surrounding him is the populist movement spearheaded by radicals like the aforementioned William Jennings Bryan and Tom Watson in retaliation to the Gilded Age. The populists came to the conclusion that in an industrialized America an expansion of federal power was needed to curb corporate power and became a dominant force within the Democratic Party by the end of the 19th Century. Teddy became concerned that the unrest in the country could lead to the populists being elected and throwing the system out of balance if not start a full scale revolution.

[p.i.]

Now go watch the movie "Hillary's America" and then AJ + can do a story about it.

[SaadFarooq]

The only problem with this is the expropriation of the word 'liberal' to mean good. Liberalism and conservatism are competing philosophies. Neither is entirely good or bad. But it seems that's how it's being interpreted now. In fact, libertarianism was created because conservatism has creeped into classical liberalism. And many of the current stances of the 'liberals' are actually pretty conservative. For e.g. the philosophical proximity most people feel to Bernie's socialist stance is actually a sign of conservatism. Yet, they still call themselves liberal. An extreme example is people like Bill Maher who think the US should treat Muslims entering the country like Israel does. Somehow he's still liberal.
Furthermore, the word progressive is an ever bigger expropriation because the word already has positive connotations. Even though many of the progressive ideologies are conservative, which apparently is really bad.