Posted on 12/23/2009 10:30:32 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
By the same token if Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and all the rest were alive today they would definitely be Republicans.
You do realize that this is wholly speculation on your part.
What Lincoln or Davis or Lee would be or do "if they were alive today" isn't something any of us can say with any authority, so it's a subject for silly conjectures.
That’s the thing. The parties switched. There was a time when the GOP was the northern liberal party and hated the down home values we in the South stand for while the Democrats stood up for those values.
Maybe those "down home values" changed.
Though sometimes I wonder.
Jefferson Davis imposed a big intrusive government on the confederacy far out of proportion to that which Lincoln in blamed for. He nationalized businesses, seized shipping space on private blockade runners without compensation, forced slave owners to provide slave labor without compensation, took a percentage of all agricultural produce without compensation, declared martial law in areas hundreds of miles from the fighting, ignored a constitutional requirement for a Supreme Court, and proposed income taxes that were confiscatory in nature. It doesn't surprise me that Trent Lott would consider these Republican Party values. But I would disagree with him completely.
Believing that Lincoln was a tyrannical dictator who did great harm to America and being a Republican in 2009 are not mutually exclusive.
Other than believing the first part of that statement displays a disregard for the facts.
About the same level as his IQ no doubt.
I'd remind the poster that a very large percentage of the 19th Century Democrat party took the position that Jefferson and the other signers of the Declaration of Independence were mistaken on their belief that All Men are Created Equal and that our Inalienable Rights are endowed by our Creator.
I would also say that the only political/social issue we face today that compares with the slavery issue of 150 years ago is the issue of abortion. And once again, the Democrats largely stand on the side of no rights for the unborn while Republicans largely stand by the concept of an Inalienable Right to Life and Liberty for all.
I'd also say that for the poster to buy into the concept that the parties have 'switched sides' and that Lincoln would be a liberal today is buying into the big Democrat lie that they have used over the last half century to mask their ugly racial history. It is simply not accurate.
The 19th Century Democrat Party, both North and South, played the Race and Class cards for all they were worth breeding hatred and distrust among people looking to divide them into factions and then play those factions for electoral victory. They do the exact same thing today. They are still the party of division today relying on ignorance, and resentment. Nothing has changed in their tactics or values.
I’m a Southerner. I know exactly why things used to be as they were and why they are as they are now.
Look at what the Democrats are today and what the Republicans are today. Reverse them and you get an exact match for the situation in Reconstruction. You can’t deny that Charles Sumner would be a raging liberal Democrat today. You can’t deny that Thaddeus Stevens would be a raging liberal Democrat today. As would Grant.
In 1870, Barack Obama would have been a radical Republican. Just look at history. Almost every Bourbon would have been a Republican in the modern political format and every Radical Reconstructionist would have been a Democrat today. There is virtually no difference in the positions advocated by the CBC today and those advocated by their forebears representing Southern states in Congress in the 1870s
And just look at the political history of the late 1800s. Republicans always passed grandiose budgets and ran on populist record while Democrats ran as conservative financial stewards and budget cutters. Cleveland would be a Republican in the modern political alignment. So would Alton Parker. Teddy Roosevelt would be a Democrat today. Hoover would be a Democrat today. Wilson would be a Republican today. It’s just the way it is. They did switch.
That’s how we explain it in the schools to our children. That’s how I explained it to my children when I taught them about politics and so forth. And I explained it because it is the truth. Look at the Democrats today. They carry on the spirit of Reconstruction. And the Republicans today? Well, we carry on the spirit of the brave men and women who fought to liberate the region from that evil.
Northern Republicans have a hard time accepting this because Lincoln and his supposed “heroism” is a part of their mythology but it is the truth. Look at a political map from the 1890s-1900s. You’ll find that the red-blue split is completely reversed for the most part. That should tell you all you need to know.
In the South, we have no qualms about this at all. We’ll gladly tell you that they switched because we have no desire to claim Abraham Lincoln and U.S. Grant as our own.
Where was Chrissy when the GOP swept New Jersey in November? I guess he only looks at returns that suit his extreme left wing agenda.
No kidding. The Republicans of the 1860s and 1870s advocated affirmative action and land redistribution for chrissakes. It was a mainstream Republican position during that time that land in the South should be forcibly confiscated from white owners and handed over to freedman. Basically, the position of Robert Mugabe.
There was nothing remotely conservative about the origins of the party or the initial stances it took. The Republicans only truly started becoming a conservative party with the nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964 and only cemented it in 1980 with the nomination and election of Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Lincoln ordered summary executions on captured Confederate soldiers. He ordered the imprisonment of reporters who questioned him. His government harassed the Copperheads.
Lincoln was a brutal dictator whether you like it or not and he was the founder of modern liberalism.
The only truth about it is that it is simplistic to the point of misinformation. History does not work that way. There are very few political issues today that can be compared to the issues back then -- slavery-abortion being the only one I can think of off the top of my head. The one constant in American politics is the tendency of the the Democrats to demagogue race and class as political weapons.
Here's a little exercise for you. Using your formula of a 180 degree 'switch' in what the parties stood for, below is a section from one of the Party Platforms from back in the late 19th century.
Now be honest (don't look it up) and tell me if it was the Conservative or the Liberal party?
This Convention hereby renews the expression of appreciation of the patriotism of the soldiers and sailors of the Union in the war for its preservation, and we favor just and liberal pensions for all disabled Union soldiers, their widows and dependents...
The Federal Government should care for and improve the Mississippi River and other great waterways of the Republic, so as to secure for the interior States easy and cheap transportation to tide water. When any waterway of the Republic is of sufficient importance to demand the aid of the Government, such aid should be extended upon a definite plan of continuous work, until permanent improvement is secured.
For purposes of national defense and the promotion of commerce between the States, we recognize the early construction of the Nicaragua Canal and its protection against foreign control as of great importance to the United States.
Recognizing the World's Columbian Exposition as a national undertaking of vast importance, in which the General Government has invited the cooperation of all the powers of the world, and appreciating the acceptance by many of such powers of the invitation so extended, and the broad and liberal efforts being made by them to contribute to the grandeur of the undertaking, we are of opinion that Congress should make such necessary financial provision as shall be requisite to the maintenance of the national honor and public faith.
Popular education being the only safe basis of popular suffrage, we recommend to the several States most liberal appropriations for the public schools. Free common schools are the nursery of good government, and they have always received the fostering care of the --------- party, which favors every means of increasing intelligence.
We favor legislation by Congress and State Legislatures to protect the lives and limbs of railway employees and those of other hazardous transportation companies....
We are in favor of the enactment by the States of laws for abolishing the notorious sweating system, for abolishing contract convict labor, and for prohibiting the employment in factories of children under 15 years of age.
Lavish government pensions or support for the military? Taxpayer money for pro-business public works projects even in a foreign country? Government money for a privatly operated Wold's Fair in Chicago? Government money for free schools? Government regulation of private employment practices?
These were the issues back then. Which party favored all of this... the Liberal party or the Conservative party?
That has absolutely nothing to do with the political orientation in Southern states in the postbellum period. I won’t bother looking it up.
What matters is what the situation was in the Deep South and in the Deep South the Democratic Party and the one party system were the vehicles of conservative rule in the region and remained so until a few decades ago at earliest to the mid 1990s at latest and white Southerners as a rule uniformly considered the Democratic Party as “the conservative party” until the presidency of Lyndon Johnson and the Election of 1964. I know this because I grew up in the Deep South. I grew up with all of this. I had grandparents who even into their old age voted Democratic because it was the “conservative” party and the party that had fought off Reconstruction
In a Southern election in the late 19th century the same voters that today make up the coalition of the Democrats (and so called Blue Dogs) were the same voters who made up the Republican/Populist fusionist movements in states like Alabama and North Carolina and in fact, when Republicans did get elected the template was the exact same as Blue Dogs today, run a candidate whose conservative credentials were good enough (and they had a preference for running Confederate veterans of commissioned rank) that they could peel off enough white conservatives votes that they’d either win in heavily black districts or in yeoman poor white districts where Unionist sentiment had left a large Republican voter stock
I would argue that Barack Obama is the fulfillment of the Radical ideology of the 1860s because in many ways, he is trying to radically “reconstruct” America in the same way that they wanted to reconstruct us after the late unpleasantness.
That must be why they all voted for FDR and the New Deal four times. Does your simplistic "Southerners vs The World" concept also call the New Deal Conservative?
I remember all of the old southern segregationists who the media always called "conservatives". They were not conservatives in any form. They were big government liberals who loved tax and spend government just as long as they were allowed to "keep the Darkies in their place." Soime of them were in fact outright pinko leftists like Al Gore Sr. (the Senator from Moscow via Armond Hammer) and Wm. Fullbright.
Even if that rant was true, one could say the same about Jefferson Davis. Does your condemnation extend to him, too?
Lincoln was a brutal dictator whether you like it or not and he was the founder of modern liberalism.
Complete nonsense.
Southern Democrats switched to the Republican party when they found that they could do so and keep their big spending, big government ways.
Why is that not surprising?
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