What the heck happened to the Party of Lincoln

[DireWolfSpirit]

Nearly every African American that I ever knew or met, absolutely loathed Reagan. It cannot be overstated how that community of voters was adamantly and permently against the GOP by that point and up until present. Goldwater= huge influence on Reagan politics.

[The Marquis de Leech]

One can go back much, much further than Goldwater:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily-white_movement

Nineteenth century Republican Presidents were generally pretty good on Civil Rights, but from the turn of century, things go downhill. Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, and Hoover.

 

 

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

One can go back much, much further than Goldwater:

One can even go back specifically to the 1876 presidential election, in which Rutherford Hayes dealt away Reconstruction for one disputed Oregon electoral vote in order to stay in office.

[The Marquis de Leech]

2 minutes ago, DMC said:

One can even go back specifically to the 1876 presidential election, in which Rutherford Hayes dealt away Reconstruction for one disputed Oregon electoral vote in order to stay in office.

Reconstruction was dead by then. The Democratic capture of the House in 1874 meant that the funds were no longer there to keep troops in the South.

The root of the problem is that the Republican Party - including Lincoln himself - were never actually dreamers of racial equality. They fought the Civil War to keep the USA together, and they achieved that. Slavery was ended, the South was staying... why bother with expensive efforts to transform the lives of Black people? The Republican Party could get back to fulfilling its role of supporting High Tariffs, the Gold Standard, and the interests of North-Eastern industrialists. 

[DMC]

19 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Reconstruction was dead by then. The Democratic capture of the House in 1874 meant that the funds were no longer there to keep troops in the South.

Uh, no.  That's a disturbingly myopic view of electoral politics.  Perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the deciding factor was 1876, not 1874.

22 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

The root of the problem is that the Republican Party - including Lincoln himself - were never actually dreamers of racial equality. They fought the Civil War to keep the USA together, and they achieved that. Slavery was ended, the South was staying... why bother with expensive efforts to transform the lives of Black people? The Republican Party could get back to fulfilling its role of supporting High Tariffs, the Gold Standard, and the interests of North-Eastern industrialists. 

Regardless of any idealist motives on behalf of the Republican leadership, they did have a plain self-interest in maintaining Reconstruction.  It's naive to think otherwise.

[The Marquis de Leech]

2 hours ago, DMC said:

Uh, no.  That's a disturbingly myopic view of electoral politics.  Perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the deciding factor was 1876, not 1874.

Regardless of any idealist motives on behalf of the Republican leadership, they did have a plain self-interest in maintaining Reconstruction.  It's naive to think otherwise.

How is it disturbingly myopic? It's simply a realisation that (notwithstanding modern morality) there was little political appetite in the North for continuing with the expensive policy. Reconstruction wasn't killed by a freak election, it was killed because there wasn't enough political and electoral support for it.

As for Republican self-interest, they had to weigh the South turning Democratic* with the policy being a liability more generally. And by 1876, it was certainly a liability. 1874 meant they no longer had the funds to keep it going. 

*It mostly had already. The troops were only propping up South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida.

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

How is it disturbingly myopic? It's simply a realisation that (notwithstanding modern morality) there was little political appetite in the North for continuing with the expensive policy. Reconstruction wasn't killed by a freak election, it was killed because there wasn't enough political and electoral support for it.

Acting like Reconstruction was killed because it was too expensive is rather silly.  As is thinking the Dems taking over the House meant the GOP couldn't get funding passed.  Reconstruction was not killed by a freak election, no, but I'm saying it was 76 when the GOP gave up on it, not 74.  There was still political and electoral support for it, Hayes just would rather be president.

9 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

As for Republican self-interest, they had to weigh the South turning Democratic with the policy being a liability more generally. And by 1876, it was certainly a liability. 1874 meant they no longer had the funds to keep it going. 

Again, you are vastly overrating the House's power of the purse, even back then.  "The funds to keep it going..." It's like reading interbranch bargaining out of a textbook.  Politically, and electorally, it was clearly in their self-interest to continue Reconstruction in the South.  Honestly, the only substantive disagreement on when they caved here is two years, so it doesn't really matter.  But, politically, they caved because they were feckless cowards politically, not necessarily because they were racist (which, of course most of them were), or because they couldn't find the money.  

[DMC]

Sorry for the double post but I want to emphasize why I'm saying this.  I have a big problem with Reconstruction arguments about how it wasn't politically/electorally viable, or how it wasn't economically viable.  The first one pisses me off because positive racial change only happens in this country when people stand up. 

Obviously, a lot of people did during and immediately after the civil war.  They may have been abolitionists, existentialists and feminists, but they were definitely there - and a part of the original GOP coalition.  But, sure, that's neither here nor there really.  Then it turned into Jim Crow and Birth of a Nation and KKK 2 and 3.0 and thousands of blacks lynched in the south in a 60 year period.  Then we got the CRM, and the VRA, and the CRA, and great.  Except now, almost like mapped onto the fucking century, there's the same goddammed backlash.  Don't tell me this is a historical thing and you just couldn't do it electorally in 1876.  People said that about Obama in 2008.  As King said, this is an excuse for white moderates.

As for economically, give me a fucking break.  On a macro-level, there's absolutely no reason Reconstruction would be "too expensive."  Would it radically alter the south's economic structure?  Yes, that's what abolishing slavery is supposed to do.  This actually pisses me off more because of the insinuation any actual redistribution of wealth - even when we're talking about one of the two Original Sins of this country - is based on some type of political calculation.  It's not.  And the Northern Republicans elites didn't give a shit about going after that.  In fact, they had every interest to destroy that system.

[Rippounet]

8 hours ago, DMC said:

Sorry for the double post but I want to emphasize why I'm saying this.  I have a big problem with Reconstruction arguments about how it wasn't politically/electorally viable, or how it wasn't economically viable.  The first one pisses me off because positive racial change only happens in this country when people stand up.

I think your position here is interesting (and I would agree with it), because of the way it presents the relationship between the public ('s opinion) and elected representatives, as well as their respective responsibilities in the grand scheme of things.

It's mightily tough to theorize though. Yes, we definitely should ignore the "political/electoral viability" when it's for the greater good. But how do we define this greater good? And how do we ensure that our representatives do not ignore the popular will for other purposes if they have the possibility of doing it?

[DMC]

40 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

But how do we define this greater good? And how do we ensure that our representatives do not ignore the popular will for other purposes if they have the possibility of doing it?

I don't know.  When Luke tries to save his father or when Neo asks the machines for help - or gets help, or whatever happened at the end of that.  It's very unlikely, especially today yes.  My argument in the past few posts, however, is that is what just as unlikely then.  Meaning, of course, that it was just as likely as well.  Progress has been available to us for awhile now.  Certainly in the 19th century and certainly during Reconstruction.

[Zorral]

14 hours ago, DMC said:

Uh, no.  That's a disturbingly myopic view of electoral politics.  Perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the deciding factor was 1876, not 1874.

Regardless of any idealist motives on behalf of the Republican leadership, they did have a plain self-interest in maintaining Reconstruction.  It's naive to think otherwise.

It also leaves out the dedicated, relentless efforts over decades of Republican abolitionists like Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner (he who was so severely beaten by SC fire breather slaverholder, Preston Brookes, in the Senate chamber itself, that he never fully recovered physically) and all the other "Radical Republicans" as they were labeled.  This includes before, during and after the surrender of Robert E. Lee.  They indeed had plans and worked ceaselessly to implement them.  It was only after they died, which so many did (not Sumner) soon after 1865, that the more profit minded sorts started to take over.  But they made the Freedman's Bureau and Reconstruction before -- sometimes long before -- Lincoln's assassination.  It leaves out also all the dedicated Northerners, female and male, who came south already during the war, to teach, to nurse and start arming the formerly enslaved with the tools to live freely.

This could not be allowed to stand and the south never stopped working to undo it, and the corrupt bargain really did that.

Blame who we like, the one who should not be blamed is Lincoln.  Ask Frederick Douglass.  Who outlived him by quite a bit.

 

[mcbigski]

Trisk, I was going to let this thread go, since this at least the third iteration of the underlying theme over the years that Ive seen.  But since you mentioned me by name, and OP is, I think, probably someone who got an anti US POV from his or her instructors in Europe, going to reiterate.

Blacks in America voted Republican by a vast amount from the 1860s to the 1880s.  Tildon/Hayes election 1876  Basically there was chicanery in the votes such that the actual winner (Hayes) was in doubt.  Hayes, the Republican, ended up getting ratified with the understanding that he would ease up on Reconstruction.  (Reconstruction being the polite term for Republicans saying make black people equal citizens or we're going to get all Sherman on your ass again.)  My take on that conflict was that Hayes said (probably the Republicans biggest shame domestically at least in all their history), sure I'll ease on enforcing anti discrimination measures as long as I get to be President.  (IIRC there was some sort of issue as to what state's electors were legitimate, with Congress having the ultimate authority.  Could be wrong studied that longer ago that a bunch of your were alive.)

Skipping over the next 3 or 4 generations where the south did everything they could to minimize the political power of minorities, All Democrat regimes btw.

Let's get to the 60's.  Civil rights bills get passed by congress.  Don't believe  my word, but look up for yourself what percentages each party voted.

There was a schism in the Democrat party after that.  The people that still wanted essentially aparthied ran as, not the dixiepublicans, but as the dixiecrats. (Why would that be, if youre explicity the pro racism party?)  And got curb-stomped at the polls.

Once both parties got officially on board with racial equality, (the democrats taking 4 generations or so to do so from the Civil War to the 1960s) there was a realignment in the south where the "Solid South" (ie Democrat voting bloc, upset about getting ground down in the civil war) finally broke.  A lot of talk about Nixon's "Southern Strategy", which won him every state north, south, and west of Massachuetts in 1972. (Which is to say for the geographically lazy, 49 out of 50 states - way to to target the south!)  The realignment in the late 60s early 70s in the south was almost entirely along non racial lines. Legal racism having been repudiated in the various civil rights acts ()again more so by Rs than Ds.  Theodore Bilbo and Robert Byrd stayed Democrat, Strom Thurmond  and others went Republican.  Based on how they aligned outside of race.  (Those three were all racist as fuck) To argue that Bilbo or Byrd werent racist would be asinine, and yet most of you are going to gloss over that because narrative.

Back to the OP and Party of Lincoln, there are self evident truths that each person has inalienable rights.  Personally, I believe strongly that fighting for equal application of those rights is imperative.  Not saying that the Declaration of Independence is a perfect document, but aspirationally, it's still about the best we've got.  Always room to improve of course, but dont let perfect be the enemy of the good as they say.

The aspirations of the Declaration helped further perfect the union, IMO.  Still havent seen anything better, warts and all.

Finally, I believe that the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights, and the Dreclaration are the soundest basis for forming a self governing people yet devised.  Lincoln, if I may be so bold, would agree.  And sadly, Democrats have been suborned by totalitarians who want to make that very thought verboten.

And yet even today there are politicians and grievance mongers that instead of appealing to the ideal of equal rights, want to do divide people on racial or tribal lines to consolidate their own power.  That sort of tribalism happens on every side, people being people, but conservative in the US at least are much more aligned towards equality for all than dividing by color or creed.  The foundational ideals of the US apply universally, so we should all work together towards a more perfect union.

 

[sologdin]

i don't understand the retrospective party loyalty thing.  there's been multiple realignments over the centuries. the parties don't mean the same thing or push the same policies or relate to each other in the same ways transhistorically.

make black people equal citizens or we're going to get all Sherman on your ass again.

i think we can all applaud the principle here--though it was the radical leftwing position then, NB.