jcookc6

Found this essay in Encarta today on MSN. I think alot of people in this forum don't realize the history of political parties in this country. It also makes me believe that the system should be overhauled to the the Conservative and Liberal parties.
Here is the article:

How Do You Tell a Democrat from a Republican?
by Tamim Ansary
What's the difference between the two major political parties? Some would say, "None." Third-party maven Ralph Nader claims they're all "Republicrats."

Then there's the other view. The two major parties, says conventional wisdom, represent enduring and opposing philosophies of government--liberal and conservative--two currents that go back to the beginning of the republic.

Let's just see about that
In the following list, which would you consider classic Democratic sentiments? Which are typical Republican stands?

[ ] People should take care of themselves, not rely on the government.
[ ] The government should help the poor and needy.
[ ] Government regulation stifles the economy.
[ ] America needs a big, powerful, active federal government.
[ ] The government can't solve social problems and shouldn't try.
[ ] The government must expand the rights of minority groups.
[ ] America must project military strength abroad.
[ ] The government should avoid war at any cost.

You're right--whatever you marked. Both parties have espoused all these positions at one time or another. Hey ...

Are Republicans against government regulation? Under Teddy Roosevelt, they practically invented it!
Are Democrats congenitally against war? I have 18 words for you: Vietnam, Korea, World War II, World War I, Mexican War, War of 1812--oh, and the Cold War.
Are Republicans soft on civil rights for African Americans? Well, there was that little matter of Lincoln (a Republican) ending slavery.
Okay, then, small government--surely that's a Republican concept. Right?
Well, actually ...
Part II: Platforms of the past

"That government is best which governs least."

So goes the motto usually attributed to Thomas Jefferson, founder of America's oldest political party--the Democratic Party.

At birth, incidentally, it was called the "Republican Party," and then the "Democratic-Republican Party," but Ralph Nader can stop smiling, because the Democratic-Republican Party didn't split in two to give us our modern parties. Today's Democrats trace directly back to the Democratic-Republicans, who simplified their name in the 1820s. Today's Republican Party was founded in 1854, by a coalition of groups opposed to slavery.
Early Democrats believed the federal government had no legitimate role except to defend the borders, keep the peace, and negotiate with foreign powers. "Ya' wanna' road? Build one." That was their original attitude.

How on earth did that party end up founding Social Security?

By the same token, look at earlier incarnations of the Republican Party. Teddy Roosevelt, that environmental all-star, added 25 million acres of wilderness to the public park system. How did his party end up pushing for oil drilling in the Alaskan Wilderness?

Moveable platforms
Sure the two major parties stand on their platforms, but their platforms have wheels. They can move. To where the votes are. At least twice, according to John Taylor, American history professor at Kentucky's Union College, the parties have flipped positions, adopting their rival's platform wholesale.
It happened after the War of 1812, for example, when the Democratic-Republicans suddenly decided the country needed a national bank and massive government-sponsored, domestic infrastructure projects, just as their rivals (the Federalists, at that point) had always clamored.

It happened again after 1912 when Democrat Woodrow Wilson suddenly embraced the entire program of the Roosevelt ("progressive") wing of the Republican Party.

In the 1840s, Democratic Party honcho John Louis O'Sullivan famously described the country's territorial expansion to the Pacific as "manifest destiny." Today, Republican "neoconservatives" celebrate spreading American values around the globe in much the same terms
Part III: How political parties change

Look, it's not like the major parties start with core philosophies.

That may be true of startups and third parties, but each of the major parties is fundamentally an apparatus that exists for getting people elected. How it's used depends on who is operating the machinery at a given moment. That is, a party's programs reflect demographic realities as calculated by its current operatives.

And the underlying demographic picture keeps changing.

Demographics equals destiny
The Republicans were founded in opposition to slavery--which made them the party of the North--which was industrializing just then--so the Republican Party inevitably became that of the manufacturing interests, the captains of industry--which made them the party of (relative) big government … the party that built the railroads.

The Republican Party's antislavery roots also made it the party of evangelical Protestants--who formed the demographic basis of the abolitionist movement--and who overlapped with temperance activists and suffragettes--which made the Republican Party a standard-bearer for feminism at that time--

And so it goes.

New Democrats of ancient history
The Civil War left Democrats scrabbling for votes among defeated Southerners and disgruntled small farmers in the West, but the underlying demographic reality was changing. Tidal waves of new European immigrants were flooding the country. They couldn't go hack themselves rich new lives out of the untrammeled wilderness like earlier immigrants because everything worth trammeling had already been trammeled.

So they pooled up in burgeoning cities and worked for low wages and no benefits in big, smelly factories. Since the natives and bosses belonged to the Republican Party, they joined the Democrats--especially since genteel Republican do-gooder temperance activists kept trying to save them from their (supposedly) hard-drinking ways.

The Democratic Party turns a corner
Sometime between the presidential administrations of Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, the Democratic Party realized its richest pool of voters wasn't Nebraska farmers oppressed by the gold standard, but urban industrial workers, immigrants, and minorities, united in their desire for more money, shorter hours, better working conditions, and greater job security.

Big government, public works, high taxes, social welfare--these policies followed inevitably as the mechanisms the party needed to deliver the goods.

What now?
Today, the demographic patterns are changing again. The country that took to manufacturing between the Jefferson and Wilson administrations, left manufacturing behind between FDR and George W. Bush. The immigrant groups that put FDR in power are now fourth- or fifth-generation Americans--natives, in short. The grandchildren of struggling, urban assembly-line workers are middle-class suburbanites working as independent consultants. The great-grandchildren of immigrants who demanded a 40-hour week are working 60-hour weeks by choice as lawyers and software engineers.

Whole new immigrant populations, mostly Asians and Hispanics, have come to America in the last three-plus decades, but their often conservative social attitudes and historically rooted anti-Communism complicate their political loyalties. Today's low-end, hourly-wage workers are not industrial employees but restaurant help, data processors, nursing home orderlies, and such. Plus, globalization means that the marginal players in the economy who once swelled the Democratic Party's electoral base no longer live in America. Having no vote, they can't shape either party's platform.

What does all this mean?
To me, the two parties seem in flux. I'm saying, don't be too sure you know who the Democrats or Republicans are and what they stand for. These things change. And in the next decade or so, they surely will change, in ways that will make today's notions about Democrats and Republicans seem as quaint as Federalists and Whigs

Here is the link for anyone who wants to read the actual article:
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/featur...republicanmain

Zeld2.0

It's a great article because its true...

Personally I can't stand those who hang on one party entirely without considering the possibility that times change and ideas change... thats personally why I used to support the traditional Republican party though recently changes have made it less appealing

irateplatypus

yeah, i think a lot of the historical context is lost when people talk about past leaders being a part of a particular political party (say that ten time fast!).

oftentimes, when someone claims JFK, Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, etc. as part of their political lineage... they're not aware of how the parties have changed over the years.

i'm a registered Republican... but that is primarily a marriage of convenience. i feel that the ideals of limited government, decreased spending have been betrayed. republicans run on those principles and get my vote for it... but don't end up doing much (if at all) better than those who don't use that pretense.

i'd be a libertarian if you all weren't completely nuts. :P

__________________
If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

fuzyfuzer

i think this person went a little too far here

"It happened again after 1912 when Democrat Woodrow Wilson suddenly embraced the entire program of the Roosevelt ("progressive") wing of the Republican Party."

wilson although did attack big buisness attacked all buisness where roosevelt only attacked the trusts that were stopping competition. you can say anything you want to that but th truth is he attacked the same thing in the other way not quite a complete flip flop

__________________
"The difference between commiment and involvment is like a ham and egg breakfast the chicken was involved but the pig was commited"

"Thrice happy is the nation that has a glorious history. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat." Theodore Roosevelt

Lebell

Interesting article.

I always appreciate gleening more insite into history, because history tells us how we got where we are today.

__________________
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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