RandyRebecca
Bisexual Woman · 41
- Joined
- Dec 27, 2022
- Posts
- 1,590
Hmm. Not really true, is it. Richard Nixon was the epitome of a Republican leader who balanced between the different wings of the Republican Party, especially when he was president.
The Democratic Party started as a slave owners' party, and the party of genocide against Native Americans in the Trail of Tears. Around the time of the civil war, the party was divided between southerners who wanted slavery expanded westwards and northerners who wanted a compromise between northern industrial capitalists and southern slave owners.
The Republican Party started as an anti-slavery party, with Radical, moderate, liberal and conservative wings. The Radical wing of the Republican Party was friendly with Karl Marx himself, and even some moderates were, like Abraham Lincoln himself. The Radicals wanted the immediate abolition of slavery, and full civil rights and suffrage for the freed slaves. This was 100 years before the 1960s.
Describing the changes as time went on would take ages. A lot of anti-Trumpists think the 1980-2015 Republican Party is the proper Republican Party, but it isn't. Reagan changed the Republican Party HUGELY. Prior to 1980, there were liberal Republicans on a national level, at their strongest in the northeast and midwest, but also in Oregon, while conservative Republicans were strong in the southwest and outer midwest. The Democrats also had this sort of division, between the pro-civil rights socially liberal northerners, and the pro-segregation socially conservative southerners.
Look at Vermont. Vermont voted the Republican candidate for president every single time from 1856 to 1988, apart from 1964 when conservative Barry Goldwater was the Republican nominee. Since 1992, Vermont has been reliably Democratic in presidential elections. Vermont, even in the 1980s while still choosing the Republican candidate to be president, was trending Democratic, because the nationwide Republican Party was becoming conservative. I believe Vermont was the only state in the nation (although there were counties in other states, including my own) where the moderate Republican Gerald Ford did better in 1976 than conservative Republican Ronald Reagan did in 1980.
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