General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why weren't Jeff Davis and Robert E. Lee executed as traitors? [View all]Agnosticsherbet
(11,619 posts)defection.
Johnson, with the passage of the Civil Rights act of 64, said that he'd lost the south for a generation. But the changes in the parties go back to that period between Wilson and Truman. The Change, particularly in the South, did not finish until Reagan. But even under Clinton there was a strong Dixiecrat wing, of which Zell Miller was a staunch supporter. Both Clinton and Gore were Dixiecrats, though both of them more socially liberal than most of the others.
The Northeast was social liberal Republicans. There were still more than a few of those even under Bush. The prominence Tea-party, which is nothing more than the old Racist John Birch Society in modern cloth, succeeded in forcing the social liberals out. They are now Democrats, and many of them are blue dogs, fiscally conservative social liberals.
The thing I take away from this is the knowledge that the great parties aren't static. They change over time. Revered Republicans of the past such as Eisenhower and even Reagan would not be elected in the current Republican Party. Eisenhower would be left of most current Democrats, including President Obama and Bill Clinton. Go back a bit father to Teddy Roosevelt, and he is left of everyone but Kucinich.
Just as the parties have changed in the past, they will continue to change in the future.