Reply #9: No fair overaching comparison of the D or R parties in the 1920s and today can be made.

[nealmhughes]

Portions of each party may seem similiar, such as the idolization of the large corporation over small business and the individual, a lack of concern over regulation of business, etc. but in hindsight, there were probably as many Progressives in each party; witness both T. Roosevelt, then W. Wilson taking on the mantle of leader of Progressiveness.

Both parties were still very much regional parties: NYC, Chicago, and the other large cities were very much solidly Democratic, as was the South -- and not like today with "red state" or "blue state" divisions, one simply had a slim chance to win local elections if they dared run on the Republican ticket in most of the South or Chicago.

Of course, a strong personality and personal magnetism as well as a good message could thwart this: witness Roosevelt's popularity in the South until it was discovered he had invited Booker Washington to dine at the White House. His mother being a Georgian might have had a bit to do with that, of course, for his initial popularity in Richmond.

The Democratic Party was the party of tacit and overt support for segregation, while the Republican tried to maintain a facade of support for Civil Rights, but in reality, there was little movement save a few isolated "victories" such as Freguson v. Plessey.

The realignments of Roosevelt and Nixon have almost inverted the parties' historic rhetoric on race! At one time, soon after its foundation, the Republican Party claimed to be the party of "Free Soil and Free Labor," the champions of the little man against the entrenched wealth and slave labor-based capital eminating from the South and New York. In reality, Lincoln was a corporate lawyer who made a fortune off of rail road companies suits!

The soi disant leaders of each party has and often will claim one thing and do another when it comes to platform v. actual overt and covert support for the status quo, so long as their friends, families and cohorts are making money.

I would not even dare to compare the parties of the 1920s and 2000s as merely continuations of the same old same old. Many of the issues have changed, and others are again re-emerging, and a comparison is only mental masturbation or source of a frustrated seminar paper's composition. One can find rhetoric to support the RP as the Party of Big Busines, and other sources to support the view that the RP was actually for small business. Going into race, rhetoric and deeds were equally noxious and marked by a silent agreement on inaction on both sides, overall.

In short, this is the type of question that a professor loves to give a PhD or MA candidate!