On Wed, 13 Oct 2004, Nathan Newman wrote:
> I thinks that more complicated. On union labor issues, the GOP was
always
> rightwing and changed little, but on issues like civil rights and the
> environment, there was a full-scale purge of the Rockefeller civil rights
> and Teddy Roosevelt style environmentalists from the party over the
> decades.
-In both cases you are talking about minority New York Republicans, who -haven't been in charge of the national party since 1908 (and were only in -charge then because McKinley got shot and TR was a dynamo).
It's broader than that on civil rights. Remember in the mid-50s, Eisenhower's Justice Department was promoting some decently progressive civil rights bills with support from a number of GOP leaders. It was a complicated dance, since the GOP was allied with southern Democrats on labor issues, so the GOP was reluctant to push too hard on civil rights and undermine that alliance. But there was a substantial body of pro-civil rights Republicans at that point.
>Southern politicians were arch reactionary -- the whole
>political and economic system was semi-feudal. They were always to the
>right of even the Republican nutjobs. The only reason they were in the
>Democratic party was because a century early the Republicans had
inaugurated
>the Civil War and Reconstruction. Reconstruction ended in 1877.
Again it's more complicated. Some southerners were rightwing across the board. Others were quite progressive on many regulatory issues and budget issues, and a few even on union issues.
One reason I love Caro's MASTER OF THE SENATE is that it emphasizes the complications of the two parties during the 50s. The reality is that the differences between the parties has become far clearer and more polarized since then, so the factions within the parties are far less important than the differences between the parties themselves.
nathan Newman