Hi Sarkie,
If only it were funny....
Here's an interesting overview of the political parties as they exist today. I see much merit in the discussion of the sectionalism of the two parties, and the reversal of affiliation of the Bible Belt voters.
washingtonpost.com
The GOP Minority
By Stanley Young
Wednesday, December 13, 2000
When you look beyond the litigation and the recounting, the greatest significance of the election of 2000 may be in its confirmation that the United States is reverting to the tradition of regional politics that ruled from the Civil War to the coming of the New Deal.
This time, however, the parties are reversing their roles: The Democrats, once the party of the South, have become predominant among northerners, while the Republicans have turned into the party of Dixie. Moreover, there is a distinct possibility, judging by the results of the past three presidential elections, that the Republican Party is becoming what the Democrats were from 1860 to 1928: the minority party.
In this election the Democratic Party's electoral successes were clearly sectional. With the exception of Indiana and Ohio, it took every state north of the Mason-Dixon line. The Republicans, meanwhile, won every state south of that line, along with the Plains states. The politics of economic and social-class difference between labor and capital, which has dominated our political discourse since the 1930s, seems to have run its course. The more recent elections, beginning with 1992's, may constitute a major political turning point--the point at which the country returned to the tradition of political sectionalism that has existed from the country's very beginnings.
Regional politics are based on sectional differences: economic, cultural and historical. Our political history has been largely a conflict between the industrial North and the agrarian South. In the 19th century, Republicans, representing the North, saw wealth as deriving from the exploitation of new technologies and innovation, a strong central government, a single national market, high interest rates, a close relationship between government and business, and government investment in infrastructure, education and research. The GOP supported monopoly capitalism and increasing real wages. It was urban, secular, racially and sexually tolerant, a party of workers, immigrants and ethnic diversity. Boston, New York and Philadelphia were cultural centers in terms of lifestyle, dress, scientific and educational development and literature.
The Republican Party of our day stresses "traditional values," "free trade" and "state's rights"--all themes that one might have heard at any Democratic national convention from 1860 to 1924.
It seems clear now that the 1980 Reagan election was not so much a matter of the Republican Party's capturing the South as of the South's capturing the GOP. Republican congressional leadership now derives from southern and rural states, as does the party's social and economic doctrine.
Between 1860 and 1928, the Democratic Party stressed state and local responsibility and a minimal federal role in opposition to any industrial policy. The Democratic South remained culturally more conservative than the North and looked to its past, highlighting Jeffersonian agrarian values and traditions of self-sufficiency, religion, suspicion of science and new technology and an opposition to social change. It remained racist, patriarchal, militaristic and sectarian.
The old Democratic Party represented the outlook and the interests of rural and small-town America. It was the party of farmers, small-business men and craftsmen, suspicious of the urban North, with its ethnic and religious immigrants.
But today the Democratic Party represents the expanding segments of our society. There is a growing immigrant and Hispanic population, more women are going to work and metropolitan areas are growing, while those of the rural small towns are declining. In the most recent election, the Democratic Party won the majority of metropolitan votes, while the Republicans captured the votes of rural areas and towns of 50,000 or less. Further, the Democrats adopted a moderate message as far as business is concerned. Increasingly, the Democrats are becoming the party of economic change and growth while retaining their emphasis on racial and gender equality.
In the future there is a strong likelihood that the GOP will become a permanent regional minority party. It will act as a counterweight and a critic of the Democratic Party--opposed to excessive concentrations of economic and political power and serving as an alternative in periods of economic depression.
In the past 20 years, conservative thought as represented in conservative journals and think tanks has increasingly come to reflect southern traditions, experience and cultural ideas. Conservatives have all but forgotten their Yankee roots.
Some Republicans are coming to realize that the adoption of a "Southern Strategy" by President Richard Nixon may have led to permanent minority status for the party. But it is difficult to see at this stage how the GOP can reverse itself and become equivalent to what it once was: the party of Rockefeller, McKinley and Ulysses S. Grant.
The writer is professor emeritus of business and social history at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. |
