Of
the two parties, the Democrats have the longer continuity. The party was
founded after the election of 1824,
when two presidential candidates from the same party, John Quincy Adams and
Andrew Jackson battled for the presidency.[1]
Jackson received the most electoral votes but did not win a majority in the electoral
college, and the House of Representatives ultimately elected Adams president
(for the rules, see
Elections). Jackson’s supporters were outraged, and
they organized themselves into a new party, which came to be called the
Democratic Party. It was supported mostly by farmers and planters in the South
and the Midwest, and campaigned against the growing power of the federal
government as well as the mercantile and banking interests of the big East
Coast cities.
The
1850s and the Civil War was a
very difficult time for the party: it split into a northern and a southern
wing, because its adherents could not agree on the policy on slavery. The Southern
Democrats supported the secession of the South and the Confederacy, while
Northern Democrats lost much of their popular support. As a result, after the
North won the Civil War, the Democrats remained in opposition for a long time:
until 1912, only one Democrat was elected President. The South became the
strongest political base of the party, because the Southern whites hated the
Republicans who had ended slavery, and consistently voted for Democrats. As a
result, in the Southern states there was practically a
one-party system until the 1960s: the outcome of elections was really decided
at the Democratic party primaries because the official Democratic candidate
almost automatically won the election itself.
Outside
the South, the Democrats had to find new political allies, and they gradually
found them among the poorer, disadvantaged ethnic and social groups: Catholics,
recent immigrants, industrial workers and small farmers formed the core of
Democratic supporters. A Progressive Democrat, Woodrow Wilson was elected President in
1912, and he managed to carry out many significant reforms that had long been
demanded by voters (e.g. federal income tax, 8-hour
working day, antitrust laws, the Federal Reserve System, suffrage for women,
etc.). He lost most of his popularity, however, after his participation in World War I and the Paris Peace Conference,
and the Republicans dominated the federal government in the 1920s.
The
modern political and social character of the Democratic party actually emerged
in the 1930s, under the long presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He
was first elected President in 1932, following the Great Depression, and initiated an immense
range of government programs, the so-called New Deal, to combat the economic and social
crisis as well as create long-term reform laws that would prevent a similar
collapse in the future. The New Deal greatly enlarged the influence of the
federal government by establishing the Social Security
program, creating a number of federal relief agencies, and imposing regulations
on banks and industries. Roosevelt became the hero of the ’small people’: labor
unions, small farmers, ethnic minorities all voted for him, but he was opposed
by the wealthier layers and business interests, who complained about high
taxes, the limits on free enterprise, and an all-too-powerful „big government”.
Largely as a result of Roosevelt and the New Deal, the Democratic Party was
defined as a left-of-center, progressive political group supporting social
programs and the protection of the average people while advocating higher taxes
and more power for the federal government in order to carry out its ambitious
social goals.
Roosevelt
remained president until 1945 (a record in American history), and when he died
in office, he was followed by his Vice-President, Harry Truman until 1952. The new
generation of Democrats returned to power with the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960. Kennedy initiated
a new wave of social reforms, most of which were completed by his
Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson after
Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. By the 1960s, the deep internal contradiction
between the progressive, reformist national leadership of the party and the
deeply conservative and racist Southern Democrats led to a break: when Kennedy
and Johnson decided to support the civil rights movement
of Southern blacks and passed legislation to end
racial segregation
in the South, many Southern whites decided to abandon the Democrats and
switched their allegiance to the Republicans. As a result, the South became a
pro-Republican region by the 1990s, but blacks remain the most faithful
Democratic voters.
In
the 1970s and 1980s, the party was mostly successful at Congressional
elections, but won only one single presidential election (Jimmy Carter in 1976). So the typical
situation was that a Republican President had to cooperate with a Congress
where both houses had Democratic majorities. In the 1990s, the situation turned
around: Bill Clinton was
President for two terms, but the Democrats lost their majority in both houses
of Congress by the mid-1990s. With the victory of George W. Bush in 2000, the party lost the
executive branch while remaining in minority in the legislative.
The
Republican Party was founded in 1854 in the Midwest by anti-slavery activists
and free-soilers (those
who wanted to occupy land in the western territories free of charge, and wanted
to keep slavery out of these areas). It had no
historical connection to the earlier Republican Party that had existed between
1790s and the 1820s. The party quickly became popular in the North, but it had
absolutely no support in the South. The party’s candidate, Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election, although he
was rejected in all the Southern states. In response, 11 Southern states
founded the Confederacy and the
Civil War broke out.
The victory of the North gave enormous popularity to the Republican Party in the
Northeast and the Midwest, and it became the dominant party in
national politics. Radical Republicans passed several constitutional amendments
and other laws in an attempt to abolish the consequences of slavery, and
offered help to the newly free blacks. Despite their efforts,
racial segregation replaced slavery in the South, and the region (dominated by
Southern whites) remained stubbornly anti-Republican until the 1960s.
The
Republicans continued to dominate the presidency: until 1912, all but one
President was Republican. The party supported the settlement of the West,
railroad building, and high tariffs to protect national industry; it was often
criticized for being too friendly with big business. The party had a
predominantly Protestant and „Old Immigrant” (British and German in ethnic
origin) voting base, therefore it was distrustful of „New Immigrants” (Southern
and Eastern Europeans) as well as Catholics, especially the Irish (for details,
see History of Immigration). The Progressive wing of the party was represented
most successfully by President Theodore Roosevelt in the early 1900s, who
helped pass several important reform acts limiting the influence of large
trusts. His reforms divided the party, however, helping Democrat Woodrow Wilson win the election of 1912.
After
World War I, Republicans returned to power and dominated the federal government
until the 1930s. The party supported protective tariffs at home and isolationism in foreign policy, opposing
the League of Nations
and any foreign commitments. Republican President Herbert Hoover, however, proved unable to
moderate the disastrous economic and social impact of the Great Depression, which led to the
collapse of the party’s support. In 1932, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt won the election, and
Democrats remained dominant in the federal government until the 1950s.
During
the two decades of opposition, the party developed a distinctly more
conservative character than the Democrats. The Republicans strongly opposed
Roosevelt’s New Deal program by
denouncing it as „socialism”: they accused the Democrats of creating an
overblown federal bureaucracy, and giving far too much power to the federal
government, while limiting the freedom of the economy by too much regulation.
However, the New Deal was popular among the poor who received relief payments
from its agencies, therefore the Republicans’ social base became the
conservative middle class and wealthy businessmen. The liberal wing of the
party accepted the most important social reforms, especially Social Security, as
a positive development in order to gain more votes.
In
1952, the Republicans managed to regain the presidency with the success of
former general Dwight D. Eisenhower.
He was a moderate Republican who continued most of the
social policies of the former Democratic administrations. His Vice President, Richard Nixon, lost to Democrat John F. Kennedy in 1960, but he came back
with a victory in 1968.
His success was also a turning point in the history of the Republican Party: during
his campaign, he consciously tried to gather support in the conservative
Southern states which had traditionally supported Democratic candidates for a
century. The ’Southern strategy’ worked: Nixon won in half of Southern states,
and since then, the majority of the South has always supported Republican
candidates at all presidential elections except 1976.
The other most influential figure in recent Republican history was Ronald Reagan, who was elected President in 1980. Reagan introduced a new economic philosophy into conservative thinking: while previously Republicans favoured a balanced budget, Reagan advocated tax cuts in order to generate economic growth, and he was not afraid of creating a huge budget deficit and national debt. His tax cuts were criticized for favouring rich people while he reduced social spending. Reagan was also the first president who looked for and received the support of evangelical Protestant groups, which had previously been passive in politics. The active participation of conservative Protestants brought a lot more votes for the Republicans in the South, but it also pulled the party in a more conservative direction, especially on moral issues. The support of evangelical Protestants is said to have been crucial in the victories of George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, too.
Sources:
J.Q. Wilson―J.J. DiIulio, Jr., American Government. 8th Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2001.
Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia
[1] Democrats like to claim that the origins of the party go back as far as the 1790s, when Thomas Jefferson founded one of the earliest political parties in the US called Republicans (which has no relation to the current Republican Party). Jefferson’s party, however, broke up into several different factions in the 1820s, only one of which became the core of the later Democratic Party under the leadership of Andrew Jackson, while other wings gave rise to the opposing Whig Party. So the claim of direct continuity from Jefferson to the present Democrats is disputable at least.