The Downfall of the Republican Party

[malletgirl02]

I just finished watching the most recent episode of CNN's Race for the White House, featuring Lincoln Douglas. Abraham Lincoln shows just how far the Republican party has fallen. In the 1800s the Republican party was created to end slavery. Over the past 150 years the Republican party has changed from the party formed to end slavery to the party of hate.

[imanamerican63]

1. it is amazing how things have changed!

[TlalocW]

2. When a republican goes to Lincoln

To make a point about theirs being the party to end slavery, I always ask them if they're able to come up with something a little more recent than 150 years ago when republicans actually helped non-whites.

Most can't.

TlalocW

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. This is what is called a party realignment

and we are likely undergoing one.

[maxrandb]

4. That's because

the battle between slavery over freedom, and civil rights over segregation has never been a battle between Democrats and Republicans... it was and always has been a battle between conservatism and liberalism!

[Hortensis]

5. At its establishment, the RepParty was the most liberal party.

When formed, the Republican Party did not draw conservatives. Issues were mixed compared to today, and it was more moderate and not strongly liberal by today's standards, but most abolitionists joined it, and it was unquestionably left of the very old, originally Jeffersonian-liberal Democratic Party, which had northern and southern factions and was pro-slavery.

Over the next half century, the Republican party became the conservative party of business, and the Democratic Party returned to its liberal roots of 1792 and before. (To confuse things further, Jefferson tried to change its name to "Republican" at that time, while conservative Hamiltonians called it - pejoratively - "Democratic-Republican," but it at least shows how misleading party labels can be.)

In any case, today's Republicans have evolved to a very strong form of conservatism, and their closest counterpart for a party in those days would be the Southern Democrat Party formed by an extremely conservative break-away faction. Definitely not the Republican.

To put it mildly, today's Republican Party is emphatically NOT the "party of Lincoln." Even in those days conservatives despised him. Nor are they the party of Theodore Roosevelt, even before he left to form the Progressive Party.