The Party of No: When Democrats were Conservatives 

There is an instinct to trace political evolution backward from now rather than to start at the beginning. That’s how notions like Conservatism being innately about small government and Liberalism a big one arise. The associations were reversed in fact at the Founding. The Hamiltonian Federalists represented a kind of Classical Conservatism which saw a strong national government as essential to preserving order. The Jeffersonian Republicans espoused a rigorous Classical Liberalism which perceived it to be an oppressive tool of the elite. As liberal teachings had informed the American Revolution, both camps were influenced by them. They reached consensus on recognizing natural rights, constraining government power, abandoning hereditary titles of nobility as well as the separation of church and state. The Hamiltonians, however, maintained conservative attitudes on central banking, protectionism, restricting immigration and property requirements for the vote. The Jeffersonians championed the liberal ideals of laissez-faire, free trade, open immigration and extending political suffrage to the common man. A nationalist versus internationalist divide emerged which shaped a lot of their disagreements. Perhaps the fiercest ensued when looming conflict around England and France aggravated tensions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the federal over state position was used for conservative purposes when Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. Efforts to thwart radicalism that involved putting foreigners under scrutiny. And the anti-federalist stance, albeit complicated by later battles, was applied for liberal ends when Republicans retaliated with the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. Decrying them as violations of civil liberties, they asserted that the states could declare federal laws that they deemed unconstitutional void. A big deal in an age of centralized empires. Though the sectional question of slavery shook up the political landscape in a variety of ways, those concepts carried on in essence as the guiding orthodoxies for the modern Republican and Democratic leaderships. But the distinction has been obscured in memory. Take two icons for limited government types who embodied the competing intellectual traditions. Hamiltonianism in the Republican Calvin Coolidge and Jeffersonianism in the Democrat Grover Cleveland. Cleveland vetoed an immigration bill which featured a literacy test as a barrier in 1897 while Coolidge signed into law such a proposal in 1924. Cleveland ran on reducing tariffs while Coolidge kept tariff rates high. Cleveland opposed national banks while Coolidge let the Federal Reserve be. Cleveland set in motion the landmark antitrust lawsuit known as the Sugar Trust Case while Coolidge ended a string of administrations that had launched many of them. Cleveland put into place the Interstate Commerce Commission to protect consumers by overseeing trade while Coolidge appointed to it and the subsequent Federal Trade Commission hands-off commissioners to facilitate economic growth. It is their shared commitment to individualism, low taxes, sound money, balanced budgets and fiscal restraint that attracts the overlapping fans. Increasing demand for government intervention ignited during the Progressive Era blurred the line between the old-fashioned conservatives and liberals weary of it. Their ideas, regardless of the historical rivalry, now tend to get lumped together in the conservative category and pit against Progressivism. It also treated as one thing, usually under the name Liberalism, despite the initial disharmony there as well. The Republican Theodore Roosevelt and Democrat Woodrow Wilson were the first progressive presidents from their parties. Though it was their successors who coined the terms Progressive Conservatism and Progressive Liberalism for their ideologies, each described himself with the pair of labels. Both differed from their classical counterparts with respect to the scope of government, but there are parallels in how they contrasted each other. Comparing Roosevelt and Wilson helps in differentiating between them. Roosevelt akin to Coolidge signed off on measures to curb immigration which included a literacy test in 1903 while Wilson like Cleveland before him rejected legislation of that sort in 1917. As expressed in his 1902 State of the Union Address, Roosevelt advocated protectionism. Wilson, on the other hand, favored free trade. A goal propounded in his Fourteen Points. Both pursued economic regulation. But though dubbed the Trustbuster, Roosevelt was not hostile to monopolies on principle. Approving of what he called good trusts like U.S. Steel. Wilson pushed for the Clayton Antitrust Act in a bid to level the playing field by breaking them all up. The argument between nationalism and internationalism gained a new dimension with their foreign policy opinions. TR believed in the superiority of Anglo-Saxon societies and, as affirmed by his Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, their duty to police the world. Conversely, Wilson claimed that no nation was fit to sit in judgement of another. His ultimate aim was global governance through the League of Nations. Much like Classical Liberalism, Progressive Conservatism is largely overlooked in these discussions. Observing them can illuminate trends which go back to the First Party System. Conditions created by the Second Industrial Revolution prompted the re-examination of accepted conservative and liberal precepts. Elements of both parties became convinced that government action was needed to remedy escalating unrest. Especially after the rise of the Populist Movement which fought for agrarian and industrial labor interests. The Populists coalesced into the People’s Party until rallying to the Democrat William Jennings Bryan to defy the rich and aid the poor. Republicans such as Roosevelt concluded that reform was necessary to prevent the country from descending into chaos. The key difference was that Bryan’s party selected him as its presidential candidate three times while Roosevelt’s gave him the vice presidency because it was thought that he couldn’t rock the boat there. Only taking office by chance after the assassination of William McKinley. And a greater number of delegates lent their support to the moderate William Howard Taft instead when he attempted to go for a third term. Admirers of Cleveland left to form the National Democratic Party when Bryan came out on top in 1896. Likewise, Roosevelt and his followers walked out to organize the original Progressive Party after Taft received the nomination in 1912. Each split benefited the other major party and they quickly declined. Internal debates persisted, but precedents were set. Though Bryan never won, Wilson acted on several of his causes. And Franklin Roosevelt actually endorsed Wilson, not Teddy, in 1912. He built on his prototypical administrative state with the New Deal. An agenda of then unmatched government activism. In keeping with Warren G. Harding and Coolidge’s Post-Wilson Return to Normalcy, Republicans led by Robert Taft worked at rolling it back. The election of Dwight Eisenhower marked a truce. His philosophy of Dynamic Conservatism made peace with the New Deal zeitgeist, but he sought to rein in any excesses. The further turns within the Democratic and Republican parties are clear-cut. The New Left and New Right adopted by George McGovern and Ronald Reagan both challenged the popular assumptions of their day. Focusing on social issues and government control. The Third Way and Compassionate Conservatism advanced by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both moved toward the center. Reflecting upon the free market and social justice. Each establishment now confronts a populist wave. Democratic Socialism and National Conservatism are embraced by those that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have emboldened. Fed up with the ruling class, both aspire to tilt the balance of power. Granted, each from early on housed factions that spanned the political spectrum. Of note are those epitomized by the Democrat John C. Calhoun and Republican Horace Greeley. Calhoun defended the status quo for Southern planters while Greeley promoted Utopian Socialism. The two served as prominent party figures up until they, alongside other dissidents, were faced with critical disputes which drove them apart. Calhoun set up the Nullifier Party after a bitter falling-out with Andrew Jackson due to him standing by the federal government in a mounting crisis with South Carolina over the Tariff of 1828. Greeley ran as the Liberal Republican Party nominee against Ulysses S. Grant in the election of 1872 in protest of scandals in his administration tied to big business. But not even allying with their partisan adversaries, the Nullifiers with the Whigs and the Liberal Republicans with the Democrats, was enough to defeat Jackson or Grant. Most of their members soon dispersed among them both. Friction lingered between right-leaning Republican and left-leaning Democratic national parties and the left-wing Republicans and right-wing Democrats holding considerable sway at the state level with whom they compromised. The La Follette Wisconsin Republican and Talmadge Georgia Democratic machines were examples which came to blows with the Coolidge Campaign and FDR Administration. More infrastructure development coupled with gradual modernization led to the regions converging economically and culturally. That resulted in Republicans and Democrats amassing vast majorities of conservatives and liberals. Broadly speaking, along small town and big city lines. Both have indeed changed with time, quibbled over details and contained shifting coalitions. But their values remain fundamentally rooted in Hamiltonian pro-business conservative nationalism and Jeffersonian anti-elitist liberal internationalism.

They never were.

WE HAVE ALWAYS HAD A CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC... NOT A DEMOCRACY WHERE THE rich wealthy hollywood aristocracy and democrat slave plantation owners were the ones who picked the president for the po folk who usually wanted to be free. A republic is diffrent then this because the people have local governments where they choose who pick to represent themselves and choose to want freedom of where they go to church and religious freedoms like conservitism. DEMOCRATS were never ever wanting to let go of the power of owning blacks and there for never have been conservative.... they have always seeked ways to own blacks and create slave institutions like welfare and housing where it seperates families and mixes genders like mr potatos parts.