I point this out every year...

Tommy Lee Jones is Not Amused by the Partisan Hackery in this thread.

wolfman24 said:

I agree this shows a fundamental lack of understanding of US history.

1845-1870's Democrats were the party of slavery, big business, against social eguality and National interference in "States Rights'
Republicans (Lincoln) were the party against slavery, for environmental issues, social equalty and Union

1870's - Present - Republcans in the Grant adminstration moved into bed with big business, abandoned the blacks, promoted social conservatism and class.
Democrats filled the void and took the opposite position.

Just like everything else political poles change.

Click to expand...

Your overall point is good but here's some problems.

1) Big business: Republicans had multiple wings even during its early existence. One of those included the big business wing. It wasn't a miracle that during the 1870s-1890s onward, African Americans and poor whites thought that the Republican Party was identified with big business.

2) For one thing, the Party was fatigued of being associated with Reconstruction and its difficult record of Southern acceptance.

Democrats didn't really starting to "fill the void" with blacks until the 1930s. Until then it was split between a majority grumbling with supporting the Republicans, and a minority of blacks and poor whites supporting the People's Party and other populist to socialist movements.

Now again, the Republican Party had multiple wings. It could be construed as big business, conservative pro-unionist, and it could be seen as moderate/ liberal, or with a small minority of the individuals involved: Radical. It wasn't one thing. That was a reason why Republicans had very serious splits during the Civil War and Reconstructionist eras. To reiterate: The Republican Party was not the Radical party, but there were radicals in it that became important.

I agree with your point 1 as most political bodies have factions, but the main portion of the Reps were on board with what I said.

I do not agree with your 3rd paragraph. When the Reps totally went off the reservation, the Dems (except in the south) did fill the void. Look at the history of the early environmental actions in this country from 1890-1910 All dems.
Child reform all dems, social reform and on.

I did not call the Reps radical, the Anachist movement was radical. The reps just held to their side of the fence for the most part and the Dems theirs. No different than today.