It's About Coalitions Not Purity, Part Three

 Political parties developed to help elect people with the same or similar ideas. That may seem to be simple enough, but in reality, things are far more complicated. If you have one issue, like slavery, things are easily decided; you are either for it or against it. The Republican Party became a national party in the 1850s because of its opposition to slavery; thus, many anti-slavery Americans joined, or voted for, the Republican candidates. While there certainly were other issues around, slavery had become the most hotly contested and divisive in the nation. The issue was so potent, when Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States, southern pro-slavery states decided to secede from the United States, an action that triggered the Civil War.

In my life time, there have been many hot-button issues, including, but certainly not limited to, the still lingering affects of slavery; that is, race and civil rights for Black Americans, but also abortion, women's rights, gay rights, immigration, and wars, especially the divisive late 1960s and early 1970s over the Vietnam War and the divisiveness over the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath beginning in 2003. From the time before the Civil War, the South had been a major element of the Democratic Party. After the war, white southerners were not about to support the Republican Party, the party of the anti-slavery movement and the subsequent defeat of the Confederacy. Southerners remained staunch Democrats. In contrast, Black Americans voted Republican, pretty much to the last man, and back then it was "man," because women could not vote.

As America grew and businessmen prospered (again, business was largely the province of men), the issues of economic fairness and business practices came much into question. A populist progressive movement grew among Americans, including many small farmers. When Republican Teddy Roosevelt came to office,* these issues were just waiting for some dynamic leader to promote them. Roosevelt got legislation passed on a variety of matters, including food safety, conservation, and the dismantling of huge corporations. For the last, he earned the title "the Trust Buster." The Republican coalition of those times consisted of most unions (although they were 'relatively' weak in those times), farmers, Black Americans, and many immigrants, while retaining the support of many conservative business people.** All of this began to change when Roosevelt left office and business people made a go of moving the Republican Party toward their side. Business, especially big business, played an increasingly important role in Republican politics. Teddy Roosevelt's run for president in 1912 as a third party candidate (the progressive "Bull Moose Party"***) and with the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson, the conservative, business wing of the Republican Party asserted itself. Under conservative Republican rule in the 1920s (elections of 1920 and 1924), the country "seemed" to be "roaring" ahead, but underneath, many Americans struggled just to stay in place. In 1928, the election again went Republican, but Democrats actually carried some urban areas, a preview of what was to become commonplace.**** Just seven months after taking office, Republican President Herbert Hoover faced the biggest economic challenge of the nation's history, as the entire system seemed to be coming unglued.

The Great Depression changed the political landscape as nothing had since the Civil War and by 1932, voters had retired Hoover from office by a substantial margin. By 1936 labor unions and Black Americans had largely gone over to the Democratic Party, where most have remained since, albeit somewhat shakily at times. The South remained staunchly conservative, but Democratic,***** and Catholic and Jewish ethnic neighborhoods in cities became Democratic strongholds.****** Franklin D. Roosevelt led a formidable Democratic Party coalition from the mid 1930s until his death in April 1945. It was an interesting coalition, too, as it held some strange bedfellows; for instance, white southerners and blacks, fundamentalist Protestants (mainly in the South) and urban Roman Catholic and Jewish voters (mainly in the North). When hatred and silly divisiveness don't prevail, people can get along for a common interest. (Although not all was exactly heaven, see note *****)

More in "Part Four"

* Theodore Roosevelt, as Vice President, succeeded the assassinated President William McKinley, and then later was elected in his own right in 1904.

** Democrats were still often tagged by some Americans as "Confederates," a legacy of the Civil War, but it was an association not sought by conservative business people. Further, the American westward expansion and the profits derived from it had largely been overseen (and helped) by Republican administrations. Further, Republicans favored high protective tariffs and the "gold standard," both generally supported by businessmen, and William Jennings Bryan, a  Democratic orator and often candidate, scared the hell out of many businessmen (which is another story). Businessmen may not have always agreed with Roosevelt, but they still saw him as less of a threat to their own self interest. Plus, many business people tend to think and look long term. They knew the "Trust Buster" wasn't going to be around forever. 

*** Although highly admired, even Teddy Roosevelt could not win as a third party candidate, which shows how difficult it is to compete in national American politics. Notice, I said "difficult," not "impossible." Roosevelt carried only six states and garnered only slightly more than 27% of the popular vote. But if you think that's bad, incumbent Republican President William Howard Taft carried only two states and received little more than 23% of the popular vote!

**** The Democratic candidate was Al Smith, a Roman Catholic, who also favored the repeal of Prohibition; that is, the law put in place by the 18th Amendment, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages in America. No doubt some Republican attacks on Smith's religion led many urban voters, where many Catholics lived, to vote Democratic, a voting pattern they maintained for quite some time. Anti-Catholic Republican operatives (and some Ku Klux Klan members) kept rumors circulating that Smith would be beholden only to the Pope, who was waiting for Smith's election to open a sort of "new Vatican" in Washington. Now, on the other side, undoubtedly some Protestant voters chose Hoover, the Republican candidate and Protestant (Quaker), simply because of religion. What the balance was is not easily deciphered, as Smith was undoubtedly destined to lose in the midst of what "seemed" like "Republican prosperity."  

***** With southern white voters reliably in the Democratic column, the addition of black voters only strengthened the Democratic hold on the South, as in those times, blacks were heavily concentrated in the southern states, although eventually, the very right for blacks to vote was often prohibited by gimmicks, if not outright intimidation (and that was by Democrats!). While conservative in many things, economic populism had not left the South untouched. Huey Long, a populist Democratic governor and then U.S. senator from Louisiana, had a considerable following in the South. Long's "Share Our Wealth" ideas of limiting large fortunes, guaranteeing veterans pensions, income supports for the elderly, and free education to all (to try to even out opportunities), was highly popular in parts of the South and elsewhere, and he was considered a possible (and formidable) challenger for the 1936 election as a progressive third party candidate. Long was assassinated in Baton Rouge in 1935 by the son-in-law of a political opponent.

****** Immigration patterns from certain parts of Europe had brought many Catholics and Jews to the United  States prior to the Great Depression. For instance, the Russian Revolution had brought many Jews, Ukrainians, and Poles to the U.S. The Russian Empire under the Tsar had contained a substantial part of Polish territory, which then became part of a reborn Poland. The western Ukraine, something of a battleground during World War One, remained such after the war, as Poland battled the new Soviet Union there (from 1919 until 1921). War and revolution left many people in the overall region in despair. Ukrainians in that general western region tended to be Ukrainian Catholic, not Eastern Orthodox. Poles were overwhelmingly Roman Catholic.

WORD HISTORY:
Pure-This word goes back to Indo European "pu," which had the notion of "to clean completely, to cleanse." This gave its Latin offspring "purus," with the same general meaning, but also, by extension, "unmixed," and later also, "untouched, chaste." French, a Latin-based language, inherited a form of the word as "pur," and English borrowed the word as "pur," seemingly about 1300, give or take a few years. The ending "e" was added for developing English spelling rules, which meant the "u" was long.