Are Republicans really still conservative and Democrats really still liberal?
Charles Tips, Serious student of US and world politics
Everybody is conservative. Don’t believe me, just challenge a progressive on progressive public schooling, Social Security, abortion-on-demand or any other of their perceived successes. Nine times out of ten, conservatism is merely a stance. For it to gain status as a movement to ideology, it needs to have several things in place, especially a party with a platform. Our Burkean or “movement†conservatives have a large body of literature, virtually a platform, but no party. Indeed, they do not have even a plurality in the Republican Party.
There are at least a dozen different stripes of conservative in the US with almost all wishing to conserve our liberal heritage. Some, like our Establishment Republicans concede that big government (read: statism) is here to stay and are liberal only to the extent they wish to preserve those of our rights it makes sense to (…to them; the rest of us are pretty fond of all of our rights).
The Conservative Party in the UK would be an example of ideological conservatism. The only comparable example in the US is the Conservative Democrats, as the southern trunk of the Democratic Party reconsecrated itself (including the capitalization) in the mid-1850s when many northern democrats transited to the new Republican Party. They wished to conserve slavery and states’ rights. After the Civil War, they wished to conserve segregation, Jim Crow laws and states’ rights. They expired as a political force by 1968 as a result of the civil rights battles of the 60s, when the northern and western wings of the Democratic Party were predominantly liberal for the only time in the party’s history. They allied with congressional Republicans to force civil rights on the Conservative Democrats.
It should tell everyone something that there is virtually zero mention of Conservative Democrats, a party with a tremendous impact on American history for nine-plus decade, over the last fifty years, not even on Wikipedia.
Progressivism is anti-liberal, that is, it strongly opposes our founding framework of Lockean Enlightenment liberalism with its freedoms, limited government and true citizenship. However, the term fell into disuse in the US following the mortification of Horace Greeley when he ran against U. S. Grant of the Republican Party as the representative of the Liberal Republican Party.
The liberal label was revived by Franklin Roosevelt in his campaign for the presidency in the election of 1932 in order to duck the bad feelings about progressives in the wake of Prohibition. Bill Buckley and other conservatives began labeling progressives liberals as a pejorative, and we became the only country in the world where liberal means its opposite—statism. Although, in academic usage we still get it right, and I’m an academic kinda guy, so I’ll use it properly below.
A liberal would be a president respectful/protective of our constitutional heritage who favored bottom-up government and free enterprise with supply-side economic interventions.
A quick way to get a handle on what Republican and Democrats are as far as actual ideological outlook in political science terms is to assess our presidents since the turn of the previous century. Here’s the list.
W. McKinley (R) proto-progressive
T. Roosevelt (R) progressive-imperialist
H. Taft (R) progressive-with liberal tendencies
W. Wilson (D) progressive-Conservative Democrat-fascist
W. Harding (R) liberal
C. Coolidge (R) liberal
H. Hoover (R) progressive
F. Roosevelt (D) New Deal progressive
H. Truman (D) centrist
D. Eisenhower (R) centrist
J. Kennedy (D) liberal
L. Johnson (D) Conservative Democrat-New Deal progressive
R. Nixon (R) progressive
G. Ford (R) progressive
J. Carter (D) progressive
R. Reagan (R) liberal
G. H. W. Bush (R) big-government semi-statist
W. Clinton (D) “Third Way†(semi-statist)
G. W. Bush (R) big-government semi-statist
B. Obama (D) postmodern progressive-globalist
D. Trump (R) liberal-populist
And the tally:
Progressives
Republicans—6, Democrats—4 (although FDR had 4 terms)
Semi-statist near-progressives
Republicans—2, Democrats—1
Liberals
Republicans—5, Democrats—1
Centrists
Republicans—1, Democrats—1
So, over the last six generations, we’ve had 13 presidents who were statist-progressive (8 Republicans to 5 Democrats) to only 8 who tended to favor our constitutional republicanism (6 Republicans to 2 Democrats).
There were two true conservatives (Democrats) to six liberals (mostly Republican), so those terms don’t reveal much, Our dominant politics since 1900 has been progressive/statist. I do not expect that to continue.
I post on Quora some, mainly just to understand what leftists are saying and how they explain their positions.
This was such a great answer to this particular question, I thought you TBRers might enjoy reading and commenting on it.
@Machiavelli, let me know if this should go elsewhere.