1956 Republican Platform- What Happened?

[packman]

[Midnight Writer]

1. I used to vote religiously for Everett Dirksen. The last Republican I ever voted for.

I don't expect to ever vote for a Republican again.

It is the Party of cranks, cons, and corporations. Oh, and fascists and oligarchs.

[ColinC]

2. Richard Nixon. Then Barry Goldwater.

It didn't get better after Goldwater.

[Irish_Dem]

3. What the heck was the Dem Party platform that year?

[Elessar Zappa]

5. Probably very similar.

[Irish_Dem]

7. My Dad was always an ardent Democrat.

He must have perceived some difference between the parties, even back then.

I guess being first generation American with Irish immigrant parents, perhaps he was deeply suspicious of those representing corporate and corrupt power interests. The Irish were horribly treated by the British for 1000 years. I guess that makes an impression.

[Lonestarblue]

25. Here's a very interesting read n the Democratic platform from 1956.

It could describe what we’re seeing today with Republicans. For example,

“Our friends abroad now doubt our sincerity. They have seen the solid assurance of collective security under a Democratic Administration give place to the uncertainties of personal diplomacy. They have seen the ties of our international alliances and friendship weakened by inept Republican maneuvering.

They have seen traditional action and boldness in foreign affairs evaporate into Republican complacency, retrenchment and empty posturing.”

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/1956-democratic-party-platform

[Irish_Dem]

28. Many thanks, very interesting.

Yes showcases the differences, same thing we are seeing today.

[pazzyanne]

29. The United States no longer is among the top 50 world democracies.

"The US has fallen to a new low in a global ranking of political rights and civil liberties, a drop fueled by unequal treatment of minority groups, damaging influence of money in politics, and increased polarization, according to a new report by Freedom House, a democracy watchdog group."

"The US earned 83 out of 100 possible points this year in Freedom House’s annual rankings of freedoms around the world, an 11-point drop from its ranking of 94 a decade ago. The US’s new ranking places it on par with countries like Panama, Romania and Croatia and behind countries such as Argentina and Mongolia. It lagged far behind countries like the United Kingdom (93), Chile (93), Costa Rica (91) and Slovakia (90)."

“Dropping 11 points is unusual, especially for an established democracy, because they tend to be more stable in our scores,” Sarah Repucci, Freedom House’s vice-president for research and analysis, told the Guardian. “It’s significant for Americans and it’s significant for the world, because the United States is such a prominent, visible democracy, one that is looked to for so many reasons.”


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/24/us-world-democracy-rankings-freedom-house-new-low

Sad, and only supports how our democracy is in jeopardy.

[Lonestarblue]

30. Thank you! I had seen references to our drop but not by how much.

Not even being in the top 50 is amazing but not surprising when Republicans are actively trying to turn us into a dictatorship like Russia with a thin veneer or democracy with elections they control.

[CrispyQ]

4. Greed? Lust for power?

They kind of go hand-in-hand, don't they? Money often buys power. Power attracts money.

[Irish_Dem]

9. Didn't take long for the GOP to become the party of ruthless sociopaths.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

[CrispyQ]

12. Scratch my response. It was bigotry, pure & simple.

People of color & uppity women demanded equality & equity in the system & in the 60s they actually made some strides. The fragile white man's club couldn't deal. That was the spark.

on edit: Reading through this thread, it was probably a combo of things.

[Irish_Dem]

17. You are right on both counts. The GOP leaders want power and money.

Period. They could care less about the red meat bait they throw out to their racist base.

[XanaDUer2]

6. Wow nt

[anti stupid]

8. Ronald Regan

[Mr.Bill]

20. I always wondered why more people didn't get the irony

of a man who said government was the problem and yet wanted to be in charge of that.

[anti stupid]

23. ha ya reminds me of a Truman quote

A bureaucrat is a Democrat who has a job that a Republican wants.

[Mr.Bill]

27. That's a good one.

I never heard that before.

[ShazamIam]

10. 1964, is when the conservatives reclaimed the party with Goldwater's nomination. The 1964

convention in San Francisco fired up the Berkeley, Free Speech Movement and Mario Savio's famous Speech.

The most famous excerpt from the Dec. 1964 speech.


“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”

https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/PDFFiles/Mario%20Savio%20-%20Sproul%20Hall%20Address.pdf

[jalan48]

11. Times changed and the MIC got control of our government. It's not about what's good for the

people, it's about how much money can special interests make off of the taxpayer.

[SCantiGOP]

13. Short, and very simple answer of what happened

In 1956 there was not a single Republican statewide official in the 11 states that had comprised the Confederacy. That was the 'Solid South' that was in an uncomfortable alliance with labor, urban areas and Catholics.
Nixon's Southern Strategy convinced those white Southerners (who were that only Southerners who could vote at that time) that the Democrats were the party of desegregation, and during the 60's and 70's (especially after the 1964 Civil Rights Act) they migrated quickly to the GOP. By the time of Reagan the parties had re-aligned: The Democrats were the party of Civil Rights; the Republicans were the party of white racism.

[Trailrider1951]

18. Yep, that's what happened. A big instigator of the shift was the issue of busing children to achiev

federally mandated racially integrated public schools. That became the "white flight" to the suburbs and the rise of private "Christian" schools. And the republicans have been on a rampage to destroy public education ever since.

[JHB]

14. Eisenhower happened. The 1952 one had plenty of wingnut-wish-list but...

...Ike promptly ignored it. It had been written by the people he'd beaten to get the nomination.

The one in the OP from 4 years later followed Ike's tune, not the proto-Buckleyites.

[lapfog_1]

15. at one time the GOP was the anti-slavery party

but devolution happened.

[zuul]

16. In 1956, "people" and "workers" and "communities" meant WHITE people, workers, and communities.

When it became apparent that black people, brown people, gay people, and women would and should be included, the repubes in power said "Nyet, hold on a second there. Let's rethink this. Can't appease those non-white, non-male types."

[Javaman]

19. greed is what happened. nt

[erronis]

21. The FDR New Deal was immensely popular. The (r)epuglicons had to play along with its tenets

for a while. Look like they were actually in favor of "the people".

Nixon was a horrible VP and a failure as an initial candidate against JFK. But still, they persevered. He/they won and then we got Watergate.

They'll continue to put up real scum over and over until they succeed. And then fail. And leave a mess for another FDR, Obama, Biden to clean up.

[KS Toronado]

22. If that really was their platform in 1956

They have gone way downhill, today they're against everything they were for in 1956.

[cstanleytech]

24. Voters switching parties over time is what happened.

The Democrats back then had a lot more racists in the party especially in the south and the Republicans back then had been losing seats.
To change that they began courting more people in the south to join them.
They then saw an opportunity to gain a lot more power by inviting the Southern Democrats into their party as the Southern Democrats were pissed over things like the voting rights act and desegregation.
They thought though that they could control them but that of course turned out to be a mistake as we have all seen.

[Mr. Evil]

26. What happened?

Probably in this order:

JFK election
Evangelicals
Civil Rights legislation
Nixon
Roe v. Wade (more evangelicals)
Reagan (even more evangelicals)
AM hate radio
Focksnooze (I refuse to use their official identity)
Bush/Cheney
Those pesky evangelicals again (human bedbugs)
TFG

[Codifer]

31. Seems like a thousand years ago.

In 1952 and 1956 the presidential contest was twixt Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson. I could have been ok with either but I did like Adlai better, he was very intelligent. Ike was not a bad president in most respects (the massive interstate highway construction) but was savaged by cold warriors and the military/industrial complex (he warned about this in his farewell).

Had we then been subjected to the horrific computer/internet algorithms, that divide us so savagely at present, it would have been a similar shit show. In looking at that sentence I realize that it is actually a matter of knowing how bad the shit show is. It is the same shit show. It is the divide and conquer shit show that Khrushchev boasted would defeat the western democracies without firing a shot.

And Khrushchev was not that smart.

Edit to ad:

In 1952 I was eight and therefor adopted my fathers politics. He was a devout FDR Democrat then. He did not grow conservative until the divisions of Viet Nam. Even when I returned from that war the only thing we could safely discuss was Dodger baseball.