Conservative Democrat
This article is part of a series on |
Conservatism in the United States |
---|
In American politics, a conservative Democrat is a member of the Democratic Party with more conservative views than most Democrats. Traditionally, conservative Democrats have been elected to office from the Southern states, rural areas, the Rust Belt, and the Midwest.[1] In 2019, the Pew Research Center found that 14% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters identify as conservative or very conservative, 38% identify as moderate, and 47% identify as liberal or very liberal.[2]
Before 1964, Democratic Party and Republican Party had their liberal, moderate, and conservative wings, each of them influential in both parties. During this period, conservative Democrats formed the Democratic half of the conservative coalition. After 1964, the conservative wing assumed a greater presence in the Republican Party, although it did not become the mainstay of the party until the nomination of Ronald Reagan in 1980. The Democratic Party retained its conservative wing through the 1970s with the help of urban machine politics while blue-collar workers still aligned with the Democrats. This political realignment was mostly complete by 1980.
After 1980, the Republicans became a mostly conservative party, with conservative leaders such as
In the 21st century, conservative Democrats are similar to their liberal Republican counterparts, in that both became political minorities after their respective political parties underwent a major political realignment, which began to gain speed in 1964.[5]
History
1876–1964: Solid South
The Solid South describes the reliable electoral support of the
1874–1928: Rise of agrarian populism
In
1932–1948: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal coalition
The
Conservative Democrats came to oppose the New Deal, especially after 1936. They included Senator Harry F. Byrd and his powerful state organization in Virginia, Senator Rush Holt Sr., Senator Josiah Bailey, and Representative Samuel B. Pettengill. The American Liberty League was formed in 1934, to oppose the New Deal. It was made up of wealthy businessmen and conservative Democrats including former Congressman Jouett Shouse of Kansas, former Congressman from West Virginia and 1924 Democratic presidential candidate, John W. Davis, and former governor of New York and 1928 Democratic presidential candidate Al Smith. In 1936, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of War, Henry Skillman Breckinridge ran against Roosevelt for the Democratic nomination for president. John Nance Garner, of Texas, 32nd Vice President of the United States under Roosevelt, a conservative Southerner, broke with Roosevelt in 1937 and ran against him for the Democratic nomination for president in 1940, but lost. By 1938 conservative Democrats in Congress—chiefly from the South—formed a coalition with Republicans that largely blocked liberal domestic policy until the 1960s.[13][14]
However, most of the conservative Southern Democrats supported the foreign policy of Roosevelt and Truman.[15]
Roosevelt tried to purge the more conservative Democrats in numerous states in 1938. He especially tried to unseat those up for reelection who defeated his plan to pack the Supreme Court in 1937. He failed in nearly all cases, with a major success in defeating John J. O'Connor in Manhattan, a spokesman for big business.[16]
A different source of conservative Democratic dissent against the New Deal came from a group of journalists who considered themselves classical liberals and Democrats of the old school, and were opposed to big government programs on principle; these included Albert Jay Nock and John T. Flynn, whose views later became influential in the libertarian movement.[17]
1948–1968: Segregationist backlash
The proclamation by President
Similar breakaway Southern Democratic candidates running on states' rights and segregationist platforms would continue in 1956 (T. Coleman Andrews), and 1960 (Harry F. Byrd). None would be as successful as the American Independent Party campaign of George Wallace, the Democratic governor of Alabama, in 1968. Wallace had briefly run in the Democratic primaries of 1964 against Lyndon Johnson, but dropped out of the race early. In 1968, he formed the new American Independent Party and received 13.5% of the popular vote, and 46 electoral votes, carrying several Southern states.[19] The AIP would run presidential candidates in several other elections, including Southern Democrats (Lester Maddox in 1976 and John Rarick in 1980), but none of them did nearly as well as Wallace.
1970–1999
After 1968, with desegregation a settled issue, conservative Democrats, mostly Southerners, managed to remain in the United States Congress throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These included Democratic House members as conservative as Larry McDonald, who was also a leader in the John Birch Society. During the administration of Ronald Reagan, the term "boll weevils" was applied to this bloc of conservative Democrats, who consistently voted in favor of tax cuts, increases in military spending, and deregulation favored by the Reagan administration but were opposed to cuts in social welfare spending.[20]
Boll weevils was sometimes used as a political epithet by Democratic Party leaders, implying that the boll weevils were unreliable on key votes or not team players. Most of the boll weevils either retired from office or (like Senators Phil Gramm and Richard Shelby) switched parties and joined the Republicans. Since 1988, the term boll weevils has fallen out of favor.
was formed, a caucus of conservatives and centrists willing to broker compromises with the Republican leadership who acted as a unified voting bloc in the past, giving its members some ability to change legislation, depending on their numbers in Congress.Concurrent with the rise of modern conservatism in the early 1970s, some Democratic politicians during the 1980s, also swung to the right, albeit very differently from the previous incarnations of southern Democrats. In 1978, for instance, Democrat
Arthur Schlesinger Jr., known during the 1950s and 1960s as a champion of "Vital Center" ideology and the policies of Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy, wrote a 1992 book, The Disuniting of America critical of multiculturalism.[23]
2000–present
During the 2006 midterm elections, the Democratic Party ran moderates and even a few conservative Democrats for at-risk Republican seats.[24] The Blue Dog Democrats gained nine seats during the elections.[25] The New Democrats had support from 27 of the 40 Democratic candidates running for at-risk Republican seats.[24]
In his
The Washington Post noted the waning influence of the conservative Democrat Blue Dog Coalition voting bloc, losing over half of their previously more than 50 U.S. House members in the 2010 midterms.[29] In the 2018 House of Representatives elections, the Democratic Party nominated moderate to conservative candidates in many contested districts and won a majority in the chamber. In the aftermath of the elections, the Blue Dog Coalition expanded to 27 members.[30]
During the
In 2023, Joe Manchin, described as the most conservative Democratic Senator,
Blue Dog Coalition
The Blue Dog Coalition was formed in 1995[38][39][40] during the 104th Congress to give members from the Democratic Party representing conservative-leaning districts a unified voice after Democrats' loss of Congress in the 1994 Republican Revolution.[41] The coalition consists of centrist and conservative Democrats.[42]
The term "Blue Dog Democrat" is credited to
The Blue Dog Coalition "advocates for fiscal responsibility, a strong national defense and bipartisan consensus rather than conflict with Republicans". It acts as a check on legislation that its members perceive to be too far to the right or the left on the political spectrum.[42] The Blue Dog Coalition is often involved in searching for a compromise between liberal and conservative positions. As of 2014, there was no mention of social issues in the official Blue Dog materials.[46]
Ideology and polls
In 2019, the Pew Research Center found that 14% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters identify as conservative or very conservative, 38% identify as moderate, and 47% identify as liberal or very liberal.[2]
According to a 2015 poll from the Pew Research Center, 54% of conservative and moderate Democrats supported same-sex marriage in 2015. This figure represented an increase of 22% from a decade earlier.[47]
See also
- Barnburners and Hunkers. Democrats in New York state in 1850s
- Black conservatism in the United States
- Blue Dog Coalition
- Boll weevil (politics)
- Bourbon Democrat, late 19th century
- Byrd Machine, in 20c Virginia
- Conservative coalition
- Conservative Democrat (South Korea)
- Conservative Manifesto
- Copperheads (politics)
- Democrat in Name Only
- Democrats for Life of America
- Dixiecrat, 1948
- Factions in the Democratic Party (United States)
- Fire-Eaters
- Hispanic and Latino conservatism in the United States
- History of the United States Senate
- Jeffersonian democracy
- LaRouche movement
- LGBT conservatism in the United States
- Libertarian Democrat
- National Democratic Party (United States)
- New Democrats
- Pork Chop Gang, in 20c Florida
- Reagan Democrat
- Redeemers
- Red Shirts (United States), violent opposition to Reconstruction
- Regular Democratic Organization
- Rockefeller Republican
- Southern Democrats
- Southern Manifesto
- Straight-Out Democratic Party
- Texas Regulars
- Yellow dog Democrat
References
- ^ "Political ideology among adults in the Midwest – Religion in America: U.S. Religious Data, Demographics and Statistics". Pew Research Center. Archived from the original on January 3, 2020. Retrieved June 5, 2019.
- ^ a b Gilberstadt, Hannah; Daniller, Andrew (2020-01-17). "Liberals make up the largest share of Democratic voters, but their growth has slowed in recent years". Pew Research Center. Archived from the original on 2020-01-17. Retrieved 2020-06-12.
- ^ Edward G. Carmines, and Michael Berkman, "Ethos, ideology, and partisanship: Exploring the paradox of conservative Democrats." Political Behavior 16 (1994): 203-218. online
- ^ Adam J. Schiffer, "I'm not that liberal: Explaining conservative democratic identification." Political Behavior 22 (2000): 293-310.
- ^ "The Long Goodbye". The Economist. November 11, 2010.
- ^ C. Vann Woodward, The Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 (1951) pp 235–90
- ISBN 978-0-375-41135-9.
- ^ James A. Barnes, "The gold-standard Democrats and the party conflict." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 17.3 (1930): 422–450. online Archived 2021-12-19 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ John H. Sloan, " 'I have kept the faith': William Jennings Bryan and the Democratic national convention of 1904." Southern Journal of Communication 31.2 (1965): 114–123.
- OL 6193934M.
- ^ Robert C. Benedict, Matthew J. Burbank and Ronald J. Hrebenar, Political Parties, Interest Groups and Political Campaigns. Westview Press. 1999. Page 11.
- ^ Byrd, Robert C. (July 16, 1988). "The Senate, 1789-1989: Addresses on the History of the United States Senate". U.S. Government Printing Office – via Google Books.
- ^ James T. Patterson, "A conservative coalition forms in Congress, 1933–1939." Journal of American History 52.4 (1966): 757–772 online Archived 2022-05-08 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ Ira Katznelson, Kim Geiger, and Daniel Kryder, Limiting Liberalism: The Southern Veto in Congress, 1933–1950. Political Science Quarterly 108 (1993): 283–306 online Archived 2020-04-11 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Charles O. Lerche, "Southern Congressmen and the 'New Isolationism.' " Political Science Quarterly, 75#3, 1960, pp. 321–37,online
- ^ Susan Dunn, Roosevelt's Purge: How FDR Fought to Change the Democratic Party (2010) passim, esp. p. 204.
- ^ Ronald Hamowy, ed. The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism (Cato Institute). pp. 356–357.
- JSTOR 2571628.
- ^ The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics. Dan T. Carter. Simon & Schuster Press (1995).
- ^ "Boll Weevils" in Elections A-Z (ed. John L. Moore: Congressional Quarterly, 1999). Routledge ed. 2013. pp. 27–28.
- ^ Roger Chapman, Culture Wars: An Encyclopedia (2010) vol 1 Page 136
- ^ A Colony of the World: The United States Today. Eugene J. McCarthy. Hippocrene Books (1992).
- ^ The Disuniting of America. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Norton Press (1992).
- ^ a b Hook, Janet (October 26, 2006). "A right kind of Democrat". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on October 14, 2009. Retrieved September 1, 2013. See also: Dewan, Shaila; Kornblut, Anne E. (October 30, 2006). "In Key House Races, Democrats Run to the Right". The New York Times. Archived from the original on July 27, 2019. Retrieved November 10, 2006.
- ^ Michael. "Blue Dogs | The Blue Dogs of the Democratic Party". Bluedogs.us. Retrieved February 23, 2016.
- ^ Stein, Sam (April 15, 2010). "Walt Minnick Tea Party Endorsement: Minnick Campaign Accepts". Huffington Post.
- ^ "Walt Minnick: The Tea Party's 'token Democrat'?". Theweek.com. April 22, 2010. Retrieved February 23, 2016.
- CQ Politics. Archived from the originalon August 16, 2009. Retrieved October 7, 2014.
- ^ Kane, Paul (2014-01-15). "Blue Dog Democrats, whittled down in number, are trying to regroup". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2014-01-16. Retrieved 2014-07-23.
Four years ago, they were the most influential voting bloc on Capitol Hill, more than 50 House Democrats pulling their liberal colleagues to a more centrist, fiscally conservative vision on issues such as health care and Wall Street reforms.
- ^ Mendoza, Jessica (June 4, 2019). "Centrist Democrats are back. But these are not your father's Blue Dogs". The Christian Science Monitor. Archived from the original on December 29, 2021. Retrieved July 3, 2020.
- ^ Sirota, David (March 8, 2021). "Joe Biden might be in the White House, but Joe Manchin runs the presidency". The Guardian. Archived from the original on March 9, 2021.
- ^ Zhao, Christina (March 7, 2021). "Joe Manchin Insists He Doesn't Like Being Most Powerful Senator as He Appears on 4 Sunday Shows". Newsweek. Archived from the original on March 9, 2021.
- POLITICO. Retrieved January 24, 2023.
- ^ Colegrove, Andrew (2016-11-10). "Senator Manchin refutes speculation of a party switch". www.wsaz.com. Retrieved 2023-11-10.
- ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2023-11-10.
- ^ "2022 Cook PVI: State Map and List". Cook Political Report. 2022-07-12. Retrieved 2023-11-10.
- ^ "Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin won't seek reelection, giving GOP a key pickup opportunity". AP News. 2023-11-09. Retrieved 2023-11-10.
- ^ Dumain, Emma (May 12, 2015). "20 Years In, Blue Dogs Not Ready to Roll Over". rollcall.com. Archived from the original on August 5, 2019. Retrieved October 7, 2019.
- ^ "History – Blue Dog Coalition". BlueDogCaucus-Schrader.house.gov/. Archived from the original on April 21, 2021. Retrieved November 15, 2016.
- ^ "History, Blue Dog Coalition". House.gov. Archived from the original on April 5, 2012. Retrieved April 10, 2012.
- ^ Naftali Bendavid (July 28, 2009). "'Blue Dog' Democrats Hold Health-Care Overhaul at Bay". The Wall Street Journal.
- ^ a b Weiner, Mark (February 1, 2019). "Anthony Brindisi to co-chair Blue Dogs, caucus of moderate House Democrats". syracuse.com. Archived from the original on March 8, 2021. Retrieved October 7, 2019.
- ^ "Wordcraft Archives, November 2004". Wordcraft.infopop.cc. Archived from the original on February 2, 2021. Retrieved February 23, 2016.
- ^ Suddath, Claire (July 28, 2009). "A Brief History of Blue Dog Democrats". Time. Archived from the original on July 31, 2009. Retrieved September 7, 2009.
- ^ Safire, William (April 23, 1995). "On Language; Blue Dog Demo". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 7, 2021. Retrieved September 7, 2009.
- ^ Parton, Heather Digby (12 November 2014). "Bye-bye, blue dog "Democrats": What the end of conservative Dems means for America". Salon. Archived from the original on 23 December 2016. Retrieved December 24, 2016.
- ^ "Changing Views of Same-Sex Marriage". Pew Research Center. People-press.org. 2015-06-08. Archived from the original on 2020-08-05. Retrieved 2016-02-23.
Further reading
- Brandt, Karl Gerard, "Deficit politics and Democratic unity: the saga of Tip O'Neill, Jim Wright, and the conservative Democrats in the House of Representatives during the Reagan Era" (PhD dissertation, LSU 2003). online
- Carmines, Edward G., and Michael Berkman. "Ethos, ideology, and partisanship: Exploring the paradox of conservative Democrats." Political Behavior 16 (1994): 203–218. online
- Claassen, Christopher, Patrick Tucker, and Steven S. Smith. "Ideological labels in America." Political Behavior 37 (2015): 253–278. online
- Dunn, Susan. Roosevelt's Purge: How FDR Fought to Change the Democratic Party (2012) in 1938 online
- Finley, Keith M. Delaying the Dream: Southern Senators and the Fight Against Civil Rights, 1938–1965 (LSU Press, 2008). ISBN 0807133450
- Franklin, Sekou (2014). "The elasticity of anti-civil rights discourse: Albert Gore Sr., Richard Russell, and constituent relations in the 1950s and 1960s". Social Identities. 20 (1): 90. S2CID 144032586.
- Frederickson, Kari A. The Dixiecrat revolt and the end of the Solid South, 1932-1968 (U of North Carolina Press, 2001). online
- Heineman, Kenneth J. "Catholics, Communists, and Conservatives: The Making of Cold War Democrats on the Pittsburgh Front." US Catholic Historian (2016): 25–54. online
- Katznelson, Ira, and Quinn Mulroy. "Was the South pivotal? Situated partisanship and policy coalitions during the New Deal and Fair Deal." Journal of Politics 74.2 (2012): 604–620. online
- Katznelson, Ira, Kim Geiger, and Daniel Kryder. Limiting Liberalism: The Southern Veto in Congress, 1933–1950. Political Science Quarterly 108 (1993): 283–306 online
- Malsberger, John W. From Obstruction to Moderation: The Transformation of Senate Conservatism, 1938–1952. (Susquehanna U. Press 2000). online
- Manley, John F. "The conservative coalition in Congress." American Behavioral Scientist 17.2 (1973): 223–247.
- Mead, Howard N. "Russell vs. Talmadge: Southern Politics and the New Deal." Georgia Historical Quarterly (1981) 65#1: 28–45.
- Moore, John Robert. "The Conservative Coalition in the United States Senate, 1942–1945." Journal of Southern History (1967): 368–376. online
- Neiheisel, Jacob R. "The 'L' word: anti-liberal campaign rhetoric, symbolic ideology, and the electoral fortunes of democratic candidates." Political Research Quarterly 69.3 (2016): 418–429.
- Patterson, James T. "A conservative coalition forms in Congress, 1933–1939." Journal of American History 52.4 (1966): 757–772. online
- Rubin, Ruth Bloch. Building the bloc: Intraparty organization in the US Congress (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
- Schiffer, Adam J. "I'm not that liberal: Explaining conservative democratic identification." Political Behavior 22 (2000): 293–310.
- Shelley II, Mack C. The Permanent Majority: The Conservative Coalition in the United States Congress (1983).
- Ward, Jason Morgan. Defending White Democracy: The Making of a Segregationist Movement and the Remaking of Racial Politics, 1936–1965 (Univ of North Carolina Press, 2011).
- Young, Cheryl D., John J. Hindera, and Gregory S. Thielemann. "The Conservative Coalition in a New Era: Regionalism and Ideology." Southeastern Political Review 24.1 (1996): 178–188.