Conservative coalition
Conservative Coalition | |
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Prominent members | New Liberalism" and called themselves "True Liberalism".[citation needed ] |
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The conservative coalition, founded in 1937, was an unofficial alliance of members of the United States Congress which brought together the conservative wings of the Republican and Democratic parties to oppose President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. In addition to Roosevelt, the conservative coalition dominated Congress for four presidencies, blocking legislation proposed by Roosevelt and his successors. By 1937, the conservatives were the largest faction in the Republican Party which had opposed the New Deal in some form since 1933. Despite Roosevelt being a Democrat himself, his party did not universally support the New Deal agenda in Congress. Democrats who opposed Roosevelt's policies tended to hold conservative views, and allied with conservative Republicans. These Democrats were mostly located in the South. According to James T. Patterson: "By and large the congressional conservatives agreed in opposing the spread of federal power and bureaucracy, in denouncing deficit spending, in criticizing industrial labor unions, and in excoriating most welfare programs. They sought to 'conserve' an America which they believed to have existed before 1933."[1]
The coalition dominated Congress from 1937 to 1963, when former
Never a formalized alliance, the conservative coalition, most often appeared on votes affecting labor unions based on Congressional roll call votes. Congressional opponents of civil rights reform, consisting white Southern Democrats and Republicans, despite being an overall minority in both chambers, prevented major congressional action on civil rights during the relevant time period through control of influential committees and by exploiting the Senate filibuster rule. The conservative coalition did not cooperate against
History
Origins
In
However, the
Attacking liberal policies
Coalition opposition to Roosevelt's "court packing"
In the hard-fought 1938 congressional elections, the Republicans scored major gains in both houses, picking up six Senate seats and 80 House seats. Thereafter the conservative Democrats and Republicans in both Houses of Congress would often vote together on major economic issues, thus defeating many proposals by liberal Democrats.
After the New Deal (1940-1960)
Some infrastructure bills received conservative support, and funding for more highways was approved under both FDR and President Dwight D. Eisenhower; Eisenhower also expanded public housing. While such liberal successes did happen, they often required negotiations between factions controlling different House committees. With conservatives heavily influencing the House agenda through the House Rules Committee and the threat of possible filibusters in the Senate (which then required a 2/3 majority to break) several liberal initiatives such as a health insurance program were stopped. Much of Truman's Fair Deal in 1949–1951 was defeated, with exceptions such as a public housing provision when conservatives split. Truman was frustrated by continued conservative strength in Congress, in spite of liberal gains in the 1948 midterm elections. As noted by one study, “First of all, only one-third of the Senate is up for election every two years. In spite of the fact that the House has a narrow liberal majority, there are only 38 votes in the Senate wholeheartedly committed to the liberal program endorsed by the American voters last November."[11] Also, while northern Democrats supported the Truman Administration's social welfare initiatives 91% of the time, the corresponding figure for southern Democrats was 46%.[12]
During his presidency, John F. Kennedy attempted with some success to reduce the conservative hold over the Rules Committee, which had blocked liberal reform measures over the years. As noted by one study, "By the late 1930s, the coalition succeeded in winning enough votes in the Rules Committee to prevent many Roosevelt (and later, Truman) proposals from reaching the floor, even though the measures had been reported by legislative committees of the House. Because of the seniority system, conservatives were able to retain control of the Rules Committee in many Congresses in which, in the House as a whole, liberals were preponderant." In 1961, the House narrowly voted 217–212 in favor of a plan to enlarge the Rules Committee from 12 to 15 members. The aim of this was to provide committee liberals with a majority on most issues "and thereby prevent conservative Republicans and Southern Democrats on the Committee from blocking House floor action on liberal Administration proposals approved by legislative committees." In this the plan was successful, as the enlarged House Rules Committee gave liberals a majority; albeit a precarious one.[13] In January 1963 the enlargement of the Rules Committee was made permanent, with the House voting 235–196 in favor.[14]
In its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s, the coalition's most important Republican leader was Senator
During the post-war period, Republican presidents often owed their legislative victories to ad hoc coalitions between conservative Republicans and conservative southern Democrats. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party (elected mainly from Northern cities and Unionized regions), on the other hand, tended to combine with Republicans from the west and the north to put their own legislation through.[17]
Decline and end
Civil Rights Era (1960-1972)
Under President
In defining the size of the Conservative Coalition in 1964, one study noted that
As of adjournment Oct. 3, the potential strength of the conservative coalition was 56 of the 100 votes in the Senate and 280 of the 429 votes in the House (there were 5 vacancies and the House Speaker is not counted because he rarely votes). This constituted a winning majority in each chamber. The figures are based on a lineup of 33 Republicans and 23 Southern Democrats in the Senate and 176 Republicans and 104 Southern Democrats in the House. Counting only bare majorities of the two blocs in the coalition (the point at which the coalition is defined in this study), its strength, assuming all Members voted, would be 17 Republicans and 12 Southern Democrats in the Senate (29 total) and 89 Republicans and 53 Southern Democrats (142 total) in the House. In neither chamber would the coalition have a winning majority. Therefore, whether the coalition won or lost depended not only on how large a majority of Southern Democrats and Republicans it could muster, but also on how many votes it would win away from the opposing faction, the Northern Democrats.[18]
In 1968, Nixon and native Southerner and American Independent candidate George Wallace carried the same number of states in the South. The coalition "found itself frequently allied with a conservative President against the restricted power of the Congressional liberals" in Nixon's first year as president in 1969, according to the 1969 Congressional Quarterly almanac.[19] Conservative senators blocked an amendment that would have blocked the Safeguard anti-ballistic missile but lacked the votes to confirm Supreme Court nominee Clement Haynsworth.[19]
Post-Watergate Era (1973-1994)
With Nixon's reelection and sweep of the South—as well as nearly every state in the country—in 1972, the Democratic stronghold of the Solid South had fallen to the GOP at the presidential level, save for 1976, 1992, and 1996, when a Southern Democrat was the Democratic nominee. However most of the state and local elections were still dominated by Democrats until the 1990s; at first these long-serving Southern Democrats still wielded great power due to the seniority system through chairing powerful committees; however, the strong Democratic victory in 1974 following the Watergate scandal led to a tremendous number of Northern and liberal Democratic freshmen in House, tilting the balance of the Democratic Caucus away from the Southerners. These Watergate Babies joined forces with more senior liberals and stripped committee chairmanship from three senior Southern Democrats: Wright Patman, William R. Poage, and F. Edward Hébert, and otherwise reformed the House, making it more responsive to the overall Democratic Caucus and leadership, and with less power for committee chairs (and the minority party.)
Over in the Senate, the similarly large Democratic majority modified Rule 22, which governs the filibuster, shrinking the required majority to invoke cloture in most cases from two-thirds of the Senate to the current three-fifths, or 60 votes. These actions together greatly reduced the power of the Southern Democrats to steer and block legislation in the House and Senate, and reduced the institutional benefits of being loyal to the Democratic Party. Many surviving Southern Democrats switched parties and became Republicans after that party gained a majority in 1995.[20] As a result of the 1994 "Republican Revolution," Republicans became the majority of Southern members of the House of Representatives for the first time since the Reconstruction era, also replacing many conservative Democratic congressmen. A few Democratic Congressmen switched parties, such as Alabama Senator Richard Shelby. After declining in the 1980s, the conservative coalition ended after 1994. However, many similarly conservative Democrats served until the 2010 midterm elections.[21] The Blue Dog Coalition is considered the main successor to the conservative coalition amongst Democrats, as it began after the 1994 midterm elections.
Main members
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See also
- American Liberty League
- Democratic Study Group
- Court Packing Plan
- New Deal coalition
- Solid South
- Southernization
References
- ISBN 9780813164045.
- ^ Mack C. Shelley, "Presidents and the conservative coalition in the U.S. Congress." Legislative Studies Quarterly (1983): 79-96 online Archived 2021-05-14 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Jeffery A. Jenkins and Nathan W. Monroe, "Negative Agenda Control and the Conservative Coalition in the U.S. House" Journal of Politics (2014). 76#4, pp. 1116–27. doi:10.1017/S0022381614000620
- ^ Katznelson, 1993
- ^ Bruce J. Dierenfield, Keeper of the Rules: Congressman Howard W. Smith of Virginia (1987)
- ^ a b c Kicker, Troy. "Taking on FDR: Senator Josiah Bailey and the 1937 Conservative Manifesto". Archived from the original on 2020-10-04. Retrieved 2016-02-02..
- ^ for example, Time magazine reported, " "Five Southern Democrats and four Republicans sat smiling at a lady one day last week in the cramped, dim-lit House Rules committee-room.... The nine smug gentlemen, key bloc of the conservative coalition now dominating the House, could afford to be gracious to hard-plugging Mary Norton, Labor committee chairlady, because they had just finished trampling roughshod over her." TIME Aug 7, 1939 online
- ^ Lubell, Samuel (1955). The Future of American Politics. Anchor Press. p. 13.
- JSTOR 4634869. Archived from the original(PDF) on October 21, 2013.
- ^ Ideologies and Institutions American Conservative and Liberal Governance Prescriptions Since 1933 By J. Richard Piper, 1997, P.126
- ^ The Elevator Constructor Volumes 46–47 1949 P.1
- ^ Race, Money, and the American Welfare State By Michael K. Brown, 1999, P.107
- ^ House Enlarges Rules Committee An article from CQ Almanac 1961
- ^ Adopting House Rules in a New Congress: From Democratic Deliberation to Partisan Monopoly by Donald R. Wolfensberger, P.12
- ^ Mayhew, David, Party Loyalty among Congressmen: The Difference between Democrats and Republicans 1947–1962 Harvard University Press (1966), pp. 165–68
- ^ John W. Malsberger, From Obstruction to Moderation: The Transformation of Senate Conservatism, 1938–1952 (2000) ch 2
- ^ The Penguin Dictionary of Politics by David Robertson, Second Edition 1993
- ^ ‘CONSERVATIVE COALITION’ APPEARED ON 15% OF ROLL CALLS, 1964 CQ ALAMANAC, P.746,
- ^ a b "Conservative coalition remains potent in Congress" (PDF). 1969 CQ Almanac. Washington: CQ Press. 1969. pp. 1052–1059. Archived (PDF) from the original on January 29, 2022. Retrieved January 29, 2022.
- from the original on 2023-01-05. Retrieved 2023-01-05.
- ^ "The long goodbye". The Economist. Retrieved 2013-03-12.
Further reading
- Caro, Robert A. The Years of Lyndon Johnson: vol 3: Master of the Senate (2002).
- Carson, Jamie L. "Electoral and Partisan Forces in the Roosevelt Era: The US Congressional Elections of 1938." Congress & the Presidency 28#2 (2001) 161–183 https://doi.org/10.1080/07343460109507751
- Domhoff, G. William, and Michael J. Webber. Class and Power in the New Deal: Corporate Moderates, Southern Democrats, and the Liberal-Labor Coalition (2011)|
- Fite, Gilbert. Richard B. Russell, Jr, Senator from Georgia (2002)
- Goldsmith, John A. Colleagues: Richard B. Russell and His Apprentice, Lyndon B. Johnson. (1993)
- Hill, Rebecca. "The History of the Smith Act and the Hatch Act: Anti-Communism and the Rise of the Conservative Coalition in Congress." in Little ‘Red Scares’ (Routledge, 2016) pp. 315–346.
- Jenkins, Jeffery A. and Nathan W. Monroe. "Negative Agenda Control and the Conservative Coalition in the U.S. House" Journal of Politics (2014). 76#4, pp. 1116–27. doi:10.1017/S0022381614000620
- Katznelson, Ira, Kim Geiger and Daniel Kryder. "Limiting Liberalism: The Southern Veto in Congress, 1933–1950," Political Science Quarterly Vol. 108, No. 2 (Summer, 1993), pp. 283–306 in JSTOR
- MacNeil, Neil. Forge of Democracy: The House of Representatives (1963)
- Malsberger, John W. From Obstruction to Moderation: The Transformation of Senate Conservatism, 1938–1952 (2000) online edition Archived 2010-04-20 at the Wayback Machine
- Manley, John F. "The Conservative Coalition in Congress." American Behavioral Scientist 17 (1973): 223–47.
- Mayhew, David R. Party Loyalty among Congressmen: The Difference between Democrats and Republicans, 1947–1962, Harvard University Press (1966)
- Margolis, Joel Paul. "The Conservative Coalition in the United States Senate, 1933–1968." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1973.
- Moore, John Robert. "The Conservative Coalition in the United States Senate, 1942-1945." Journal of Southern History 33#3 (1967), pp. 368–376. online; uses roll call data sets.
- Patterson, James T. "A Conservative Coalition Forms in Congress, 1933–1939," The Journal of American History, (1966) 52#4 pp. 757–72. in JSTOR
- Patterson, James. Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal: The Growth of the Conservative Coalition in Congress, 1933–39 (1967) online edition
- Patterson, James T. Mr. Republican: A Biography of Robert A. Taft (1972)
- Reinhard, David W. The Republican right since 1945 (UP of Kentucky, 2014) online.
- Schickler, Eric. Disjointed Pluralism: Institutional Innovation and the Development of the U.S. Congress (2001)
- Schickler, Eric; Pearson, Kathryn. "Agenda Control, Majority Party Power, and the House Committee on Rules, 1937–52," Legislative Studies Quarterly (2009) 34#4 pp. 455–91
- Shelley II, Mack C. The Permanent Majority: The Conservative Coalition in the United States Congress (1983) online edition Archived 2009-06-04 at the Wayback Machine
- Shelley, Mack C. "Presidents and the Conservative Coalition in the U.S. Congress." Legislative Studies Quarterly (1983): 79-96 online
- Rohde, David W. Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House (1991)
- Williams, Arthur R., Karl F. Johnson, and Michael P. Barrett. "Cutting the Deck: New Deal, Fair Deal, and the Employment Act of 1946: Problems of Study and Interpretation." in Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress (Routledge, 2019).
Primary sources
- Cantril, Hadley and Mildred Strunk, eds.; Public Opinion, 1935–1946 (1951), massive compilation of many public opinion polls online
- Gallup, George. The Gallup Poll: Public opinion, 1935-1971 (3 vol 1972) vol 1-2-3 online 1935–1948.