Remember when the Republicans were socialists?

Because they sure don't.





(I know that not all of them were socialists, but it seems like there was a large base of socialists in the party. Anyway, use this thread to talk about the republicans, and other conservative parties n such.)

Actually, they weren't really socialist at all. They sought government regulation of business, not government control. And that was only part of the party, which eventually shifted to the Dems after the New Deal.

Yar, that's why I put the disclaimer there. The majority of the party weren't socialists, but the party was undoubtedly left wing, and had a socialist minority. I used a bit of creative license with the title. The point was basically to point out the hypocrisy in modern republican conservative-rhetoric, and provide a base for a discussion on how far they have fallen from their founders ideas.

Actually, if you follow American history at all it incredibly obvious why the Republican party was both left and right at the same time. The Republican party formed in the North (the present day Northeast aka New England). The northern US at the time was an industrial society centered around factory production, while the South, the area of the Democrats, was a mostly agrarian society. Since the Republicans formed around business, they represented business in all aspects. There were some, known as Progressives, who favored regulation of business, but not for any sort of socialist reasons. Most believed, as stated by President Theodore Roosevelt, that there were good trusts and bad trusts. They only regulated businesses to prevent them from hurting the economy. They sought rights for unions only to prevent strikes and disruption of production.

You can talk about the Democrats in the same fashion. President Thomas Jefferson, a leading father of the party, would most likely be appalled by the practices of the current party.

What does it matter? We aren't Socialist in anyway any more. We are Conservatives. We wouldn't think of touching Socialism.

fallen/progressed. Both words are equally meaningless & drive from a pre-conceived notion of how you believe the Government should be. Ultimately it is irrelevant what the Republicans used to stand for & all that matters is what they currently stand for. Of course they cannot deny their heritage, but their heritage is meaningless politically.

Democrats and Republicans used to be in the same party before this. That's pretty much unfathomable now.

I'd say it wasn't so much 'socialist' as 'not conservative'. Conservatives at the time were absolute monarchists, so it follows that everyone in the US might as well have been a Leninist as far as some people were concerned. The international consensus was that monarchy is what represented 'legitimate' government.
1848 was when the middle-classes (ie- those who are now republicans) had their revolution.

No, and I honestly don't give a shit.

By that same logic you could call all modern Democrats hypocrites for not supporting slavery. Which of course is ridiculous.

Well the old Rep. party supported the american people's well-being by giving out worker's rights,abolishing slavery,not interfereing with the people's buisnesses.

Now the Republicans want to support the american people's well being by wanting to kick out immingrants,building a fence in the border and wanting to lose many soldiers in pointless wars of intrest.

By today's standards the Progressives would seem extremely conservative.

Not even close. Even among the extremely extreme radicals support of monarchy was almost impossible to find. The US has never really considered monarchy as a desirable form of government.

No. By the time of the Progressives (Around 1900), England's Parliament and Prime Minister had almost effectively eclipsed the monarchy. Germany had a constitutional monarchy and France (if I recall correctly) had no king.

This is the time of "there must be monarchy!" era you're thinking of. Most of the revolutions were failures, and only those considered unimportant (or in Greece's case, against the Ottoman Empire) were not forcefully put down. There was a heavy bourgeois element in the revolutions, but there was also a substantial amount of ethnic tension as well. And that was Europe, not the US, so calling the middle classes 'Republican' is a far-reaching assumption. The basis of the Republican Party was slavery and federalism, not economic class.

@LeonTrotsky is correct for the most part, except for that England has been an effective democracy since the 17th century, with the Glorious Revolution following the shitstorm that was the 1600s. Not the year 1900.

Also the Republican Party, even of the day, appealed mostly to the upper classes, while the Democratic Party appealed to lower classes and was heavilly populist by the year 1900.

In the US the lower classes, the populists, that the Democrats appealed to at the time of the birth and rise of the Republican party were only farmers. It was only later during the New Deal that they began to include industrial workers.

Right.

Here's an interesting set of images to show how party lines have shifted.

http://www.270towin.com/

It seems the democrats had full control of the south until about 1980.

I never knew the south would be a mainly democratic area.

The Democrats were originally the party of slavery.

Which makes this slightly inaccurate. The Republicans were initially bonded by anti-slavery, and after the Civil War were the party for everyone but the South. The Democratic more or less run by former plantation owners, so it's not as simple as rich vs poor. That is a more modern differential.