Racists Have No Place in the Conservative Movement (ZO!)

I knew you were a troll but your coming out as gay is a surprise (not that there’s anything wrong with that) ;-)

Hahahahahaaha.. Another graduate of the Pee Wee Herman School of Debate — “I know you are, but am I.”

OK, you win. No way I can compete against such mastery.

LMAOROTF!!!

I owe you a debt of gratitude since I learned it all from you.

;-)

99 percent of your post is just opinion...yours...without any supporting documentation. Admittedly, I did not document most of the post I made...but I do admit it.

Hmmm ... so all I had to do was just say that your whole post was just your own unsupported opinion and brush it aside? Good to know.

Actually, though, I did look up who controlled Congress from 1829 to 1859. Thirty years. And the Democrats had control of each house for all but 6 of those years.

And suggest you check again on who gave us Wilson and FDR. Here’s a hint: try to figure it out without applying party affiliations but at socialist/progressive orientations. Lincoln, Wilson, FDR and Obama...peas in a pod.

And I looked up the vote for Wilson and FDR. 96% of the vote in SC for Wilson in 1912. 98% for FDR in 1932. 98% for FDR in 1932. 95% for FDR in 1940 (what happened?). SC had the most extreme results but the other states (particularly Mississippi) weren't so far off.

Everybody has their reasons, explanations and excuses. If my grandparents voted for Roosevelt it's because they were poor and either out of work or worried about losing their jobs. 70 years later I'm not going to blame them for that. And I understand how people in a similar position would vote in a similar way.

But Southerners could vote 60%, 70%, 80%, 90% for some very liberal candidates -- could actually give us Wilson and mightily contribute to giving us FDR -- and still claim to be immaculate conservatives with nothing to regret or make up for. It's a funny world.

lentulusgracchus: "I'm convinced Lincoln and his inner circle... came to office with a secret war policy, which was presented back-to-front as opposition to the extension of slavery, but was instead a determination to destroy the moneyed classes of the South economically and politically... "

Nothing in the 1860 Republican platform or other documentary evidence remotely supports your opinion.
In actual history, Deep South secessionists -- aka "Fire Eaters" -- pushed and lead every step of the way from peace in 1860 to formally declaring war on May 6, 1861.

Both outgoing "Dough-Faced" Democrat President Buchanan and incoming "Black Republican" President Lincoln did nothing more than respond to the Confederacy's increasingly aggressive acts of rebellion or war against the United States.

Indeed, Lincoln's First Inaugural Address directly spoke to secessionists, telling them they could not have a war, unless they themselves started it.
So they very soon did.

lentulusgracchus: "The Republican Party's real platform was to attack and totally destroy the South, take the Government into receivership, and seize control, total control, of the country's fortunes, turning the federal republic of enumerated powers into an autocratic, centralized and illimitable one: Hamilton's old ideal of "Empire without the King"."

Actually, the real 1860 Republican platform can be found here.
If you study it carefully, you'll find it calls for nothing you've claimed, but does support the right of territories to restrict slavery from areas where it wasn't wanted.

For examples, items 7 & 8 say:

"SEVENTH. That the new dogma that the constitution of its own force carries slavery into any or all of the territories of the United States, is a dangerous political heresy, at variance with the explicit provisions of that instrument itself, with cotemporaneous exposition, and with legislative and judicial precedent, is revolutionary in its tendency and subversive of the peace and harmony of the country.

EIGHTH. That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom; that as our republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that no "person should be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law," it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the constitution against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States."

lentulusgracchus: "Or do you think it all happened by accident, as a series of extemporaneous responses to unforeseen events: that the Republic "lurched uncontrollably"... into a centralized nation-state run by a delimited "Who's Who" of elite politicians and businessmen, into whose phalanx-like Gilded-Age ranks nobody managed to break until Grover Cleveland won the White House?"

First of all, Southern Democrat President Andrew Johnson served from 1865 to 1869, and while his record is mixed, it was generally favorable to the South.
Eight years later -- 1876 -- the election between Hayes and Tilden was so close, political deals were made which further reduced restrictions on the South -- eliminating "Black Republican" elected officials.
In 1880 another very close vote went to Republican Garfield, because he carried New York.
Finally in 1884, Democrats nominated the Governor of New York, which gave them enough electors to win the election.

In Congress, Democrats first won the House of Representatives in 1874 and by 1878 controlled both House and Senate.
And just as before the Civil War, the majority of Democrats were Southerners.
After 1874 there were very few years when Democrats did not control one or both Houses of Congress.

So all your language about "Republic "lurched uncontrollably"... into a centralized nation-state run by a delimited "Who's Who" of elite politicians," is more hyperbole than any serious analysis.

lentulusgracchus: "It wasn't about abolition.
It was about what Yankees thought about Southerners, which they demonstrated beyond recall... when John Brown was executed in 1859, and Massachusetts Gov. Nathaniel Banks responded..."

Of course, John Brown was all about abolition, nothing else.
And before the Civil War, many Northern states often voted for Southern Dominated Democrats, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and New Jersey, so Northerners were far from hostile towards the South.
What Northerners feared and didn't want was Southern slavery imposed by Federal laws on Northern territories or states.
But that is exactly what the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scot decision implied.

lentulusgracchus: "It was never a political issue before Northern apologists for the Tariff of Abominations (1828) started reaching around for clubs with which to beat the South and divide the West from the South..."

No, slavery was an issue in both the Continental Congress' Declaration of Independence (see Jefferson's deleted words on that) and in the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
In the earliest Congresses slavery was seldom mentioned, because the South imposed a "gag rule" to forbid that.
But the interests of Slave and Free States clashed most importantly in admitting new states -- one slave for every free state.

lentulusgracchus: "...reaching around for clubs with which to beat the South and divide the West from the South, the better to isolate the South and subdue it..."

In real history, as opposed to Neo-Confederate myth-making, Democrats dominated all three branches of the Federal government from the Founding of the Republic in 1788 until Secession in 1861.
And Democrats were always dominated by Southerners.

Except in this case, an awful lot of "Northern victor's history" was written from a very pro-Southern point of view. Whatever historians are saying now, for over fifty years in the early 20th century they were a lot friendlier to the secessionists than Northerners at the time were or Americans today are.

A lot of southerners have come to consider as vindication what northerners only intended as mercy and politeness. This can always be seen when the subject of Jefferson Davis being released without trial comes up.

mercy and politeness

Yeah, right.

So which region of the USA is the most conservative?

Gallup poll

Case in point.

In real history, as opposed to Neo-Confederate myth-making, Democrats dominated all three branches of the Federal government from the Founding of the Republic in 1788 until Secession in 1861.

Actually, there were no Democrats, in the sense you mean it, before around 1830.

The original two-party systems (Federalists vs. Republicans) fell apart when the Federalists crumbled as result of the War of 1812.

A relatively party-free period then lasted till about 1832, when Jackson's partisans developed what eventually became the Democratic Party and his opponents what became the Whig Party.

But your comment about national politics being dominated by southerners prior to 1860 is entirely correct.

Sherman Logan: "Actually, there were no Democrats, in the sense you mean it, before around 1830."

Understood, but the "sense I mean it" begins with the "Negro President" Jefferson's Southern Slave-Power party: Democratic-Republicans.
Yes, they were usually called "Republicans", but when they split in 1825, the Southern majority went with Jacksonian Democrats.

That's why today Democrats claim both Jefferson and Jackson as their founders.
What unites the two politically is the underlying constitutionally sanctioned 3/5 representation: the Slave Power.

Thanks for a great post.
Our FRiend central_va has been singing his song and dancing that dance for several threads now.
Nice to see a great answer for it. ;-)

While we're at it, here are the 10 most Liberal states:

Note first that only half of the "top 10" most Liberal are Northeastern, two are below the old Mason-Dixon Line and three are western states.

Also note: while the 10 most Conservative states average about 48%, the most Liberal places average barely 30% Liberal -- showing yet again that even where they are most popular, Liberals are still a small minority, with a disproportionate share of political power.

Indeed, Gallup says there is a Conservative Advantage in every state of the Union.
I can't get Gallup's map to show, but here is one very similar -- Amazon's map based on Conservative versus Liberal book sales:

Sorry, my bad, should have included central_va in the address line of post #233.

One of the neo-confederates who used to post here would routinely respond to me by saying, "You're from Washington state - a blue state - so you have no place to talk". I take no pride in admitting that my state falls in the top 10 lib states. So what? If one looks at the last election in terms of voter proclivity in my state you would see an island of (2 counties) blue surrounded by a sea of red.

The split has been stagnant at around 52/48 dem/pub. It's been this way for close to 30 years now. That means that there are more libs in this state than pubbies, but not by a heck of a lot. This flies in the face of the binary blue/red opprobrium that states that "you come from a blue state so you don't matter".

In 2012 Washington went for Øbongo 55/41. central_va's state of Virginia went for Øbongo 50/47. Better (more republican) but not by much. And the trend in Virginia is leaning left. With its proximity to the madness that is DC the seduction toward statism must be tremendous.

cva's original question was:

Ok, if the following question were submitted randomly to 1000 people how many, as a percent, would answer 'B' IYO?
Which region of the USA is the most conservative?
* A. North
* B. South
* C. MidWest/Mountain
* D. West Coast
I dare say 90% would answer 'B'.

I submit that northerners, northwesterners, westerners, southwesterners, and midwesterners would respond that it is a tossup between the midwest and the south. Southerners would say the south. Again I say so what?

Virginia and Florida showed us that the south isn't as solid a block as some would suggest. Likewise Colorado is drifting in the wrong direction. BroJoeK's posts have shown us that the "solid south" also voted overwhelmingly for Wilson, FDR, LBJ, and Carter. The true point of commonality in every state is the ratio of dem/pub going from rural to urban. No matter where you go in this country you will find that big cities equals rampant liberalism. It doesn't matter it is Alabama or California (or Washington). Living in cities requires a greater degree of regimentation and that is the breeding ground for liberalism.

I get your point, but I would contend that the present-day GOP is every bit as much a descendant of the Democrat-Republicans as the present-day Democrats are.

Possibly a nit, but I think it’s a significant one. The Democrats, Whigs and Republicans are (were) all branches on the same American tree.

Actually, that’s not true anymore, although it was up till the late 1800s, when the Progressive movement made major inroads into both parties. The Progressives get a bad rap among today’s conservatives, much though not all of it deserved. But it is pretty difficult to see them as anything but the introduction of foreign, French Revolution based ideologies into American politics.

Both parties are presently uneasy coalitions of groups attempting to adhere to the principles of both Revolutions. With liberal Democrats mostly French in their ideology, with their left wing adding a dose of Russian and/or Chinese revolutionary fervor. Meanwhile conservative Republicans are mostly though not exclusively devoted to American Revolution ideals. And the squishy middle an unstable mixture of both, though few of them are aware of it.

The problem is that the French (not the mention the Russian and Chinese) and American Revolutions are inherently incompatible.

The French Revolution taught that The People were sovereign, with individuals having no rights at all against the General Will of The People, which of course was by definition subject to interpretation and application by whichever group of thugs was temporarily in power.

The American Founders believed that the people (lower case) were sovereign, but that as an entity or group they had no right to trample on the inalienable rights of each individual making up the people.

Sherman Logan: "Possibly a nit, but I think it’s a significant one.
The Democrats, Whigs and Republicans are (were) all branches on the same American tree."

When the old Federalist Party collapsed after the 1816 election, Northerners joined Democratic-Republicans for the 1824 election, and just managed to elect John Quincy Adams.
But unity didn't last long.
By 1828, Adams ran (and lost) as a National Republican, a party which also fielded candidates in 1832.

By 1836 National Republicans had become Whigs, a party which lasted through 1852.
After Whigs collapsed, abolitionist Republicans became the main anti-Democrat party.

So the sequence was:

Federalists, eight presidential elections, from the Founding until 1816
united Democratic-Republicans, two elections 1820 & 1824
National Republicans, two elections 1828 & 1832
Whigs, five elections 1836 through 1852
abolitionist Republicans, now 39 elections starting in 1856

So, from the Founding of the Republic until Goldwater in 1964, the "Solid South" was solidly Jeffersonian / Jacksonian Democrats.
During that same period, the North was represented by Federalists, National Republicans, Whigs and then Republicans before turning, in the 1960s, solidly Democrat.

Hate to get involved in a rather abstruse discussion, but I think you’re falling prey to a rather common mistake.

There were initially no “parties” at the founding, other than federalists and anti-federalists, neither of which line up particularly well with the parties that later developed. Or, rather, the federalists at the Founding all pretty much went into the Federalist Party, but the anti-federalists split, with some joining, at least initially the Federalists and others signing up with the Republicans.

The Federalists had a long decline as the opposition party agter 1800, but pretty much killed themselves off, at least as a national party, during the War of 1812. There followed a period from the late teens thru 30s where the contention was primarily not between parties as such, but more between Jacksonians and anti-Jacksonians, both groups fully paid up members of the Democratic-Republican Party, the only one left standing.

This party split in two during the 1830s, forming the Whigs and the Democrats. So IMO the Whigs were every bit as much a continuation of the original Democratic-Republican Party as the faction that kept the Democratic name. And so were the Republicans who eventually succeeded the Whigs in the role of opposition party to the Democratic machine.

BTW, as you probably know, the 1850s were a much more complicated period in American political party history than any other. The Whigs, Democrats, Know-Nothings (American) and Free-Soil parties all played a part.

And of course during the 1860 election there were four parties in the running, northern and southern Democrtats, Republicans and Constitutional Union, which was more an attempt to revive the Whigs than anything else.

Most critically, national politics, and particularly party politics, did not consistently break out into a real north vs. south split until the 1850s. As southern aggression (which they viewed as only self-defense) got more intrusive, the North developed as a self-concious political region, replacing the previous East and West, with the West normally aligned with the South.

So which region of the USA is the most conservative?

If you're talking about what happened around 1912 or around 1932 feel free to speculate. But how things are now or what happened in the 1860s isn't going to give you the best explanation of how things were in the 1910s or 1930s or why what happened back then happened.

lentulusgracchus: "What do you call waiting for Congress to go home, then launching a major war that ends with the South in ashes?"

I'd call that a Neo-Confederate myth, since it's not what happened in real history.
In real history, Congress served its normal session from March 4 until March 28 and then adjourned as usual.

But Lincoln's deadline for action on Fort Sumter -- as per Major Anderson's reports -- was April 15, and Lincoln spent that time trying to find some peaceful solution.
For example, even as late as April 4, Lincoln again offered to trade Fort Sumter for a promise of Virginia not declaring secession -- an offer again rejected by Virginia's Unionist leadership.

And in the end, Lincoln never "launched a major war" until after the Confederacy had provoked, started and formally declared war on the United States, on May 6, 1861.

In his response to the Confederacy's assault on Fort Sumter, Lincoln called for a highly unusual special secession of Congress, to begin July 4, in which session Congress approved everything Lincoln had done.

lentulusgracchus: "In 1870, 20% of the Mississippi state budget went for prostheses for war veterans.
In what skittles-and-unicorns sense is that not 'expansion of federal powers'? "

The US Constitution provides for the Federal Government to repel invasions and suppress rebellions.
So no expansion of constitutionally delegated authority was necessary to defeat a Confederate military power, after it had launched and declared major war on the United States.