When the South Switched Parties: Part 2: Sixty-Four

There is a myth that has been spread around America since the 1960s that goes something like this: "The Democrats were all a bunch of conservatives, and the Republicans were all a bunch of liberals, up until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Then, overnight, everybody switched their political party so that the conservatives were now Republicans and the liberals were now Democrats. Therefore, all the bad stuff in the South that happened in American history was done by conservatives, who are today's Republicans." There are two kinds of people in this debate: (1) the liberal Democrats who want to wash-away the sins of their political party's history and are more than willing to keep that myth alive; and (2) the scholars, historians, conservatives, Republicans, and independents who know better. Eleven out of sixteen Southern States formed a democratic confederacy for a short time when they militarily opposed our republican form of government (including our constitutional Electoral College). The history of all these Southern States is not so convenient that one can simply say, "the conservatives were always the bad guys." Another part of this myth is that "all the racists were conservatives from the South," which is still used as propaganda in today's liberal politics. The truth of the matter is that the Grand Old (Republican) Party was always the party of conservative politics, abolition, de-segregation, human and civil rights (for all citizens), individual and corporate freedoms, and free (anti-monopolist) markets going back to its first iteration with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and up to the present. The liberal politics of the Federalists and the Democrats had been a part of Northern and Southern politics since the beginning of our nation, with the goal of democratizing the United States for the sake of a majority rule. In terms of magical overnight party-swapping, that never happened in American history. There were two periods before 1964 when the South voted mostly for the Republican Party at the federal level. In State politics, the South as a whole would be a single-party apparatus until long after 1964. The gradual transition of the South (whether we are talking about the whole South, the "Solid South," or the "Deep South") toward Republican Party politics that we see today did not take full effect until the 21st century, and it had absolutely nothing to do with race politics. Part 1 of "When the South Switched Parties" delves into the early history of the United States of America that leads up to World War I. That history alone dispels the whole "party-switching" myth that is propagated today. This part is sub-titled "Regressing Forward" as a contrast to the "conservative progressivism" that the Grand Old Party (GOP) had been engaging in despite the Democratic Party politics of the North and South. Part 2 of "When the South Switched Parties" is sub-titled "Sixty-Four" and focuses on the takeover of liberal and the Democratic Party politics in America that was seeded between 1912-1920 and that then became a juggernaut for sixty-four years straight into the 1990s. After reading both Part 1 and Part 2, you should have a full sense of factual American history that completely dispels the propaganda/myth that "conservatives are the bad guys, going back to the pre-1964 Democratic Party days." Kevin R. Haughn has authored several books that are available in multiple formats on Amazon. Your support for his works is very much appreciated.