What Really Makes Democrats and Republicans Different
The Republicans have their flaws, but a lack of unity is not one of them. The one thing that distinguishes Republicans from Democrats is a national vision. The Democratic Party, since its inception, has never had a national vision, but rather has been a coalition of often hostile constituencies.
TODAY
The Democratic Party today embraces sharia-compliant females — à la Brooklyn's Linda Sarsour and Minnesota's Ihlan Omar — along with hyper-feminists and LBGT constituencies.
The Democrats also embrace expansive abortion rights and seem to be moving to the point of legalizing abortion up to the minute of birth. New York State has legalized such a broad definition.
Ironically, Islamic countries and culture are notoriously restrictive with abortion and lethal to any LBGTs who fall into their hands. So why would practicing Muslims, such as Mmes. Sarsour and Omar, attach themselves to the Democratic Party?
How do the two of them reconcile Islamic culture's honor killing, repression of sexuality, and mutilation of women with the Democratic Party's acceptance of sexual deviance? Likewise, how does the Democratic Party reconcile these ladies' embrace of a retrograde creed?
This article has a list of 13 countries where homosexual activity is punishable by death. All but one of them are Muslim nations, and the thirteenth nation (Nigeria) is roughly split, with the death penalty being applied only in the Muslim north of the country.
So why in the world would a party that supports abortion, homosexuality, transgender rights, etc. embrace Islamic sharia-observant women in politics?
There are other issues. How does one reconcile extreme green politics (which crushes business) with promises of good-paying jobs for union workers?
This is the weakness of the Democratic Party. It is a jumbled mess of constituencies that are objectively hostile to one another.
This is not a recent development. This has been the Democratic Party's modus operandi throughout history.
FDR
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was ostensibly a liberal, yet he and the Democratic Party, at that time, were willing to cut broad deals with Boll Weevil Democrats who enforced Jim Crow legislation. What in the world would a liberalizing Northern Democrat have in common with Southern politicians who were upset that the South lost the Civil War, with slavery being abolished?
Northern Democrats were drawn from industrial working constituencies, often Catholic or Jewish, and of ethic extraction. Southern Boll Weevils were WASP, and sometimes intolerant of non-
The irony of the Democrats' oppositional constituencies could be seen in the matter of Prohibition. Catholics, Jews, and the liberal urban North hated Prohibition, while Prohibition maintained a good deal of support in the conservative fundamentalist Protestant South. Eventually, the North won, with the repeal of Prohibition, during the FDR administration, but only because Southern support for teetotaling was more vocal than practiced.
What is clear is that the Democratic Party had no core values on major issues. If progress was made for industrial workers in the North, it was purchased at the expense of blacks in the South.
WOODROW WILSON
When I was in school, Wilson was portrayed as a lion of democratic progress, not only for the United States, but for the whole world. He entered World War I to make the world safe for democracy. Hadn't he issued the fourteen points?
What the books didn't tell us was that, before Wilson, the federal government had become one bright area where the official policy was to treat blacks equally. Wilson — whose father was a Confederate army chaplain — did away with that. Wilson was a virulent racist, even by the standards of his day.
Washington was a rigidly segregated town — except for federal government agencies. They had been integrated during the post-war Reconstruction period, enabling African Americans to obtain federal jobs and work side by side with whites in government agencies. Wilson promptly authorized members of his cabinet to reverse this long-standing policy of racial integration in the federal civil service. —William Keylor as quoted in Government Executive
Wilson resegregated the federal government and set back race relations 40 years. That never got mentioned when I was in school.
In the history books that we were given, the Republican Party was condemned for opposing the internationalism and globalization of the League of Nations — one of Wilson's pet projects. A century later, it is obvious that the Republicans were right.
So how did Wilson win? Again, by appealing to oppositional constituencies. The Democratic Party had no values, so it could be flexible to potential voters on an as-needed basis.
CIVIL WAR DEMOCRATS
Here again, the Northern and Southern Democrats could not agree on the major issues of their day. They split over the issues concerning the expansion of slavery and the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. What in the world were they doing in the same party, if they were opposed over such fundamental issues?
During the war, there was a Northern Democratic Party, with War Democrats supporting Lincoln.
After the war, the party reunited and embraced white supremacy — at least in the South. Why? Democrats undid the gains of the Civil War. The South became a virtual one-party region after Reconstruction. All the while, the Democrats were preaching progress and more freedom in the North while agreeing to repress it in the South.
ANTEBELLUM DEMOCRATS
Southern Democrats tried to suppress free speech in Congress by instituting a gag rule that prohibited discussions of slavery. One man who opposed this rule was John Quincy Adams. The Adams family were very opposed to slavery from day one. Adams would later affiliate with the Whig Party, which morphed into the Republicans.
One can trace these inconsistencies all the way back to the first Democratic president, Andrew Jackson, who was supposedly a man of the people yet an avowed racist, treating both blacks and Indians atrociously.
CONCLUSION
One does not really see such major divides in the Republican Party. They tend to be pro-business in the belief that prosperity for the country, as a whole, arises from a good economy. And, in theory, they oppose big government.
During the Civil Rights era of the 1950s and '60s, Republicans opposed Jim Crow, which Southern Democrats preferred, yet Republicans would also oppose enforced integration, which Northern Democrats sought. The Republican position was basically that the government should not be in the business of race relations at all. The government should not be mandating segregation or school busing. Let individuals find their own level of comfort, and things will work out in due time.
This was logically more consistent than the Democratic Party, which was bipolar on the issue. Eventually, conservative Southern Democrats would switch to the Republican Party, with the implied understanding that Republicans would not support a re-introduction of Jim Crow.
For a while, after FDR and before Reagan, there was a brief attempt at a liberal expression of Republicanism under John Rockefeller. But that section of the party was dumped as inconsistent with central principles. Again, the Republicans have a consistent vision: pro-business as a means to generate prosperity, along with limitations on government.
On other issues, it is amazing to see how inconsistent the Democrats are.
This is because Democrats have no vision for the country. Rather, they seek only to get elected and are willing to cobble hostile elements together to do it.