The basis of Democratic appeal to blue-collar workers, low-income individuals, and recent immigrant groups largely Catholics and Jews from southern and eastern Europe was the party's liberalism in economic matters. Roosevelt and the Democrats favored federal government activity to combat the Depression and proposed programs to benefit disadvantaged groups.
The Republicans, who appealed more to the middle-class, business groups, and northern white Protestants, were critical of this expansion of government interference in the economy and creation of a variety of social welfare programs. By the late s, the lines between the two parties were clearly drawn, both in ideological and socioeconomic terms Ladd and Hadley , Although the New Deal coalition began to break up in the s, the impact of the New Deal realignment has remained to the present, albeit in a diluted and revised form.
Many of the party images of decades past persist to the present. Democrats remain thought of as the party that favors bigger government, more spending on domestic programs, and helping those at the bottom of the economic pyramid. Republicans continue to be perceived as favoring limited government, less spending on domestic programs, and fewer restrictions on business enterprises.
As late as the s, however, some Republican officials were still trying to find a middle path. On the one hand, GOP officials sensed an opportunity to present the party as a moderate alternative to the segregationist policies endorsed by the outgoing Woodrow Wilson administration—to make inroads into the growing urban centers of African-American voters.
On the other hand, in campaign efforts against northern Democrats such as Al Smith of New York, Republicans perceived the chance to cultivate southern white voters by stoking racial tensions.
The party tried to walk a fine line. GOP Presidents in the s hosted black leaders to discuss touchstone issues such as anti-lynching legislation. But they did little to pass that legislation for fear of alienating southern whites.
Tone deaf to issues that resonated with black families, Hoover then catered to the lily-white delegations at the Republican National Convention. The platform ignored the interests of black voters, except for a perfunctory sentence about the necessity for anti-lynching legislation.
Furthermore, during the campaign Hoover devised a southern strategy against Democratic nominee Al Smith, who Southerners perceived negatively because he was Catholic and was believed to represent ethnic and African-American interests. By courting the racially conservative white vote with tacit support for the segregationist status quo, Hoover fractured the solid South and captured the electoral votes of five southern states: Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, and Texas. The presidential campaign marked a significant step toward the eventual black exodus from the Republican Party.
Though a majority of African Americans cast their vote for Hoover, black defection from the party was greater than in any prior election. Manufacturers of public opinion within the black community, including the Chicago Defender and the Baltimore Afro-American , supported Al Smith. The Great Migration made black-white relations no longer primarily an issue for the South. The new urban America offered a core constituency of the coalition that would propel Democrats into power in the s.
Next Section. A significant break between the black elite and the Republican Party occurred in the aftermath of the August Brownsville affair. A garrison of African-American soldiers stationed near Brownsville, Texas, were accused on the basis of scant evidence of several shootings in the town. Three companies of black troops enlisted men were discharged without honor by recommendation of the U. Army command. President Theodore Roosevelt swiftly approved the findings.
When Republican Senator Joseph B.
0コメント