#realignments

[existingeden]

FernGully lullabies 🌱💚💕 #Vermont #realignments #happyplaces #green #dreams #summeroflove #mama #nature #fernbabyfern #wild #child #life #cityescape #calculatingthebestroot https://www.instagram.com/p/B13AyDDh_-u/?igshid=hp3rjbkotv2l

[existingeden]

Echodislocation #bw #cutandpaste #collage #art #light #line #echo #realignments

[chasingthevote]

Historian Heather Cox Richardson provides a useful historical analysis of the history of the GOP, from its inception as a populist anti-slavery party to the current day. She focuses on the tension that the party has faced throughout its history between those who favor government investment in economic opportunity for poor and working class members of society, and those who want to protect the interests of the affluent. Richardson shows how both forces have contributed to GOP policies over time, and suggests that leaders such as Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower represented a very different economic ideology than other leaders such as Hoover and Reagan. Differences in policy also lead to differences in coalitions; one of the noteworthy elements of Richardson's analysis is the role that such leaders played in keeping their party competitive during the political eras in which they lived. The first two helped to create a GOP resurgence, whereas Eisenhower helped to bring the GOP back from the brink of extinction after FDR swept the Democrats into power in the 1930s. Does the GOP Richardson described look like the GOP of today? How and why has the party evolved? What internal and external forces can we expect to contribute to the party's continued evolution?

[chasingthevote]

Curtis Wilkie examines the relationship between nativism (and racism) and populism among working class whites in the South at various points in history. For our purposes, the time periods that Wilkie is discussing occur around the time of the political realignment of 1896, as well as the later responses to Brown versus Board of Education (and the subsequent party readjustments on the issue of race that occur during the 1960s). Many other authors have written on the link between populism and nativism-- and Southerners were not the only group in society susceptible to either social force. What is particular about whites in the South is the manner in which they responded to nativist appeals-- in part, perhaps, due to the unique socio-demographic make-up of the South at this time. Most of the black population in the U.S. in the late 1800s still resided in the South (although this would soon change). At the same time, immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe tended to settle outside of the South-- which therefore remained, among the white population, mostly Protestant. While working class whites in other parts of the nation directed their anger at poor white newly arrived immigrants who represented potential economic threats (and perhaps cultural threats due to religious and language differences), for Southern whites, the "other" was even more clearly defined: the newly emancipated African American (who, unlike the white Southerner, would be likely voting for the GOP). This is overly simplified, of course. Even if the economy of the South had been booming, it is likely that white Southerners would have sought to limit the rights of blacks-- witness the post-Reconstruction antics of the states and localities involved. And, the 50s and 60s were hardly a time of economic downturn, yet Massive Resistance showed that white Southerners were willing to close the public schools rather than let black children attend them. But, populism as a sentiment is real, and it fuels political movements. Even during good economic times, sometimes large groups of people get left behind, fostering resentment-- resentment that can influence political behaviors, particularly if it becomes organized. Some of the most revealing books about the tea party movement tap into this notion of resentment-- although they differ with this author about the exact social class that is experiencing the resentment and why (is it working class people who have been left behind? or, a lightly educated middle class who feel that the world has changed somehow, and that their values are no longer the dominant ones and that what it takes to be in charge in this economy is somehow not what it used to be?). Journalists like to believe that there is a sameness to populist movements. We may need to look at more evidence to evaluate these claims.