The Republican and Democratic political parties in the US did not always agree with each other. When did Democrats and Republicans switch platforms? What is the reason?
The Free Dictionary describes a system of government in which power is divided between a central authority and a group of people. The transcontinental railroad, the state university system, and the settlement of the West were all funded by this. Those measures were opposed by the Democrats. The French newspaper Presse stated that the Republican Doctrine was the most liberal in its goals.
After the United States triumphed over the Confederate States at the end of the Civil War, Republicans passed laws that granted protections for Black Americans and advanced social justice, but this did not happen. Democrats objected to the expansion of federal power.
It sounds like an alternate universe. The year 1936.
The New Deal helped Franklin Roosevelt win reelection. The FDR Presidential Library and Museum described a set of reforms designed to help remedy the effects of the Great Depression. Roosevelt won the election by a huge margin because of the measures that were MzEd.
Between 1860 and 1936, the Democratic party of small government became the party of big government, and the Republican party of big government became rhetorically committed to curtailing federal power.
Davis pins the transition to the turn of the 20th century on William Bryan, a highly influential Democrat.
Republicans didn't immediately change their stance of favoring limited government.
There are seven great congressional dramas.
Both parties promise an augmented federal government devoted in various ways to the cause of social justice for a couple of decades. Republican rhetoric gradually shifted towards the counterarguments. In the 1930s, the party's small-government platform gained popularity due to its opposition to the New Deal.
Bryan and other turn-of-the-century Democrats advocated for big government.
They were trying to win the west. Both parties were vying for the attention of the new voting bloc created by the admission of new western states to the union.
The Civil War myths have been busted.
The Democrats were able to ingratiate themselves to western voters by showing that Republican federal expansions in the 1860s and 1870s were favorable to big businesses in the northeast.
The general public was promised some of the federal help that had previously been given to the business sector. Republicans were driven to the counter position of hands-off government after Democrats stuck with this stance.
The loyalties of the parties did not really change. "Although the rhetoric and the policies of the parties do change, their core supporters don't," he wrote, "which is to say, the Republicans remain, throughout, the party of bigger businesses."
Businesses need things that only a bigger government can provide, such as infrastructure development, a currency and tariffs. The government became better for business once these things were in place.
The original article was published on Live Science. The article was updated in October.