Happy Birthday, Republicans!

[MrFun]

I totally love your sig, Che.

[Ben Kenobi]

As for being a Western party, the only 'West' at the time in terms of States with sufficient population to be a politically influential power base was the Midwest which has closely aligned with the North East and together compromise the 'North' of the Civil war. Their was not yet any politically organized 'West' in the modern sense of the vast expanses of predominantly rural areas between the Mississippi and the Sierra Nevada.

Lincoln was considered a western politician back then because he was born in Kentucky and raised in Illinois.

The west back then was Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois and anything west of the Mississippi.

The North was everything north of the Mason-Dixon line, Pennsylvania, NY, NJ and New England.

[Ben Kenobi]

As you can see the Economic policies of the early Republicans were the polar opposite of their current positions, namely they were once Progressive. The splintering of the Republicans under Teddy Roosevelt was ware this Progressive streak left the GOP, during the Gilded age it migrated to the Democrats and has resided their ever since.

Whig positions were high tariffs, and subsidies for big business. TR wanted to keep busting the trusts which wasn't the positions of the Whigs who were there not to increase, but rather to decrease competition. TR called for health insurance.

TR was again, a western politician in the mould of Lincoln. The problem for TR in 1912, is that the west and north was split, allowing Wilson to win based on support from the south only.

Republican economics pretty much left the Whigs behind, and only resurfaced in the 1896 election with McKinley, to counteract Bryan who finally figured out that an alliance of the south and the west was necessary to defeat the republicans. McKinley brought the Bourbon democrats of the North on his side, while Bryan took the western farmers.

The interesting thing is that the so-called Gilded age represented the opposite strategy. Cleveland won by bringing in the former Whigs into the democrat party. From 1880-1896, the Democrat strategy was to win the entire south plus enough northern states (NY, NJ), that they could win the presidency. The west remained republican until the 1892 election when James Weaver ran. Weaver drew off the western Republicans, and Cleveland took the Northern whigs into the democrat party. The response by the republicans in 1896 was to pull the northern whigs back into the party, where they stayed throughout the first part of the 20th century.

Really, the gilded age represented the disaffected whigs shifting to the democrat party.

[RGBVideo]

Uh, yes.. VJ. They were radical because they wanted totally equal rights for blacks and to punish the South to make it so. They wanted a 1964 Civil Rights Act in the 1860s.

okay, first off: "radical" didn't mean left- or right-wing at all before the 1960s when "radical liberals" (in the 70s, shortened to "radicals" and getting it's current connotations) became a talking point of the republican party, pushed by patrick buchanan as a white house speechwriter.

wrt the actual expertise of oerdin: they were "radicals" because they wanted to punish the south and censure everything which could be understood as pro-rebel. the congress in the 1860s and 1870s was really more of a paternal autocrat pushing stronger federal government than a left-wing one. if we think about the social meaning of the word "liberal", it wasn't liberal at all, it was the opposite of liberal. if we think about the economic meaning of the word "liberal", republicans at control weren't liberal either, high tariffs and protectionism were one of the reasons why the war was fought with republicans demanding protectionism, or anti-liberal trade policy.

but really, what does the truth matter - truthiness triumphs over reality when wikipedia is the only thing you'll trust

[RGBVideo]

This is an oversimplification of what the Republican party stood for during its early years because you had Republicans within the new party taking different positions on the issues concerning race relations and slavery. Contrary to your post, not all Republicans were radical.

that's not the point. my point was that radical republicans were not called radicals because they were liberal or left-wing. they were called radicals because they did not want to compromise or to negotiate with the just-won south.

given the actual legislation which the radical wing of the republicans pushed immediately after the war, I thought it'd be obvious that oerdin would be laughed at so much that he'd quickly realize what an ass he made out of himself by pretending to be an expert on something he's not -- well, long story short: i overestimated the knowledge of history in this forum and underestimated the amount of self-importance

again