AHC: Destroy the democrats on the presidential level
- Thread starter Zajir
- Start date
Napoleonrules
Banned
To do that you'd have to either ASB the TL or make the Republican party not what the Republican Party stands for today and basically the Republican party in this ATL would have the platform of the OTL democratic party.
Do you mean make it so that it's still a two-party, Republican-Democrat system, but the Republicans perpetually control the presidency? That's virtually impossible; eventually, people would get fed up with the Republicans and elect a Democrat or the Democrats would fall apart and be succeeded by another party.
It doesn't mean that Republicans always win, it means that nobody who is/calls himself a Democrat wins.
So you could have stuff like OTL Liberal Republicans supported by Democrats in 1872, Independents supported by Democrats, an ATL Populist nominee supported by Democrats OR the Democrats simply change their name
Deleted member 83898
Have Blaine win in 1884 (it was close) and win re-election in 88. Right there, you've already locked out the Dems for 32 years. Have a Populist win in '92 and the Panic occur as IOTL, have a GOP guy win a realigning election in 1896, and the Democrats should be extinct, replaced probably by the Populists.
In that case, it's pretty easy. Just have the Democrats fall apart and get the replaced by another party like the Federalists and Whigs did. I'd say the Liberal Republicans (somehow) winning in 1872 could do the trick.
Radical reconstruction works, free elections in Mississippi and South Carolina could not have been won by Democrats and some other former rebel states might have gone the same way- especially if there were a retreat from the South by some white folk
For all of you saying that 24 years is too long (8 of which, mind you, were from elections where many Democrats were ineligible to vote), why isn't there such a problem with 28 to 40 years of one winning the presidency starting in 1800? Depending on whether you consider the Democrats and the Democratic-Republicans the same party, one of those numbers is valid.
Anyway, I find this scenario perfectly plausible. By whatever method (more radical reconstruction is the most obvious), the Democrats are utterly discredited as a party due to the taint if secession. A new party with a similar enough platform is formed, lets call it the Constitutional Federalist party (in opposition to the centralizing policies of the GOP, while also paying homage to the idea of the indivisible federal union). Dispirited Democrats join and they win the Preisdency, the final nail in the Democrats' coffin.
Challenge completed.
Anyway, I find this scenario perfectly plausible. By whatever method (more radical reconstruction is the most obvious), the Democrats are utterly discredited as a party due to the taint if secession. A new party with a similar enough platform is formed, lets call it the Constitutional Federalist party (in opposition to the centralizing policies of the GOP, while also paying homage to the idea of the indivisible federal union). Dispirited Democrats join and they win the Preisdency, the final nail in the Democrats' coffin.
Challenge completed.
A successful Reconstruction as envisioned by Stevens and Summer seems like a good start, certainly-the destruction of the Southern Democrats' social base was basically a core part of their plans, and between the freemen and carpetbagger/scalwag populations there are enough votes to secure most of the former confederacy for the GOP for as long as the Dems are still the party of slavery and treason.
I can see this only if McClellan comes to power and *then* loses the Civil War (both of which I consider unlikely). If the Civil War is lost under a Republican administration, people are a lot more likely to blame the Republicans. After all, the worse the Union seemed to be doing in the ACW in OTL, the better the Democrats did in elections.
But what if the ACW goes worse, with a stalemate on both eastern and western fronts, and the Democrats win the 1864 election and sign a peace treaty with the Confederacy? Would that work?