AHC: Republican Party dies during the 1930's

During the 1936 the Democratic Party hit one of the greatest majorities of congressional history (322/435 House seats: 77% and 76/96 Senate Seats: 80%) Some people even thought the Republicans would disband after this.

My question to you is, how could they have disbanded, who would have taken up their mantle, and how would this affect the American Political Landscape?
 
More of a Democratic hegemony. You'll probably see an American version of the PCs appear, since Truman would have made the Fair Deal go.

By the way, the Dems WILL be called the GOP, since they would have outlived two opposing parties (Whigs and Republicans)
 
How fast does the Democratic party breaks apart into two new parties? I doubt one party rule would last beyond one midterm cycle.
 
In many places in the south post reconstruction through the civil rights era the democratic primary was the election so you did see it in part of the country to a degree.
 
You'd need a disastrous election, both on the federal and state levels, in 1938 and 1940, for the Republicans to be well and truly finished as a major party. So you'd have to avoid the 37-38 recession, and probably have battles within the Republican Party over the party's future. Say, pro-New Deal Republicans having vary bloody and public political disputes with traditionalists, to the point where they end up demoralizing Republicans, potentially splitting the vote, or even joining the Democratic Party.

So, you'd need bad results in 38, a wave of defections and retirements, and then crucially, no Wilkie type moderate in 40. Some traditionalist has to win the nomination and choose to stay the course. Then maybe the party's organization would whither out of major party status.

Ultimately, the new hegemonic Democratic Party will not last for long. Most likely, former Republicans and such just end up joining the party, leading to an internal conflict over the party's future. In this case, what is most likely are two factions defecting from the Democrats. A more left-wing faction, closely allied with organized labor and probably a focus of entryism by socialist and communist groups, and a Southern Dixiecrat faction.
 

Japhy

Banned
I'm not sure that you could kill a party with a few defeats that quickly. The Whigs only imploded at the speed they did because of the Slavery issue and the Know-Nothings.

If the Republicans lost in 1952, after 20 years of losing the White House (Especially if they don't have their 1946/48 gains) then yeah I think the Party would break up, but in the 1930's, just 4 years after holding the White House, there can always still be hope.
 
I'm not sure that you could kill a party with a few defeats that quickly. The Whigs only imploded at the speed they did because of the Slavery issue and the Know-Nothings.

If the Republicans lost in 1952, after 20 years of losing the White House (Especially if they don't have their 1946/48 gains) then yeah I think the Party would break up, but in the 1930's, just 4 years after holding the White House, there can always still be hope.
The source of party strength isn't in the federal government though. It's state governments. That's the key: decisive losses in the control of state governments. Without effective state organizations to develop crediblity and channel resources, no party can hope to really be viable on the national scale.

That's why avoiding any reversal of Democratic dominance in the 30s is absolutely crucial. It's the best chance to really destroy the Republican's last remaining strongholds, and push them out of control of state governments.
 
How's this for a vague and broad start: Dems do a little better in 1936, Republicans really start pushing isolationism and the hard core of Republican Senators filibuster defense bills. The USS Panay incident breaks out and escalates into an American-Japanese War, and the slow speed of US response is blamed on the Republicans. FDR is too busy with the war to bother with court packing, and the conservative Rep/Dem alliance doesn't gel like it did OTL. By the end of the war in 1940, FDR has just won an unprecedented third term on the ticket of the revived National Union Party. The last few Republicans hang on for a while yet, but they're a fading shadow of the past.

Of course, in the next few years, the powerful unified force of southern Democrats and conservative ex-Republicans ends up driving many liberal Democrats and ex-Republicans into the arms of the Wisconsin-born Progressive Party...
 
Wealthy Democrats like the DuPonts, Southern populists like Eugene Talmadge of Georgia, conservative Democrats like Senator Josaiah Bailey of North Carolina, and Bourbon Democrats like Albert Ritchie of Maryland decide to not go against the President directly by challenging him in the presidential election or forming a Conservative Coalition in Congress with the Republicans, but instead focus on an internal battle in primaries to increase their size in the Democratic party.

Under this thinking, rather than an influx of conservative Republicans being what imbalances the Democrats towards splitting in two, simply working on more productive internal organization building than on disastrous attempts to go against FDR's massive personal popularity could create a conservative party within the Democratic party.

If the DuPont's and the American Liberty League put the energies they put into an unsuccessful challenge to the President on a personal level into winning Democratic primaries and generals against liberal Republicans for free market Democrats, if Bailey didn't write the Conservative Manifesto with the Republican Vandenberg but instead formed a Conservative caucus among the Democrats, if the Conservative Coalition was never formed; all that energy put directly into the party and into seizing state and local governments instead could lay the seeds for a Democratic conservative revolution.

I won't say that it would gestate quickly enough to forcibly prevent FDR from running for a third term, but it could mean a conservative like Garner was takes the VP slot in 1940, and that instead of Truman you have a post-war Return to Normalcy by a Veep running on FDR's coattails war-wise while reversing his domestic policies.
 
FDR does not pull back from the New Deal and worry about the deficit so there is not the 1938 recession

Insteaad of court packing he goes for amending the constittions to strengthen social and economiic powers./

Republicans run an out an out isolationist in 1940

They are associated with defeatism and so on after 1942
 
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