AHC: Switch modern left and right in U.S. politics

What if the Democratic party had not shifted into the more socially concerned, progressive, and seemingly "minority-friendly" party and the Republicans had continued to be the more socially open-minded - forcing the Democratic Party to lean further and further right to keep its staunchly anti-civil rights Southern base and woo white Christian social-conservatives?

In other words: Do not allow the Republicans and Democrats to switch places socially in the mid-20th century but they can remain fiscally the same.

The South and right-wing Christians, etc. remain Democrat, while the minority and socially progressive vote goes to the Republicans.

POD no earlier than 1900 and no later than, let's say, the seventies.

And... GO!
 
That's very easy: FDR isn't nominated in 1932. Without his influence the Bourbons remain ascendant and the Democratic Party remains true to its federalist, small-government, fiscally conservative, free-trade roots. As for the GOP, have Frank Lowden instead of Harding in 1920, or TR lives to run and win in 1920 before stepping down in 1924 or dying in office before 1928.
 
It's pretty hard with a POD after 1900. FDR was just the culmination of a realignment trend within the Democratic Party. The only reason the Democrats were not confined to the South was the appeal to northern working class voters as well as rural populists. It was an uneasy balancing act that Northern leftists ended up winning by weight of numbers in the end.
 
The issue here is invariably factions. The parties used to be big tents, certainly with unifying things per party (GOP being pro business; Democrats being pro labor, for example), but with Left, Right, and Middle factions. It wasn't necessarily that one party was left wing and one was right wing; it was that a party was controlled by it's left wing faction, or by it's right wing faction.
In modern politics, that's been pretty well destroyed since each party is pretty much run by one faction with the other wing destroyed long, long ago.
 
At first glance I thought this meant that each party is controlled by "one faction", meaning both by the same faction. :p

How much of that is funny and how much of that is horrifyingly true we may never know...:eek:

At any rate, yes those are all very good suggestions but it would be more interesting for me personally if the shift came later. Like say when Rockefeller was a viable candidate for President or during the brief period of time when he was being considered (or was it merely suggested, RogueBeaver?) as RFK's vp pick.

Conversely, the Republican party after Carter began to woo white-wing fundamentalists and as saddening for the GOP as that has become, could it not have just as easily been attempted much earlier by a weaker than OTL Democratic Party?

OR, could different party switching in the 50's-70's (i.e. Reagan, etc.) have culminated in an alternate wing shift?

Making the GOP still small government but socially progressive and the Democratic party still big government but the party of the crazy white Christians (as depicted in the media, not my own opinion per se) is the ultimate goal here.
 
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RogueBeaver,

Just so you're aware this is for my version of the Kennedy/Nixon TL and I'm currently trying to Rockefellerize the GOP and force the Dems to appeal to the... er... let's call them the Falwells.

Help?
 
It's pretty hard with a POD after 1900. FDR was just the culmination of a realignment trend within the Democratic Party. The only reason the Democrats were not confined to the South was the appeal to northern working class voters as well as rural populists. It was an uneasy balancing act that Northern leftists ended up winning by weight of numbers in the end.

I'm more inclined to agree with this. The Bourbons were done when Bryan wn over the party.
 
Have the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed 10 years earlier under Eisenhower. That act being passed by a Democrat caused the conservatives to leave and become Republicans. Having Eisenhower pass it would mean that the Dixiecrats stay in the Dems while the Republicans stay the party of the socially liberal businessman.
 
Have the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed 10 years earlier under Eisenhower. That act being passed by a Democrat caused the conservatives to leave and become Republicans. Having Eisenhower pass it would mean that the Dixiecrats stay in the Dems while the Republicans stay the party of the socially liberal businessman.

That would pretty well work, although how Ike would pass a Civil Rights bill or even see the immediate need to is beyond my scope. Thank you though for the great suggestion, it's given me an idea for something else entirely.
 
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