What would happen if Governor Thomas Dewey became President in 1948? How similar/different would his presidency have been from Eisenhower's? Would it have butterflied away the Dixiecrats eventually joining the GOP?
Well, he would have to deal with Korean War, which would break out anyway. But if he manages to pour billions of dollars into military budget right at the beginning of his presidency, then the US military might be in a better shape by the time of the war.
What would happen if Governor Thomas Dewey became President in 1948? How similar/different would his presidency have been from Eisenhower's? Would it have butterflied away the Dixiecrats eventually joining the GOP?
1) With very few exceptions, the Dixiecrats never joined the Republican Party. They died off or retired and were replaced by Republicans.
2) Dewey's presidency changing this is not a "butterfly effect", it is a knock-on. "Butterfly effects" are changes in highly contingent events, such as the conception of a particular child or a particular soldier being killed in a battle with light or moderate casualties.
Az to differences:
Dewey would have entered the Presidency before the Cold War had really started. There had been incidents (the Berlin Airlift) and NATO was being formed in late 1948 (established April 1949). But the US was still largely indifferent to the Communist threat. The US armed forces had been almost entirely disbanded after WW II; serious rearmament didn't start until 1950. At that point the Korean War broke out and the US confronted its military weakness. By the time Eisenhower took office in 1953, military spending was triple the 1950 level.
Maybe Dewey would increase military spending right after entering the WH. After all, by 1948, the GOP already had a majority in Congress.The US armed forces had been almost entirely disbanded after WW II; serious rearmament didn't start until 1950. At that point the Korean War broke out and the US confronted its military weakness.
Strom Thurmond was a Dixiecrat. He then joined the GOP.
Thurmond was one of the very few exceptions. The number of Southern Democrat Senators and Representatives who were elected before 1970 and "crossed the aisle" can be counted on one hand.
Maybe Dewey would increase military spending right after entering the WH. After all, by 1948, the GOP already had a majority in Congress.
The Republicans were not the same defense hawks as today. The fiscal conservative elements in the party were working for the sort of defense budgets that existed i the 1920s or 1930s. Of those who did support a larger defense budget many had drank the Kool Aid served up by Sec Def Louis Johnson and were favoring all the funds to the new USAF, reducing the Army & Navy to something less than the 1930s level of man power. Barely even a training cadre in the case of the Army. Many in both parties were fine with the Navy reducing its aircraft carrier force below the 1930s fleet to fund more B36 bombers & jet fighter planes.
The Republicans were not the same defense hawks as today. The fiscal conservative elements in the party were working for the sort of defense budgets that existed i the 1920s or 1930s. Of those who did support a larger defense budget many had drank the Kool Aid served up by Sec Def Louis Johnson and were favoring all the funds to the new USAF, reducing the Army & Navy to something less than the 1930s level of man power. Barely even a training cadre in the case of the Army. Many in both parties were fine with the Navy reducing its aircraft carrier force below the 1930s fleet to fund more B36 bombers & jet fighter planes.
But it’s fair to say that the Old Dixie block switched to the GOP overtime in response to civil rights.
As the south became less racist, it became more RepublicanNo, it is not. The lockstep loyalty of Southern whites to the Democratic Party was an extreme and unnatural condition. It arose as a response to the threat of domination by black Republican majorities in some states and many localities, during and after Reconstruction.
It was sustained because the national Democratic Party protected the white supremacy regime in the South - blocking any Republican efforts for civil rights legislation, even anti-lynching laws, and appointing only Dixiecrat whites to Federal offices in the South (Judges, US Attorneys).
This ended in 1948, when the Democrat convention adopted a civil rights plank at the behest of liberal northern Democrats, who were a majority in the party and no longer willing accomplices in Jim Crow.
(It occurs to me that this may have been affected by the Roosevelt landslides in the 1930s; from 1880 to 1930, the Democrats outside the South were a minority party and at times almost vestigial. For instance, after the 1928 elections, there were 97 Democrat Representatives from the South and only 62 from the rest of the country, compared to 261 Republicans. (NOTE: these numbers may not be exactly right. I used the Congressional Biographical Dictionary's list of Representatives in the 71st Congress, and there were more than 435, due to Representatives dying or resigning in mid-term and being replaced in special elections.) But from 1932, non-Southern Democrats became the majority in the party.)
The institutional loyalty of Southerners to the Democrats remained. There were mutinies at the presidential level, right up through 1968's Wallace campaign. But there was very little change at the state level. Republicans did make progress in the South in the 1950s and 1960s, but it was mainly in areas that were outside the traditional "Solid South": Texas and Florida, and also Tennessee, which had always had a relatively strong Republican Party (electing governors in 1910, 1912, 1920).
There wasn't any great shift to the Republicans, because the Republican position on civil rights was essentially the same as the non-Southern Democrats. Then, with the 24th Amendment, the Voting Rights Act, and the Civil Rights Act, the white supremacy regime was overthrown - abolished, wiped out. This happened in the mid-1960s, and was <i>not</i> revoked by Republicans.
White Southerners were no longer constrained in their voting by the defense of white supremacy, and began to consider other issues. On these other issues, most of them were <i>not</i> in sympathy with non-Southern Democrats. In the 1972 election, Democrats nominated a relatively far-left Democrat for President, spurning mainstream liberals. They even expelled Chicago Mayor Richard Daley from the convention as insufficiently progressive. This allowed Republican Richard Nixon to paint the Democrats as the party of "Acid [drugs], amnesty [for draft evaders], and abortion" - i.e. not mentioning race. Nixon easily swept the South, along with the rest of the country. However, it should be noted that five old-bull Dixiecrat Senators that were up that year were all easily re-elected as Democrats. Republicans won a seat in NC, where the old-bull had been defeated in the primary, and defeated a first-term incumbent in VA.
That was the pattern for the next 50 years: the Dixiecrats died off, retired, were primaried by other Democrats. Many of the "yellow-dog" Democrat voters died off as well. New cohorts of white Southern voters entered the voting population. They had no interest in white supremacy (it was dead), and most had no sympathy for the increasingly liberal tone of the Democrats. So they became Republicans, and began to elect Republican state and local officials.
It should be noted that this process took about 35 years. Texas still elected more Democrat Representatives than Republicans as late as 2002, thirty years after Nixon's sweep.
As the south became less racist, it became more Republican
What would happen if Governor Thomas Dewey became President in 1948?
How similar/different would his presidency have been from Eisenhower's?
Would it have butterflied away the Dixiecrats eventually joining the GOP?
Dean Acheson, who was Truman's Secretary of State, in 1949 omitted South Korea in a description of the US's "defense perimeter" in Asia. In conjunction with the U.S. pullout of troops that, this was taken by the Communists as the U.S. indirectly saying it didn't consider Korea a vital interest and wouldn't intervene in the region. Without a Truman Administration in power, you could thus avoid the Acheson speech as well as have an ongoing U.S. buildup, which should deter the Communists and thus prevent the Korean War.
But let's go back to 1948 and Dewey in the White House instead of Truman. By late 1949 the Air Force has a bit more money AND is not given a direct choice between "bombers" OR "R&D" but both AND some little more cash to spend. It was very true that a majority of the Air Force brass saw ICBMs as future "Buck Rodgers" weapons, however, they were also well aware that description included the Atomic bomb so funding is likely not going to dry up as completely as it did OTL. More to the point Lovett's proposed defense spending was towards "preparedness and deterrence" rather than "reactive and massive retaliation" so he was likely more open to possible 'future' weapons systems like the ICBM.