Which US political party is more likely to disintegrate?

Which political party was more likely to collapse?

  • Republican Party

    Votes: 27 43.5%
  • Democratic Party

    Votes: 35 56.5%

  • Total voters
    62
Exactly what it says in the title: in the 20th century, were the Democrats or the Republicans more likely to collapse? Obviously, the collapse of a major political party is difficult to achieve and whichever one falls will be succeeded by a new party with a similar outlook, but how could each party collapse? Which scenarios are most likely?
 

Anchises

Banned
Exactly what it says in the title: in the 20th century, were the Democrats or the Republicans more likely to collapse? Obviously, the collapse of a major political party is difficult to achieve and whichever one falls will be succeeded by a new party with a similar outlook, but how could each party collapse? Which scenarios are most likely?

I am not that informed about U.S. politics but the Dixiecrat/Democrat split offers a lot of potential to wreck the Democratic party imho.
 
As much as a Dixiecrat/Democrat split could sink the Democratic Party, same could be said of Conservative/Moderate Republican split for the GOP. Tough to say, but if I had to choose one, I'd say the Republicans have a better chance of falling apart.
 
As much as a Dixiecrat/Democrat split could sink the Democratic Party, same could be said of Conservative/Moderate Republican split for the GOP. Tough to say, but if I had to choose one, I'd say the Republicans have a better chance of falling apart.

Fair assessment. Especially since the GOP also has to make it through situations like the Great Depression and Watergate while simultaneously weathering these divisions.
 
Fair assessment. Especially since the GOP also has to make it through situations like the Great Depression and Watergate while simultaneously weathering these divisions.

IMO the Republicans got pretty lucky following Watergate especially; Jimmy Carter winning in 1976 was a blessing for them. Had it been Gerald Ford, and had he been forced to deal with the same things Carter did, they might not have come out the other side a measly four years later.
 
I voted Democrat but I think I might actually go with the Republicans after some thought. If you could have Roosevelt change up his strategy a little in the 1912 election he might actually be able to win the primary, he beat Taft in the general election as it was anyways. In this eventuality perhaps Taft and the more conservative Republicans would be the ones who went and formed their own party while Roosevelt's progressive wing took control of the main party. The vote would still split and Woodrow would still win but the conservatives might not be as willing to return to the Republicans as the progressives were. I might be off my mark but I can see them being more stubborn about this sort of thing. If that came to pass the Republicans and this new Conservative party might try to chug on for a while before faltering out as a more unified Democratic party took advantage of their split until then both eventually faded away as a new political faction rose.
 
IMO the Republicans got pretty lucky following Watergate especially; Jimmy Carter winning in 1976 was a blessing for them. Had it been Gerald Ford, and had he been forced to deal with the same things Carter did, they might not have come out the other side a measly four years later.

Gerald Ford's administration from 1977-81 would probably have been unpopular, and the 1980 GOP presidential candidate (most likely Reagan) would probably have lost even if he tried to disassociate himself from the administration. But so what? Republicans had lost five presidential elections in a row in 1932-1948 without coming close to being destroyed as a party. A dislike of the policies of the new Democratic president after 1981 (especially if he's a liberal, as he would most likely be--the failure of Carter in 1976 would discredit the "we can only win with a southern moderate" argument among Democeats) would help unify Republicans, and they would probably regain some seats in Congress in the 1982 midterms. All talk about the death of the party would quite quickly disappear.
 
I imagine it would be very hard for the Democrats to recover if the Great Depression happened while they were in power.

Why? They presided over a terrible depression in 1893-6. Henry Adams wrote (a bit melodramatically) "Men died like flies under the strain, and Boston grew suddenly old, haggard, and thin." https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2044/old/eduha10h.htm In the 1894 election the Democrats lost 127 of their 220 seats in the House! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_1894 Yet the party survived and even came fairly close to winning the presidency in 1896...

Besides, in OTL presiding over the Great Depression did not kill the Republicans, so why should it kill the Democrats? If anything, they would be a little better off than the Republicans were in the 1930's in OTL, because at least the Democrats had the Solid South left as a base when they were losing elsewhere, whereas the Republicans had very few truly safe states.
 
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See Walter Lippmann's comments ("Why I Shall Vote for Davis," in the *New Republic,* October 29, 1924, reprinted in the chapter on the election of 1924 in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Fred L. Israel, and William P. Hansen, eds., *History of American Presidential Elections, 1789-1968,* Vol. III, p. 2578) about the futility of the 1924 La Follette Progressives' dream of replacing the Democrats as America's second party:

"First, the practical politics of the La Follette movement. Here in the East its supporters, the New Republic among them, are arguing that the new party is to destroy and supplant the Democratic party as the opposition to conservative Republicanism. This seems to me impossible. *The Democratic party is more or less indestructible because of the solid South.* [My emphasis--DT] A party which enters every campaign with roughly half the electoral votes [I assume that what Lippmann meant was "half of the electoral votes necessary for victory"--DT] is not in my opinion going to disappear. It seems extremely unlikely that La Follette will break the solid South, and almost as unlikely that the Southern Democrats will
coalesce, as the New Republic has suggested, with the Eastern Republicans. If the Democratic party survives, and if the Republican party survives, there is not under the presidential system of government any permanent future for a third party..."
 
Gerald Ford's administration from 1977-81 would probably have been unpopular, and the 1980 GOP presidential candidate (most likely Reagan) would probably have lost even if he tried to disassociate himself from the administration. But so what? Republicans had lost five presidential elections in a row in 1932-1948 without coming close to being destroyed as a party. A dislike of the policies of the new Democratic president after 1981 (especially if he's a liberal, as he would most likely be--the failure of Carter in 1976 would discredit the "we can only win with a southern moderate" argument among Democeats) would help unify Republicans, and they would probably regain some seats in Congress in the 1982 midterms. All talk about the death of the party would quite quickly disappear.

Potentially, yes, but that assumes the Republicans are able to unify. It does seem likely, admittedly, but what would they unify around? If we assume that the 1980 GOP candidate is Reagan, and we also assume that 1980 would be a bad election year for Republicans due to previous drama, that could put a serious dent in Republican conservatism. Which, from my understanding, was the movement that unified Republicans following Watergate. So, if that movement is seen as discredited by the loss of not only Barry Goldwater back in 1964, but now Ronald Reagan in 1980, I think it's possible that it fizzles out. Which leaves Republicans to find some new identity, a new path forward; which is easier said than done. But I do see what you're saying in general, and I think it's a fair assessment.
 
I am wondering if the "Roosevelt age" (including Truman's presidency) did allowed the Republicans in the long haul to survive. The Democrats handled the depression and WWII, the Republicans flied low, while the ideological switch allowed them to gain the South progressively.

Besides 24 years are still a generational gap. More than enough for the GOP establishment during the Depression age to being replaced, while the Americans were finally ready for a true alternance switch through Eisenhower.
 
Potentially, yes, but that assumes the Republicans are able to unify. It does seem likely, admittedly, but what would they unify around? If we assume that the 1980 GOP candidate is Reagan, and we also assume that 1980 would be a bad election year for Republicans due to previous drama, that could put a serious dent in Republican conservatism. Which, from my understanding, was the movement that unified Republicans following Watergate. So, if that movement is seen as discredited by the loss of not only Barry Goldwater back in 1964, but now Ronald Reagan in 1980, I think it's possible that it fizzles out. Which leaves Republicans to find some new identity, a new path forward; which is easier said than done. But I do see what you're saying in general, and I think it's a fair assessment.

The GOP could quickly unite on opposition to the policies of the new Democratic administration. For by the 1980's the ideological differences within the GOP were a lot less than they had been. There were very few liberal Republicans of the Jacob Javits or Clifford Case type left. The party would basically be divided between Right and Center-Right. That was hardly a gap likely to tear the party apart, when both wings of the party were closer to each other than they were to the Democrats.

The notion that conservatism would go away because conservatives had lost in both 1964 and 1980 (though I really doubt that Reagan would lose in a 1964-style landslide in 1980, no matter how unpopular Ford was) is very implausible. You might as well say that after 1936, 1940, 1944, and 1948, moderate Republicanism would be discredited--yet it went on to win in 1952! Or that after 1896 and 1900 the Democrats would be done with Bryanism once and for all--when in fact they nominated him again in 1908.
 
I voted Democrat but I think I might actually go with the Republicans after some thought. If you could have Roosevelt change up his strategy a little in the 1912 election he might actually be able to win the primary, he beat Taft in the general election as it was anyways. In this eventuality perhaps Taft and the more conservative Republicans would be the ones who went and formed their own party while Roosevelt's progressive wing took control of the main party. The vote would still split and Woodrow would still win but the conservatives might not be as willing to return to the Republicans as the progressives were. I might be off my mark but I can see them being more stubborn about this sort of thing. If that came to pass the Republicans and this new Conservative party might try to chug on for a while before faltering out as a more unified Democratic party took advantage of their split until then both eventually faded away as a new political faction rose.

If TR won the Republican nomination in 1912, he would moderate enough to keep the conservatives in the party. After all, he managed to balance the conservative and progressive wings of the party during his two terms as president. And even as candidate of the Progressive Party, his plan to tolerate but regulate trusts appealed to some businessmen who didn't like Taft's antitrust prosecutions. (It's also sometimes forgotten that TR did get the support of some Republican bosses against Taft--e.g., William Flinn of Pitttsburgh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Flinn)

In any event, if TR won the GOP nomination and did not succeed in conciliating the conservatives, he would probably lose to Wilson. Then the conservatives would see no need to leave the GOP; they would assume they could take it over again in 1916 with TR discredited.
 
Simply for age and growing internal divides, I'd be inclined to say the Democrats, but the reality is that while U.S. parties are weak compared to some countries, they are both internally robust institutions capable of adapting to changing conditions.
 
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