Why did the Northeast Reject the New Deal?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Well, okay it didn't really reject the New Deal, but look:In 1936, the only two states that voted for the GOP were Vermont and Maine. But why? We look today, and Vermont has elected a quasi-socialist. In 1940: Shift 5 points Wilkie's way, and every Northeastern State (even NY) except MA switches to the GOP. Throughout the 1950' s it voted for Eisenhower who was anything but a New Dealer.

So why was the strongest opposition to the New Deal from the Northeast, the region where liberalism is most confined today?
 
Well, okay it didn't really reject the New Deal, but look:In 1936, the only two states that voted for the GOP were Vermont and Maine. But why? We look today, and Vermont has elected a quasi-socialist. In 1940: Shift 5 points Wilkie's way, and every Northeastern State (even NY) except MA switches to the GOP. Throughout the 1950' s it voted for Eisenhower who was anything but a New Dealer.

So why was the strongest opposition to the New Deal from the Northeast, the region where liberalism is most confined today?

Well for one Liberalism does not equal the New Deal, Liberalism tends to oppose such things, but alas the American political vocabulary has bastardized terms to badly for it to matter to most I suppose.

Anyways, I would suspect because people don't focus just on economic issues.
 
Landon, Wilkie, and Dewey had the same opinions on WWII as FDR, so that cant be it. I also dont think there were many prominent Social issues in the 30's.
800px-1936prescountymap2.PNG

The only place of relatively strong GOP strength is the Northeast, why?
 
Well their was the ending of the Women's Rights movementn and at that time I beleive the Republican party was the socially liberal party, so that would explain it.
 
The only place of relatively strong GOP strength is the Northeast, why?

Uhmm, because New England was the biggest GOP bastion from the foundation of the party right up until recent living memory? Until the 1990's most of New England never voted Democrat except in landslide years.

Post-war, the GOP has steadily moved right. New England has stayed more or less where it's always been, politically, maybe moved slightly to the left. So electorally, the two have parted company.
 
What VJ said really, the Northeast has always been liberal in the classic sense of the word and prior to the rise of Progressivism in both parties in the 1910s when thing got really confusing until the 1950s, the Republicans were the liberal party and Democrats the conservative. The New Deal saw the switcharoo as FDR forged an alliance of pretty everyone in favour of federal intervention, the Unions, social conservatives, social liberals etc. this left the Republicans with a more 'small government' base. Add to that the fall of the Solid South when the Democrats pushed for Civil Rights, and even though it was the party of Lincoln, Nixon managed to win the southern whites over to the Republicans which pushed the party to the right and arguably gave Reagen's chaps the footing to start their conservative 'revolution'.

Bit messy but the gist is there. The Northeast hasn't really changed, its just the political parties have spent the last century doing a very painful flip-flop. Although New England is arguably 'liberal' it is more leaning sowards libertarianism than socialism or whatever other overblown description the American Right throws at the left.
 
How exactly do you figure the Northeast rejected the New Deal based on Maine & Vermont voting Republican as they always had (since the age of Lincoln) in '36, and Wilkie, er, not actually carrying any more states than those two in '40? (Dewey carried only those two states in '44 as well. It took the election of '48 for the GOP to return to winning almost the entire region, save for RI and the most populous New England state of Massachusetts.)

This isn't an Amity Shlaes theory, is it?
 
Landon, Wilkie, and Dewey had the same opinions on WWII as FDR, so that cant be it. I also dont think there were many prominent Social issues in the 30's.
800px-1936prescountymap2.PNG

The only place of relatively strong GOP strength is the Northeast, why?

Got any figures on how many people lived in those red and purplish red counties at the time?

Don't you think the then populations of New York City and Boston combined didn't vastly outnumber the populations of upstate New York, upstate MA, and the rest of New England?

This map is interesting, in that it proves that rural counties in the Northeast were more loyal to the GOP than those in the other traditional Republican strongholds of the Midwest and Great Plains, but unless you discount the urban populations of the entire region save for Vermont and Maine you haven't proven that "the Northeast rejected the New Deal".

Anyway, some of the other posters on this thread are at least partly right in their analysis--not that I think any of them support your original thesis.
 
What VJ said really, the Northeast has always been liberal in the classic sense of the word and prior to the rise of Progressivism in both parties in the 1910s when thing got really confusing until the 1950s, the Republicans were the liberal party and Democrats the conservative. The New Deal saw the switcharoo as FDR forged an alliance of pretty everyone in favour of federal intervention, the Unions, social conservatives, social liberals etc. this left the Republicans with a more 'small government' base. Add to that the fall of the Solid South when the Democrats pushed for Civil Rights, and even though it was the party of Lincoln, Nixon managed to win the southern whites over to the Republicans which pushed the party to the right and arguably gave Reagen's chaps the footing to start their conservative 'revolution'.

Bit messy but the gist is there. The Northeast hasn't really changed, its just the political parties have spent the last century doing a very painful flip-flop. Although New England is arguably 'liberal' it is more leaning sowards libertarianism than socialism or whatever other overblown description the American Right throws at the left.

Your comment is confused. Liberalism when Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge were young did not mean Big Government (as it does today) it meant the opposite - rolling back government. Republicans such as Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge were vastly more ANTI Big Government than modern Republicans are - and New England was a place where people thought that government should be a matter of local town meetings (and voluntary action - not really government at all) not Washington D.C. This it was perfectly natural for much of New England (including most people in Vermont and MAINE - Maine had voted for Franklin Roosevelt in 1932) to oppose Franklin Roosevelt when they found he was a Big Government person. As for the Democrats - most of them rejected small government Classical Liberalism as far back as the 1896 Convention (when they rejected Grover Cleveland). By this time the Democrats were very much the party of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. And other Big Government people - such as old Governor Bilbo of Mississippi.
 
Well, okay it didn't really reject the New Deal, but look:In 1936, the only two states that voted for the GOP were Vermont and Maine. But why? We look today, and Vermont has elected a quasi-socialist. In 1940: Shift 5 points Wilkie's way, and every Northeastern State (even NY) except MA switches to the GOP. Throughout the 1950' s it voted for Eisenhower who was anything but a New Dealer.

So why was the strongest opposition to the New Deal from the Northeast, the region where liberalism is most confined today?

New England in this period was still a region of CLASSICAL Liberalism (the opposite of modern "liberalism") - small government and voluntary cooperation, the area of Calvin Coolidge (voluntary association - with most government just being local town meetings). It did not, at that time, support the vast government and centralisation in Washington D.C. that Franklin Roosevelt (like Woodrow Wilson before him) represented in 1936.
 
Top
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top