Would progressives have done better if the Republican had been their party

I am a left Liberal. Obviously at least into the 1880s the Democrats were so much the party of racism I would have voted for a Republican or a third party.

There was for a long tim a progressive element of the Republican party.

Could it have taken over the Republican Party.

My ideal fantasy sees FDR as a Republican, having defeated a conservative democrat in 1932, with no reason to be nice to the racist establishments in the South east.


How hard is this to imagine. Could shifting a few votes in 1916 have done it.

Alternatively had TR won in 1912 as a prog could the conservative Republican party have collapsed?
 
1. Well it's more complicated then that, every party was racist in the 1880s, it was just a matter of how racist. Obviously the Jim Crow Southern Democrats were the worst, but then the Northern Democrats and Republicans were at least willing to be open about the race issue, but the thing with the Democrats was the race issue fragmented them along regional lines. This opened the way for the Republicans to control the presidency for the better part of several decades, this is where the dynamic emerged that Democrats historically tend control Congress and Republicans historically tend to control the presidency.

2. No, not taken over, split it, 1912 taught us a lot of things, and one of them was that the Progressives could tear the Republicans apart in elections in the same way that regional issues would do for the Democrats. You can't just change the powers that be in the Republican Party, business business and business is the patron saint of the Republican Party and they aren't about to entertain politicians within their own party of the TR strain of thought.

3. TR has to get the GOP nomination in 1912 to win, even if he does substantially better than OTL he still is fighting with a divided base. It is a very, very Democratic year indeed. TR getting the convention nod means the establishment has to be okay with him, which wasn't going to happen.

4. Also the New Deal was shockingly progressive considering how many Southerners were actually in the New Deal coalition, that it wasn't going to be the most racially tolerant legislation ever passed in American history was a given, that it was as helpful of blacks as it turned out to be? That was actually pretty damn good.
 
Best way to make this happen is to have the Great Depression happen on a Democrat's watch, allowing a progressive Republican to take FDR's role. That was the moment when Democrats clearly became the more liberal of the two major parties, not withstanding the Dixiecrats.

Maybe have Hughes win in 1916, allow a Democrat - either a stroke-free Wilson or someone else, maybe William McAdoo - win in 1920, and then keep the Democrats in power throughout the 1920s boom.
 
Top