Ahira's Hangar

In light of current circumstance this will sound sort of silly, historically U.S. political parties have not been cause or ideological based. (notable exceptions are the abolitionist parties of the 19th century and the prohibitionist parties). This is a contrast to European parties which have always had an ideological basis of formation.

The Republican party after its start in the 1850s was a party popular with rural populations, non-ethnics, westerners, business elites and barons of industry.

The Democratic party had as its base, urbanites, ethnics (first and second generation immigrants), easteners, working classes and lower middleclass.

The described groupings were not ideological; however, the groupings that support the Republican might be thought to be more conservative than those supporting the Dems.

In 1964 this changed for the Reps. Goldwater's acceptance speech of his party's nomination was a call for conservatism as a political philosophy to claim the Republican party as its own.

In 1972 and nomination of George McGovern the Dems began to be identified as the party of liberal political philosophy.

Discuss comment.

As an outsider, I must say I've always considered even the "liberal" American politicians to be fairly "conservative," at least in terms of a more global definition of the two extremes.

--A