When parties behaved this way in the 1850s and the 1890s, the answer was quite simple: Democrats in the 1850s and Republicans in the 1890s each fervently believed their opponents would hurt business and thereby destroy America. To stay in power, they increasingly limited the vote, and accused those who wanted to level the playing field between those at the top of the economic ladder and those at the bottom of wanting to destroy individualism by redistributing wealth. They were, in short, socialists. In the 1850s, the Civil War stopped the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a rich elite; in the 1890s, the elite consolidated power and took the vote from people of color and wage laborers.
Aren’t we looking at pretty much the same conflict right now? GOP voters want power just to dominate people of color and women, while GOP leaders want power to consolidate wealth?
Sure looks like that to me.
-Heather Cox Richardson, Boston College
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