The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Republican

A few weeks ago President Obama had a health care reform conference with Democrats and Republicans to try to reach a bipartisan consensus on a health care reform bill. From what I read and what I watched on youtube, some interesting debates occurred between the participants, but no real consensus was formed. I personally think that a lack of consensus was reached because the idealogical gap between conservative Republicans and moderate and liberal Democrats is just too great for there to be much compromise. The Republicans in Congress right now have too strong a belief in the ability of the markets to resolve major national issues to jibe with the Democrats belief in the government's role in curbing the worst excesses of a market economy. I strongly support the efforts of President Obama and the Democrats to pass the health care reform bill, and support their tactic of using the legislative maneuver of reconciliation to achieve it. Though partisan politics have always been a part of the United States history, why have so few Republicans crossed party lines to work with Democrats in an important national issue? To find the solution, I think one needs to look at the history of the Republican Party and the rise and fall of the Progressive Republican within its ranks.

There used to be a strong progressive Republican tradition, dating from the Radical Republicans in the 1860s to Teddy Roosevelt and Robert LaFollette in the early twentieth century. These Progressive Republicans worked to abolish slavery, protect the civil rights of African Americans, break trusts and regulate corporations, protect the environment, and make a more democratic government. At one time, the Republicans were better on civil rights than the Democrats.

The Republican Party was founded in the 1850s to restrict the spread of slavery. Many of these new Republicans were disenchanted former members of the Whig Party, who had been the main rivals of the Democratic Party in the 1830s and 1840s. The Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854 destroyed the Whig Party and gave the Republican Party the environment to come into being. This Act had this effect because it allowed the residents in the new territories to decide whether slavery was to exist, thus rendering null the Compromis of 1820, which stated that slavery was to be forbidden in any territory or state north of the line 36 degrees, 30 minutes.

Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican President, elected in 1860, and he was one of this country's greatest Presidents. During the Civil War, the Lincoln administration greatly expanded the role of government in the economy and in the fight against the Confederacy, creating a National Banking System, adopting an income tax, creating the Department of Agriculture, and adopting a draft. Lincoln argued that the national government held sway over the states, and used the implied powers of the War Powers in the Consitution to free the slaves in the South under the Emancipation Proclamation. After meeting Frederick Douglass, Lincoln allowed African Americans to serve in the Union armies, and as he saw their valor in battle, Lincoln grew stronger as an advocate of African Americans' civil rights. He set up the Freedman's Bureau for the freed slaves and lobbied for the Thirteenth Amendment, which would permanently abolish slavery in the whole nation.

While Abraham Lincoln was trying to steer the nation through the Civil War and was slowly working for progress for African Americans, Radical Republicans were pushing for stronger laws to protect the rights of the newly freed slaves. These Radical Republicans were led by Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, and they worked to expand the rights of African Americans through such laws as the Fourteenth Amendment, the Fifteenth Amendment, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875. These laws enabled the first African American Congressman and Senators to be elected to Congress, including such distinguished men as Hiram Revels of Mississippi, Robert Smalls, Benjamin Turner of Alabama, Jefferson Long of Georgia, Robert De Large, Robert Brown Elliott, and Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina, and Josiah Walls of Florida. After the era of Reconstruction was over, however, and President Rutherford B. Hayes began withdrawing soldiers from the South, white southerners intimidated their African American neighbors and began reasserting their political dominance through segregation laws and Jim Crow. Republicans like George Frisbie Hoar continued to speak out for the rights of African Americans, as well as of Native Americans and Chinese American who were facing similar persecution.

The 1860s and 1870s saw a rapid rise in industrialization in America, and the Republican Party pushed for laws that promoted economic growth through high tariffs and generous subsidies. Thus their party began to strongly strengthen their their ties to big business. This caused a fissure between the more socially conscience and progressive elements of the Republican Party and the part of the Republican Party that promoted the interests of big business. Businesses such as steel, the railroads, and oil were being consolidated under the leadership of businessmen like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan, and they pursued ever greater profits, ignoring the plight of the underprivileged and the workers. The gap between the rich and the poor widened, as laborers worked for low wages and often sweatshop conditions, they worked in dangerous conditions, women and children worked for even less pay than men, and they worked for long hours set by the industry heads. In addition, the rush to exploit the nations' natural resources led to great polllution problems and the decimation of much natural habitat. The Panic of 1873, the result of overspeculation in railroad construction, led to bank failures, widespread unemployment and the near collapse of the economy. The resulting Long Depression and the Panic of 1893 led to worsening conditions for the average worker and farmer. These conditions led to the fight of radicals and progressive reformers to rectify the problems that the unfettered free markets were causing.

President Teddy Roosevelt developed a philosophy that became known as the Square Deal, which expanded the government's regulatory powers over privative industry through such acts as the Elkins Act of 1903 and the Hepburn Act of 1906 to control rates on railroads, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 to regulate the food industry, and the Antiquities Act of 1906 which gave the government the power to restrict the use of government owned land. Roosevelt felt that the growth of corporations and big business was inevitable, and that a strong federal government with strong regulatory powers was necessary to act as a referee between socially useful corporations and predatory corporations. In the book Grand Old Party: A History of the Republicans by Lewis L. Gould, Teddy Roosevelt is quoted as saying:

"The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the State, and the State not only has the right to control them, but it is in duty bound to control them whenever the need of such control is shown."

Roosevelt's willingness to use the government to regulate businesses put him in opposition of the more conservative and business friendly segment of the Republican Party, led by Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich, Orville H. Platt, John Coit Spooner, and William Boyd Allison, who fought efforts of reform. To the left of Teddy Roosevelt in the Republican Party were the Progressive Republicans, led by Albert Baird Cummins and Robert La Follette, who fought for direct primaries to give more power to the people, fought for more stringent railroad regulation, and wanted higher taxes on corporations. As Lewis L. Gould noted in his book, the Progressive Republicans did not want to overthrow the capitalist system, but they did want to challenge the power of corporations over the American political and economic landscape. This brought the Progressive Republicans in direct confrontation with the more conservative Republicans, resulting in the split in the 1912 elections, when the regular Republican members renominated William Taft, and Teddy Roosevelt bolted the party and ran under the Progressive Republican ideology through his Bullmoose Party. The defeat of Taft and Roosevelt to Democrat Woodrow Wilson led to a slow decline over the decades of the Progressive Republicans, as the Republican Party became more conservative and became more the party of big business. Gould would write of the aftermath:

"But in the long run, the Republicans were likely to win back some of the progressives who had left with Roosevelt and regain their position as the leading challenger to the Democrats. In the meantime, the conclusion of most of the party was, as one of them wrote, 'If the Republican Party is to have a future, it must be on conservative lines; it must be the great conservative party of the nation.'"

The conservative and business elements of the Republican Party gained strength during the presidencies of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s, and would gain strength in the 1940s and 1950s. But moderate and liberal Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Cabot Lodge and William Scranton continued to have some sway in the party. A major turning point in the dominance of conservatives in the Republican Party was the candidacy of Barry Goldwater for President in 1964. A strong libertarian and anticommunist, Goldwater ran an uncompromisingly conservative campaign where he declared ""Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.""Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." Though he lost the elections to Lyndon Johnson, Goldwater emboldened the conservative movement within the Republican Party that saw its fruition in the Ronald Reagan presidency in the 1980s. Gould wrote of the 1964 elections:

"The importance of the contest lay in its enduring effects on American politics for the next three decades. The defection of the moderate Republicans from the Goldwater-Miller ticket assured continuing conservative dominance of the party one the election results were counted. Whatever moderate Republicanism was, that faction of the part had both shrunk and shifted rightward at the same time to remain within the party. Although Goldwater lost in a national rout, he established a more permanent base for the GOP in the South. The Republican candidate carried Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, and ran well in Florida and the Deep South even in states that he lost. In South Carolina,, Senator Strom Thurmond made a public conversion to the GOP that proved significant for the party in the future. The process by which the South became a GOP bastion took time to unfold, but Lyndon Johnson correctly anticipated the impact of the Democratic adherence to civil rights and the Goldwater candidacy on the political allegiance of the states of the old Confederacy."

The Reagan presidency coalesced the conservative trends started by Goldwater that continued in the 1970s from business interests, the conservative christian Moral Majority, and conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation. Moderate Republicans began to slowly shrink in number, as conservatives began to dominate the intellectual debate in the party. When moderate Republican John Anderson ran for President in the Republican primaries in 1980, his opponents often questioned whether Anderson was really a Republican because of his social liberalism, ignoring his fiscal conservatism. The Rockefeller Republican became more scarce in the 1980s and 1990s, as the Republican Party became more uniformly conservative. With the growing uniformity of thought of the Republican Party, bipartisan collaborations were becoming more rare. In a June 23, 1996 article entitle Why Today's Politics Stink, David Broder writes:

"The need for cross-party friendships is even greater now than in the past because the ideological differences between the parties have grown. And in both the House and Senate, a bloodless version of 'ethnic cleansing' has been taking place within each party.

For most of the postwar period, Democratic congressional majorities included a kaleidoscope of personalities and views, ranging from Northern liberals like Humphrey, Hart, and McGovern to Southern conservatives like Sam Ervin, John Stennis and Harry Byrd. But the conservative Southern Democrats began to disappear after the civil rights revolution. In the House, some of their seats are now held by African-Americans. But most of the House seats and all of the Senate seats that have switched parties are filled by conservative Republicans. As a result, the center of gravity in the House and Senate Democratic caucuses has moved north and moved left.

Exactly the opposite has been happening to the Republicans. With Southerners now in the top leadership positions in both House and Senate, the congressional GOP is much more uniformly conservative than it was when Dole arrived. And just as conservative Republicans have replaced conservative Democrats in the South, so liberal Democrats have replaced moderate and liberal Republicans who once were numerous in New England, the Middle Atlantic states, the Midwest and the Northwest.

As each party has become more homogeneous in terms of philosophy, there has been less tolerance of dissent. The penalties for deviating from the party line have increased.

The differences of view- even of philosophy- between the parties are genuine. But the press treats these disagreements as if they were narrowly partisan and the public often sees these battles simply as evidence of small minded, churlish behavior- and condemn everyone involved, regardless of party label. The result is a more polarized, less productive Congress- and one which the public has come to despise."

Though this article was written in 1996, I see the same things happening in Congress today. I believe President Obama's efforts to to reach out to Republicans and reach some bipartisan consensus on this health care reform bill are genuine, but I also think the Republicans and moderate and liberal Democrats are too ideoligically apart for there to be any meaningful collaboration. The Republican ideas on free markets and small government are too opposed to the Democrats ideas of the necessity of the federal government to regulate the health care industry. During the health care summit, the Republicans did not invite moderates such as Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, or Judd Gregg, who have expressed a willingness to compromise and meet the Democrats half way. Instead, the Republicans who were invited to the summit have been uncompromising in their opposition of the health care reform bill. In this atmosphere, I think Obama and the Democrats have no choice but to go the route of reconciliation. Though it's an imperfect bill, the March 6, 2010 editorial of the New York Times makes an argument that I agree with, saying that it'll still help 30 million people who are now uninsured. The same paper has a graphic that shows the 20 times since 1980 that the 20 times that the reconcilation process has been used.

Though I am a liberal Democrat, there are Republicans I respect. I admire Barry Goldwater's support of gay rights and his fight against the influence of the Religious Right. I respect Jack Kemp's attempts to use enterprise zones and free market ideas to try to revitalize poor neighborhoods and help the poor in the 1980s. I admire Orrin Hatch's collaborations with Ted Kennedy to pass many bills that helped millions of Americans with their health coverage, helped AIDs victims receive needed care, and fought discrimination. Though these times are more partisan, I hope a time in the future will come when there will be more bipartisan laws coming out of Congress. The efforts of conservatives within the Republican Party to purge their party of moderates is unhealthy for both the Republican Party and the nation, and I think eventually there will be a backlash within the party. As a liberal, I'm sometimes frustrated by the Blue Dogs within the party, but I also think in the long run, the Democratic Party is healthier for having a diversity of views. As a liberal, I think progressives have to agitate and push the political center more to the left, as Reagan was successful in the 1980s in pushing the political center to the right. If progressives do the work of agitating and arguing their points and changing the points of views of the people in the middle of the road, moderate Democrats will follow wherever the political center moves.

The nation has always had partisan politics. In the 1790s, the Federalists and the Republicans were having similar political arguments about a strong federal government as opposed to states rights. These arguments broke friendships and threatened to pull the nation apart. When Thomas Jefferson was elected President in 1800, he said something in his inaugural that could also be applied today. He said:

"During the contest of opinion through which we have passed the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good. All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and less by others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety. But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government can not be strong, that this Government is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest Government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern. Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government."