Boll weevils (named for the type of beetle which feeds on cotton buds) was an American political term used in the mid-to-late 20th century to describe conservative Democrats, particularly Southern Democrats.
Boll weevils (named for the type of beetle which feeds on cotton buds) was an American political term used in the mid-to-late 20th century to describe conservative Democrats, particularly Southern Democrats.
During and after the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, conservative Southern Democrats were part of the coalition generally in support of the economic policies of Democratic presidents Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, dubbed the New Deal and Fair Deal respectively, but were opposed to desegregation and the civil rights movement.
On several occasions between 1948 and 1968, prominent conservative Southern Democrats broke from the Democrats to run a third party campaign for President on a platform of states' rights: Strom Thurmond in 1948, Harry F. Byrd in 1960, and George Wallace in 1968. In the 1964 presidential election, five states in the Deep South (then a Democratic stronghold) voted for Republican challenger Barry Goldwater over Southern Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, partly due to Johnson's support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Goldwater's opposition to it.
After 1968, with desegregation a settled issue, the Republican Party began a strategy of trying to win conservative Southerners from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party (see Southern strategy and silent majority).
Representative Howard W. Smith of Virginia took up the boll weevil as a symbol in the 1950s, during Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration, [1] but the term did not gain currency until the 1980s, when it was revived by Representative Charles W. Stenholm of Texas. The group adopted the name of the boll weevil, a pest destructive to cotton crops, because of the difficulty of eradicating the weevil and the pest's range in the Southern United States. [2]
Nonetheless, a bloc of conservative Democrats, mostly Southerners, remained in the United States Congress throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These included Democratic House members as conservative as Georgia's Larry McDonald, who was also a leader in the John Birch Society.
During the administration of Ronald Reagan, the term "boll weevils" was applied to this bloc of conservative Democrats, who consistently voted for Reagan administration policies, such as tax cuts, increases in military spending, and deregulation. [2] [3] The boll weevils were contrasted with the "gypsy moth Republicans"—moderate Republicans from the Northeast and Midwest who opposed many of Reagan's economic policies. [2]
Most of the Democratic boll weevils eventually retired from politics, or in the case of some, such as Senators Phil Gramm of Texas and Richard Shelby of Alabama, switched parties and joined the Republicans. [4] Since 1988, the term "boll weevils" has fallen out of favor.
A bloc of conservative Democrats in the House, including some younger or newer members as well as the remaining boll weevils who refused to bow to pressure to switch parties, organized themselves as the "Blue Dogs" in the early 1990s. [2] A different bloc of Democrats also emerged in the 1990s, under the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), espousing pro-business views on economic issues and moderate views on social issues.
The 1964 United States presidential election was the 45th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 3, 1964. Incumbent Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson defeated Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee, in a landslide. Johnson was the fourth and most recent vice-president to ascend to the presidency following the death of his predecessor and to win a full term in his own right. With 61.1% of the popular vote, Lyndon B. Johnson won the largest share of the popular vote for the Democratic Party in history, and the highest for any candidate since the advent of widespread popular elections in the 1820s.
The New Deal coalition was an American political coalition that supported the Democratic Party beginning in 1932. The coalition is named after President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs, and the follow-up Democratic presidents. It was composed of voting blocs who supported them. The coalition included labor unions, blue-collar workers, racial and religious minorities, liberal white Southerners, and intellectuals. Besides voters the coalition included powerful interest groups: Democratic Party organizations in most states, city machines, labor unions, some third parties, universities, and foundations. It was largely opposed by the Republican Party, the business community, and rich Protestants. In creating his coalition, Roosevelt was at first eager to include liberal Republicans and some radical third parties, even if it meant downplaying the "Democratic" name. By the 1940s, the Republican and third-party allies had mostly been defeated. In 1948, the Democratic Party stood alone and survived the splits that created two splinter parties.
The States' Rights Democratic Party was a short-lived segregationist political party in the United States, active primarily in the South. It arose due to a Southern regional split in opposition to the regular Democratic Party. After President Harry S. Truman, the leader of the Democratic Party, ordered integration of the military in 1948 and other actions to address civil rights of African Americans, including the first presidential proposal for comprehensive civil and voting rights, many Southern white politicians who objected to this course organized themselves as a breakaway faction. They wished to protect the ability of states to maintain racial segregation. Its members were referred to as "Dixiecrats", a portmanteau of "Dixie", referring to the Southern United States, and "Democrat".
American electoral politics have been dominated by successive pairs of major political parties since shortly after the founding of the republic of the United States. Since the 1850s, the two largest political parties have been the Democratic Party and the Republican Party—which together have won every United States presidential election since 1852 and controlled the United States Congress since at least 1856. Despite keeping the same names, the two parties have evolved in terms of ideologies, positions, and support bases over their long lifespans, in response to social, cultural, and economic developments—the Democratic Party being the left-of-center party since the time of the New Deal, and the Republican Party now being the right-of-center party.
The Rockefeller Republicans were members of the United States Republican Party (GOP) in the 1930s–1970s who held moderate-to-liberal views on domestic issues, similar to those of Nelson Rockefeller, Governor of New York (1959–1973) and Vice President of the U.S. (1974–1977). Rockefeller Republicans were most common in the Northeast and the industrial Midwestern states, while they were rare in the South and the West.
The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion of the Southern United States. The term was first used to describe the states which were most economically dependent on plantations and slavery. After the American Civil War ended in 1865, the region suffered economic hardship and was a major site of racial tension during and after the Reconstruction era. Before 1945, the Deep South was often referred to as the "Cotton States" since cotton was the primary cash crop for economic production. The civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s helped usher in a new era, sometimes referred to as the New South. The Deep South is part of the highly-religious, socially conservative Bible Belt and is currently a Republican Party stronghold.
In American politics, the Southern strategy was a Republican Party electoral strategy to increase political support among white voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans. As the civil rights movement and dismantling of Jim Crow laws in the 1950s and 1960s visibly deepened existing racial tensions in much of the Southern United States, Republican politicians such as presidential candidate Richard Nixon and Senator Barry Goldwater developed strategies that successfully contributed to the political realignment of many white, conservative voters in the South who had traditionally supported the Democratic Party. It also helped to push the Republican Party much more to the right relative to the 1950s. By winning all of the South a presidential candidate could obtain the presidency with minimal support elsewhere.
The Blue Dog Coalition, commonly known as the Blue Dogs or Blue Dog Democrats, is a caucus of moderate members from the Democratic Party in the United States House of Representatives. Under the leadership of Representatives Jared Golden, Mary Peltola, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, the caucus has shifted focus towards ideological centrism and pragmatic, constituency-based politics.
The Solid South or the Southern bloc was the electoral voting bloc of the states of the Southern United States for issues that were regarded as particularly important to the interests of Democrats in those states. The Southern bloc existed between the end of the Reconstruction era in 1877 and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. During this period, the Democratic Party overwhelmingly controlled southern state legislatures, and most local, state and federal officeholders in the South were Democrats. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, Southern Democrats disenfranchised blacks in all Southern states, along with a few non-Southern states doing the same as well. This resulted essentially in a one-party system, in which a candidate's victory in Democratic primary elections was tantamount to election to the office itself. White primaries were another means that the Democrats used to consolidate their political power, excluding blacks from voting in primaries.
In US politics, Republican In Name Only is a pejorative used to describe politicians of the Republican Party deemed insufficiently loyal to the party, or misaligned with the party's ideology. Similar terms have been used since the early 1900s. The acronym RINO became popular in the 1990s, and both the acronym and the full spelling have become commonly used by former president Donald Trump and his supporters to refer to his critics within the Republican Party regardless of their political positions, ideology, or voting record.
Southern Democrats are affiliates of the U.S. Democratic Party who reside in the Southern United States.
In American politics, a conservative Democrat is a member of the Democratic Party with more conservative views than most Democrats. Traditionally, conservative Democrats have been elected to office from the Southern states, rural areas, the Rust Belt, and the Midwest. In 2019, the Pew Research Center found that 14% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters identify as conservative or very conservative, 38% identify as moderate, and 47% identify as liberal or very liberal.
The politics of the Southern United States generally refers to the political landscape of the Southern United States. The institution of slavery had a profound impact on the politics of the Southern United States, causing the American Civil War and continued subjugation of African-Americans from the Reconstruction era to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Scholars have linked slavery to contemporary political attitudes, including racial resentment. From the Reconstruction era to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, pockets of the Southern United States were characterized as being "authoritarian enclaves".
The Democratic Party is one of the two major political parties of the United States political system and the oldest existing political party in the country. The Democratic party was founded in the 1830s and 1840s. It is also the oldest active voter-based political party in the world. The party has changed significantly during its nearly two centuries of existence. Once known as the party of the "common man," the early Democratic Party stood for individual rights and state sovereignty, and opposed banks and high tariffs. In the first decades of its existence, from 1832 to the mid-1850s, under Presidents Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and James K. Polk, the Democrats usually bested the opposition Whig Party by narrow margins.
The conservative coalition, founded in 1937, was an unofficial alliance of members of the United States Congress which brought together the conservative wings of the Republican and Democratic parties to oppose President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. In addition to Roosevelt, the conservative coalition dominated Congress for four presidencies, blocking legislation proposed by Roosevelt and his successors. By 1937, the conservatives were the largest faction in the Republican Party which had opposed the New Deal in some form since 1933. Despite Roosevelt being a Democrat himself, his party did not universally support the New Deal agenda in Congress. Democrats who opposed Roosevelt's policies tended to hold conservative views, and allied with conservative Republicans. These Democrats were mostly located in the South. According to James T. Patterson: "By and large the congressional conservatives agreed in opposing the spread of federal power and bureaucracy, in denouncing deficit spending, in criticizing industrial labor unions, and in excoriating most welfare programs. They sought to 'conserve' an America which they believed to have existed before 1933."
The Republican Party, also known as the GOP, is one of the two major political parties in the United States. It is the second-oldest extant political party in the United States after its main political rival, the Democratic Party.
The Fifth Party System, also known as the New Deal Party System, is the era of American national politics that began with the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt to President of the United States in 1932. Roosevelt's implementation of his popular New Deal expanded the size and power of the federal government to an extent unprecedented in American history, and marked the beginning of political dominance by the Democratic Party that would remain largely unbroken until 1952. This period also began the ideological swapping of Democrats and Republicans into their modern versions, largely due to most Black voters switching from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party, while most conservative, White, usually southern Democrats shifted to the Republican Party as Democrats began increasingly prioritizing civil rights; this process accelerated into the 1960s. The Fifth Party System followed the Fourth Party System, also known as the Progressive Era, and was itself followed by the Sixth Party System.
Liberalism in the United States is based on concepts of unalienable rights of the individual. The fundamental liberal ideals of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, the separation of church and state, the right to due process, and equality before the law are widely accepted as a common foundation of liberalism. It differs from liberalism worldwide because the United States has never had a resident hereditary aristocracy, and avoided much of the class warfare that characterized Europe. According to American philosopher Ian Adams, "all U.S. parties are liberal and always have been. Essentially they espouse classical liberalism, that is a form of democratised Whig constitutionalism plus the free market. The point of difference comes with the influence of social liberalism and the proper role of government."
The Democratic Party of the United States is a big tent party composed of various factions. The four most prominent modern factions are the liberals, moderates, progressives, and conservatives. The liberal faction supports modern liberalism and social liberalism that began with the New Deal in the 1930s and continued with both the New Frontier and Great Society in the 1960s. The moderate faction supports Third Way politics that includes center-left social policies and centrist fiscal policies. The progressive faction supports social democracy and left-wing populism. The conservative faction supports centre-right policies. The traditional conservative Democratic faction lost much of its influence in the 21st century as the South realigned towards the Republican Party, though a subsequent realignment starting in the 2010s brought a new set of moderate to conservative voters disillusioned with Trumpism in the Republican Party, prominently including many suburban women, into the Democratic tent.
This timeline of modern American conservatism lists important events, developments and occurrences which have significantly affected conservatism in the United States. With the decline of the conservative wing of the Democratic Party after 1960, the movement is most closely associated with the Republican Party (GOP). Economic conservatives favor less government regulation, lower taxes and weaker labor unions while social conservatives focus on moral issues and neoconservatives focus on democracy worldwide. Conservatives generally distrust the United Nations and Europe and apart from the libertarian wing favor a strong military and give enthusiastic support to Israel.