Let's Rename Democratic and Republican Parties

The modest proposal I'm suggesting here may not be as "appetizing" as the one put forth by Jonathan Swift almost three centuries ago, but it is one that may have more relevance to Americans today. I would suggest that we rename the Republican Party as the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party as the GOP. This would allow Americans to be back in their natural parties.

With few exceptions, the 2004 presidential election between Republican George Bush and Democrat John Kerry was an almost complete reversal of the 1896 and 1900 elections which pitted Republican William McKinley against Democrat William Jennings Bryan. The states that voted Republican in 1896 and 1900 were now Democratic and vice versa.

The political descendants of Bryan's fundamentalist Christian beliefs and social conservatism can now be found in the Republican Party. As rural America's defender of faith, Bryan argued at the Scopes trial in favor of creationism and against Darwinism and evolution. Yet today those wanting intelligent design taught as science in schools are mostly Republicans.

The GOP is now also home to the political descendants of Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, but is no longer a welcome place for the descendants of Republican abolitionist and Congressman Thaddeus Stevens. When former GOP Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott expressed a fondness for Strom Thurmond's 1948 presidential candidacy, he was speaking nostalgically about Dixiecrats, not Dixiecans. The Dixiecrats came from the Democratic Party and had no connection to Republicans. Not only that, but those touting the Confederate flag today are Republicans like Governor Sonny Perdue of Georgia. Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell faced criticism recently when he declared Confederate History Month without mentioning the institution of slavery. He later corrected himself, but the irony cannot be lost that these governors claim to be Republicans when Republicans literally fought against the Confederacy and the Confederate flag. We still have the Solid South today, but it is the reverse of what it was traditionally.

Utah today is sometimes called the most Republican state in the union. Yet when Utah tried to be admitted into the union, it was Benjamin Harrison, a Republican president, who tried to keep them out, citing polygamy, while Democratic President Grover Cleveland gladly had them admitted in 1896, during his last year in office. Therefore, Utah entered the union as a rabidly Democratic state, the opposite of what it is today.

The Democratic Party of today is identified for advocating strong central government, but Thomas Jefferson, the first Democratic President (called Democratic-Republican at the time), was for states' rights and argued that "he who governs least governs best," or "the government is best that governs least." This quote is more correctly attributed to Henry David Thoreau, but it was also Jefferson's philosophy. But those making the strongest pitches for smaller government and deregulation today are Republicans. It is as though Thomas Jefferson's political descendants today are Republicans and Abraham Lincoln's political descendants are Democrats.

Beginning with Andrew Jackson, our seventh President, the Scots-Irish were mainstays in founding, nurturing, developing and maintaining the Democratic Party. The heart of Scots-Irish settlements was through the Appalachians, across Pennsylvania, down through West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, northern Alabama, etc. These Scots-Irish were Democrats to their bones. They were instrumental in electing such Scots-Irish presidents as Jackson, James Polk, James Buchanan and Woodrow Wilson, all Democrats. Yet today the descendants of these same Scots-Irish citizens vote largely for Republicans.

African Americans, embracing Lincoln and the Radical Republicans of the Reconstruction period, voted heavily for Republicans from the 1860s to the 1930s. Then, starting with the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, African Americans began to slowly drift toward the Democratic Party. The transformation was completed by 1964, when Lyndon Johnson was elected with overwhelming African American support. Today African Americans are often classified as the base of the Democratic Party and the most reliably Democratic voters, a title once held by white southerners.

Today many moderate voters from the Northeast and Midwest are called RINOS (Republicans In Name Only). They are still registered Republicans, as their forebears were, but they often vote Democratic. Even New Hampshire, a state that once didn't know what a Democrat was, now has elected Democratic governors and U.S. Congressmen and Senators.

To top it off, Republicans virulently detested the Red Menace known as Soviet communism. Yet today we say the GOP is the red party and GOP-leaning states are the red states, and conversely the Democrats are the blue party and Democratic-tilting states are the blue states.

In conclusion, since everything is turned upside down and is inverted from what it should be, my modest proposal is to simply rename the GOP as the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party as the Republican Party. That way everyone from the old Dixiecrats, to the Scots-Irish who settled the South, to the residents of Utah, to the residents of New Hampshire, to African Americans, will all be back in their natural parties. The Republican Party will again have originated in Ripon, Wisconsin, and Jackson, Michigan, and the Democratic Party will once again be the party founded by white Southerners and maintained with heavy Southern input.

Right now the two major parties are in the opposite places from their origins and heritage. A name change in certainly in order.