Gilded Age Republicans

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To demonstrate, let’s examine what happened after the civil war. Whereas Civil War Republicans had argued that “it was a legitimate use of the government to expand economic growth that benefited everyone,” Gilded Age Republicans worked to protect their prosperity by railing against communism and socialism, and "within a generation, the Republican effort to enable working men to rise had turned to defense of property. Property was the heart of individualism, Republicans argued, and any effort to regulate business or to levy taxes was a direct attack on the American system." Unregulated capitalism meant powerful wealth distribution at the top of the ladder (as evidenced by business tycoons like John D. Rockefeller, J.P Morgan, and Cornelius …show more content…
Many of its members were ex-slave owners, conservative minds who abhorred Carpetbaggers and Scalawags who came into the South to upturn the established social order. In many ways, the South was the only part of the country that resembled bourgeoisie Europe, a result of the feudal like order of society that was founded on slavery. If we think back to Alexis De Tocqueville’s definition of liberalism and conservatism—that true conservatism is founded on an oligarchy--this very fact would make the South by far the most conservative region of the country. Even after slavery was abolished, the South maintained its feudal order through systems designed to keep the poor at the bottom like sharecropping and voting restrictions for African Americans (grandfather clauses, poll taxes). In fact the South was so Democratic, it was nicknamed the “Solid South” because of its consistently blue …show more content…
Communism and Socialism impede this goal. As Mr. Goldwater puts it, “it is Socialism that subordinates all other considerations to man's material well-being.” William F. Buckley, founder of the Conservative magazine National Review, says, in the magazine’s founding statement, published 1955, that while America appears to be a conservative society at first glance (as it was in the 50s, with the conformity of suburbia), because people and organizations like Henry Steele Commager, the League of Women's Voters and the New York Times are in place (all liberal organizations), National Review, and conservatism, is out of place in American society. Capitalism must be maintained; it is currently threatened by the growth of "Big Brother Government." If this was what Mr. Buckley thought in 1955, he must have been absolutely outraged by LBJ’s Great Society and the growth of the counterculture in the 60s. And so were many white conservatives especially in suburban areas and in the South who turned away from the Democratic Party and to the Republican. By the 1968 election, Nixon had won 63% of the high-income suburban vote.
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