Which Major Party Needs To Change the Most?

 

North Carolina political analyst and writer Alexander H. Jones (no, the good Alex Jones) explored some important history of both the North Carolina Democratic Party and what has now become the MAGA Party. He points out that especially the old Democratic Party before Harvey Gantt and Barack Obama -- was a one-party oligarchy with an iron hand that ruled from 1876 (until fairly recently really). Writes Jones, "Democratic hegemony [was] secured by the disenfranchisement of Black voters" (2 Jan. 2025). Any political domination without a principled and effective opposition has every opportunity to turn corrupt, or mean, or both. The old slave-holding, landed class that lost the Civil War became the Democratic Party machine post-Reconstruction as it reasserted property over civil rights and white over Black. Jesse Helms, after all, began his politics as a Jim Crow Democrat. 

It took a long damn time for an effective Republican opposition to arise in North Carolina. Jones reminds us of an astounding fact: "In 1976, only one — one — Republican sat in the North Carolina Senate." Though no Republican Party machine yet threatened Democratic hegemony, the hearts and minds of white rural voters were already roiling in cultural ferment because of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 (followed closely by the Voting Rights Act of 1966). If you were not part of a rural community back then -- as I most certainly was in those years in the Panhandle of Texas -- you perhaps do not realize the terror and fury that Lyndon Johnson unleashed on white minds of an otherwise comfortable cultural tradition. Minds changing unfavorably and hardening self-destructively were not a good sign for the political party of President Lyndon Johnson. Many rural Democrats would stay registered "D" even while casting protest votes for very right-wing Republican alternatives, like Barry Goldwater in 1964 ("In Your Heart You Know He's Wacky"). In NC Goldwater took almost 44% of the presidential vote against Lyndon in 1964, and probably 10% of that total were registered Democrats. I'm guessing, of course. In 1964, Republicans weren't even 33% of registrated voters in the state.

Bottomline: Through the ineffable influence of Jesse Helms and Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy," the Old Republican Party of business and banking became increasingly what the Old Democratic Party had been, a political movement that depended ultimately on racial resentment. "Republicans built momentum decade by decade" on the strength of it. They learned how to gerrymander Black voters and contain Black power.

What's noticeable, Jones says, is the split personality that's become pronounced in the contemporary NCGOP. Republican primary voters keep running extremist nuts for governor and other statewide offices while also buying into a more moderate line of mannikins for U.S. Senate:

Savvy political strategists like Karl Rove and North Carolina’s Paul Shumaker saw the state was becoming more moderate and suburban. In response to John Edwards’ victory in 1998, Rove recruited Elizabeth Dole to run for Helms’ old Senate seat, and she won suburban Wake County by 10 points .... Richard Burr and Thom Tillis were also in her mold.

Following another crushing loss last November of a far out Republican for Governor, the NCGOP is perhaps caught in its own vice. The segregationist base of the new Republican Party likes hard-edged extremists like Mark Robinson, while the general voting public does not cotton to extreme:

The GOP — more accurately MAGA — has a base heavy on evangelicals, know-nothings and not a few racists clustered in very conservative counties who only want to support candidates like Robinson, who just lost by 15 points.

The voting bloc that once held back the old Democratic Party can now hold back the new Republicans. And good riddance.