Thinking about the previous post, I’m remembering when a group of ‘Democrats’ had great influence within their supposed party. These were the Southern Democrats who were anti-union, pro-military and anti-civil rights when the national party was exactly the reverse.
Coming out of the near-one-party FDR era, Southern Democrats pulled their party’s policies rightward until roughly Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, when that became impossible. They often allied with Republicans to pass military budgets, support right-to-work, and hold down income-transfer spending.
When Democrats became the party of desegregation and school busing, most Southern Democrats seamlessly became Republicans and have been so ever since. At this same time southern Blacks, who had been Republicans since the Civil War, became Democrats.
It is entirely possible to be a group which holds outlier views within a party.
