It'll break your heart: Summary of 1956 Republican Party Platform

[Model35mech]

I do remember President Eisenhower, the Kennedy-Nixon Debate, etc,

But this is NOT a reminiscence.


Summary of Ike’s 1956 (Pre VRA) Republican Platform as presented on SNOPES

Provide federal assistance to low-income communities,

Protect Social Security,

Provide asylum to refugees,

Extend minimum wage,

Improve unemployment benefit,

Strengthen Labor Laws to facilitate more union memberships.

Assure equal pay for equal work regardless of sex

[albacore]

1. Politifact pretty much agrees...

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/oct/28/facebook-posts/viral-meme-says-1956-republican-platform-was-prett/

[Model35mech]

5. He painted most of the Electoral College Map red, the Dixiecrats took most of Dixie

plus Missouri for Adlai.

It was a LANDSLIDE election

[LeftInTX]

2. Yep

[Model35mech]

7. Yep

Can you imagine how the R's 1956 party platform committee would feel seeing Trump's Republican Party?

[A HERETIC I AM]

3. Rachel Maddow once said...

That if you wanted to know what her politics are, just read the 1956 Republican Platform document.

[senseandsensibility]

4. Wow

How far they have fallen.

[Model35mech]

6. The response to the Voting Rights Act completely turned them inside out

[tritsofme]

8. It's not really a version of their party that existed before or after Eisenhower.

Four years later they would nominate Nixon, and four years after that Goldwater.

[Model35mech]

9. That may be, but that is the summary of the R party platform for '56

In many ways it reflects the politics of that year

The platform does mobilize the party against positions recently taken by Dems... for example. several years earlier Truman (D, Pres.) had tried to use the military to break union strikes to keep war goods headed to Korea.

iKE won that election in a landslide.

[Model35mech]

10. And here are points from the platform of the Dixecrats in 1948

I think they may have been out of business in 1956

The South was strong in Dem voters, but the Dixiecrats were a powerful block within that, sort of what the Tea-Party was to the Republicans in 2004, and they influenced Dem politics across the Deep South.

For those who lived it, I'm sure it sounds a lot like their memories of the 1968 candidate for the Dem presidential nomination George Wallace.


Opposed federal anti-lynching legislation

Oppose anti-poll-tax legislation

Oppose permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission

Pledged to uphold segregation and white supremacy.

[tritsofme]

11. They were certainly a strange movement, definitely a product of their times.

Many Dixiecrats were even strong supporters of the New Deal, a big reason many of the early reforms specifically excluded black people.

[LeftInTX]

12. Yep

The Dixiecrats joined the Republicans. Since then, the Republicans have been the dominant party because they obtained a huge voting bloc when the Dixiecrats jointed them. Then a bunch of people moved south, giving more electoral votes and power to the south.

[wnylib]

15. That platform reflects the state of politics at the time in general.

It was only a decade after the FDR programs that were so popular with many 1956 voters who had lived through the Great Depression and WWII. To win votes, it was necessary to promote those points on the 1956 platform.

Doesn't mean that most party leaders and members actually supported those points. As another poster has pointed out, not long afterward, Republicans nominated Nixon and Goldwater.

[Polybius]

13. So what were the Party differences in 1956 then?

[honest.abe]

14. Exactly my question as well.

[Model35mech]

16. Right... sorry but I'm trying to avoid reminiscing about the old days.

[bucolic_frolic]

17. To survive, the whole Republican Party embraced the New Deal in the 1950s

They had no ideas to govern then either!

[Beartracks]

18. Wow. They used to stand for something instead of falling for...

... every bullshit conman and conspiracy theory.

They used to stand for something... instead of just opposing everything.

They used to stand for something... instead of taking a knee for Trump. Well -- TWO knees, if you know what I mean.

==========

[Tree Lady]

19. Weren't republicans like democrats

until civil rights in the south in the 60's?

Funny I was born in 56.

[Model35mech]

24. The passage of the Voting Rights Act precipitated great change

When Lyndon Johnson pushed the VRA and it passed into law, the Dixiecrats left the Dems. In a country where the system always settles into 2 competing parties... they joined the Republicans and American politics has never been the same.

The republicans had always wanted the South in their camp. But it had a long tradition of being democratic. When the Dixiecrats came to them, the republicans welcomed them.

[Joinfortmill]

20. Yup, last good Republican, Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower

[Recycle_Guru]

22. presidents, yea. been a few decent GOP governors over the years

and a few senators back in the day

[Joinfortmill]

25. Yup.

[Recycle_Guru]

21. how far the Qpublicans have fallen

[swong19104]

23. Which is why Rachel Maddow

calls herself an Eisenhower Republican.

Ike wasn't too progressive on the race front, though. Probably a lot more progressive than many others of that era, but he'd be a troglodyte in today's understanding about race (and sexuality/gender).

[Recycle_Guru]

26. he sent the national guard in to integrate after Brown vs Board

[deepblue]

27. Politifact and Snopes responses to 1956 Republican Party meme appear dishonest.

First, the last Republican Party platform adopted was published in 2016, not 2012. It is the current Republican Party platform. The current platform, published in 2016, is pretty nonsensical for a "platform", basically all negative, running down Obama and the Democratic Party, using the platform as a press release to advertise their rewrite the Constitution, crap like that. It's not a platform, it's a declaration of a generally negative attitude. Nutcake stuff. Read it, if you can bother yourself to go all the way through it.

Neither Politifact or Snopes refer to the 2016 platform, which is the current platform of the Republican Party. Snopes says, "The most recent available Republican Party platform dated to 2012, during the campaign of Mitt Romney." Politifact says, "We wondered whether the meme accurately describes these elements of the 1956 platform, and if so, whether the 1956 document contrasts sharply with the most recent party platform in 2012." This is flatly untrue.

Politifact and Snopes's use of the 2012 platform makes the Republican Party appear more rational that it is. I say this oversight can only be intentional, because it takes minimum effort to find the 2012 platform, and considerable effort to ignore the 2016 platform, which was famously carried over to 2020 without an update. Now it may be said that the 2016 platform gives Politifact and Snopes very little to work with in comparison to the 1956 platform, but that is precisely the point of the meme they purport to examine: the declaration of the current party platform bears no resemblance, at all, with the declared party platform of 1956. So I call omission of the 2016 platform dishonest.

Snopes goes further. Snopes calls the meme, "Mixed" rather than "True," which is crap. Snopes says the issue of comparison is complicated by the fact that individual politicians have views that differ from the party platform. Snopes leads with this. Snopes spends a lot of type on it. What an individual politician thinks has no bearing on the subject at hand. How does the Republican Party platform of 1956 differ from the position of the Republican Party today? So, Snopes seems dishonest here.

Snopes does summarize the points of the meme as being essentially true, but it's not that complicated of a meme. Memes are simple, that's the grab. This meme is true, and really anybody with any real knowledge and real sense knows it is true. But not Snopes, apparently. The thing is "Mixed." It is not entirely true, because somebody somewhere calling themselves a Republican does not necessarily agree with the Republican Party platform, even if the purpose of the Republican Party platform is to declare the official position of the Republican Party.

[ventuckian]

28. wikipedia

I need to recheck it but I remember on Ike's wikipedia a part of it mentions a speech he made talking about the more radical elements of his own party and the kind of party he was fighting for. If true then he lost that battle.