History Lesson 1
The Reality of 1930's National Politics.
The following is a simplification. I'm sorry, I don't feel like writing a 100 page essay on the way politics used to be. While gamers might know their history, I think it is better if I state the obvious for those younger people who don't know what things used to be like, and for foreigners might not know this stuff about the United States to begin with. Hell, I wasn't born until 1959, and things just started to change in the
60's
In the 21st Century saying Republican is like saying Conservative.
In the 21st Century saying Democrat is like saying Liberal.
That was not at all the case in the 1930s.
In the south, most white people were conservative and Democrats. They were referred to as Yellow Dog Democrats (they'd vote for a Yellow Dog before voting for a Republican). The solid South was solidly for the Democrats (not like now when it is solidly for the Republicans). Roosevelt didn't get a majority of black votes (where blacks could vote) until 1940. Though from a later time period Robert Byrd (who served as a Democratic U.S. Representative from 1953 until 1959 and as a Democratic U.S. Senator from 1959 to 2010) had been a Klansman. Yes, white Southerners were conservative, but it was an anti-banker/Wall Street kind of conservatism that didn't keep them from accepting government help. Given the economic state of the Old South during the Depression (remember most poor sharecroppers were white) it was help they needed.
Also there was a strong stream of liberalism in the Republican Party. Teddy Roosevelt busted the trusts. Western Republicans like Senator Robert M. La Follette, Sr. and his sons in Wisconsin (from about 1900 to 1946), and western leaders such as Senator Hiram Johnson in California, Senator George W. Norris in Nebraska, Senator Bronson M. Cutting in New Mexico, Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin in Montana, and Senator William Borah in Idaho supported the New Deal and Unions. Starting in the 1930s a number of Northeastern Republicans took liberal positions regarding labor unions, spending and New Deal policies. They included Mayor Fiorello La Guardia in New York City, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, Governor Earl Warren of California, Senator Clifford P. Case of New Jersey, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. of Massachusetts, Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut (father of George H. W. Bush), Senator Jacob K. Javits of New York, Governor William Scranton of Pennsylvania, and Governor George Romney of Michigan.
And needless to say moderates abounded in both parties at the time, but what fun are those in a Civil War.