A lot of people have posted recently about our need to be a big tent and include the Zell Millers. Of course, majority parties by nature must be big tents and I won't argue against that.
But a look at the history of the Democratic party reveals the truth:
Many of the so-called "Conservative" Democrats are not conservative at all but instead are direct descendents of the same radical republicanism that traces its lineage from Alexander Hamilton to William McKinley and now to Bush.
In other words... many so-called conservative democrats stand for nothing the democratic party has ever stood for.
While the Democratic party was divided by racial politics for most of its history, it is no surprise that once the embers of the civil war cooled that economic progressives and populists came home to the Democrats as part of FDRs new deal coalition.
Populist (or as Fox News AND the DLC calls it, class warfare) politics had its start with Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. The mostly rural south (where the majority of whites were not slave owners) had a natural affinity for policies that would keep the federal government from siding with corporate (railroads, etc) interests and essentially exploiting the south's raw materials (sound familiar?) Thus the Whigs fighting for a strong federal government to coerce states into increasing trade opportunities for business.
Fast forward to the civil war. The Republicans opposed slavery because their northern industrialist backers feared an industrialized south would rise that used slave labor. The religious and moral abolitionist movement latched onto the Republican party out of necessity (like the modern day alliance of Rs and Xians). (Note there were industrialists who opposed slavery on moral grounds as well).
The Republicans, then as now, tended to side with corporate interests over the people (Theodore Roosevelt a notable exception). This finally caught up to them during the great depression, when FDR pulled in everyone who was not beholden to corporate america - including poor southern whites and blacks.
From the New Deal to the 60s, while Dems were divided over race, they were generally allied on economnic issues - the south benefited from many new deal programs (rural electrification). Where federalist objections were raised, it was more out of fear that a stronger federal government would someday interfere with Jim Crow (which it would).
Which brings me to today--
Many of the Democrats labeled as "Conservative" are anything but. They embrace the idealogy of the government empowering corporate interests through unfair trade agreements, etc. (I point to Breaux, Baygh, Miller, etc.) These conservatives are direct decendents not of old southern gentleman Democrats but Smoot-Hawley Dewey Republicans-- going back to William McKinley and even Alexander Hamilton (his national bank idea was essentially a way to promote business by using government as its tool).
The Cons. Dems, are really NEO-CONSERVATIVES- or- radical. That is what Bush is - a radical. We can work with TRUE conservatives (like John McCain- and I am giving him too much credit) because they tend to embody those more traditional southern Democrats we have worked with. We understand federalism (it helps in gun control and gay rights) - but not selective federalism (as Bush practices). We understand the need for balanced budgets.
That is why it is so hard for the progressive wing of the Democratic party to get along with the DLC crowd. An should we change our policy, against everything our party has ever stood for, to bring them in?
Maybe, just this once, to get rid of Bush. But not after that.
