THE RETURN OF THE SOUTHERN PARTY

The struggle to elect a Speaker of the House of Representatives this past week eventually arrived at the point where it was compared with the breakdowns in congressional governance of the 1850s is instructive. The last time there were more than this many ballots for Speaker was in 1860.We are now back to pre-Civil War territory, as several observers noted when McCarthy failed for an eleventh time to get elected and we officially entered that rarified territory.

This is important. We really are back to that reality.

The Southern Party has formally returned. We are back to what was effectively a three party system under which the United States was governed before 1860.

Political historians of the pre-Civil War period have begun in the past 20 years to note that the political reality in the United State between the election of Thomas Jefferson and the outbreak of the Civil War was that there were actually three political parties. There were a national conservative grouping, a national progressive grouping, and a regional “southern” party that was ultra-conservative and which allied with whichever of the national parties would allow it to maintain its “peculiar institution” of chattel slavery. That coalition was with what became the Democratic Party, and with the exception of the four years of civil war, it was an alliance that lasted into the 1950s and only really split apart formally beginning in the 1960s when the “southern” party changed its alliance from the Democrats to the Republicans.

In many ways before the civil war, the two national parties contained both progressive and conservative elements - a situation that continued until the 1960s when an ideological sorting began that was complete by 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan.

The “progressive” element of both parties was found outside the South. What progress was allowed by the reactionaries happened so long as its effects were primarily outside the South. This was why, when the Civil War came, the eleven insurrectionist states had the least amount of transportation infrastructure in the country as a whole, which put them at a military disadvantage along with the lack of an industrial base that they were never able to overcome and was one of the primary reasons for their ultimate defeat.

The “Southern” party was essentially reactionary as opposed to the conservatism of the the national parties. They were dedicated to the maintenance of an aristocratic, anti-democratic society, based on white supremacy and the institution of chattel slavery. They were entirely regional in their outlook and saw no reason to support expanding a democratic society in the rest of the country, correctly viewing such an event as ultimately a threat to their existence.

The Southern view of how the economy should be ordered was perfectly captured in the “Cornerstone Speech” delivered in 1861 by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens:

“The question of building up class interests, or fostering one branch of industry to the prejudice of another under the exercise of the revenue power, which gave us so much trouble under the old constitution, is put at rest forever under the new. We allow the imposition of no duty with a view of giving advantage to one class of persons, in any trade or business, over those of another. All, under our system, stand upon the same broad principles of perfect equality. Honest labor and enterprise are left free and unrestricted in whatever pursuit they may be engaged.

“Again, the subject of internal improvements, under the power of Congress to regulate commerce, is put at rest under our system. The power, claimed by construction under the old constitution, was at least a doubtful one; it rested solely upon construction. We of the South, generally apart from considerations of constitutional principles, opposed its exercise upon grounds of its inexpediency and injustice. Notwithstanding this opposition, millions of money, from the common treasury had been drawn for such purposes. Our opposition sprang from no hostility to commerce, or to all necessary aids for facilitating it. With us it was simply a question upon whom the burden should fall. In Georgia, for instance, we have done as much for the cause of internal improvements as any other portion of the country, according to population and means. We have stretched out lines of railroads from the seaboard to the mountains; dug down the hills, and filled up the valleys at a cost of not less than $25,000,000. All this was done to open an outlet for our products of the interior, and those to the west of us, to reach the marts of the world. No State was in greater need of such facilities than Georgia, but we did not ask that these works should be made by appropriations out of the common treasury. The cost of the grading, the superstructure, and the equipment of our roads was borne by those who had entered into the enterprise. Nay, more not only the cost of the iron no small item in the aggregate cost was borne in the same way, but we were compelled to pay into the common treasury several millions of dollars for the privilege of importing the iron, after the price was paid for it abroad. What justice was there in taking this money, which our people paid into the common treasury on the importation of our iron, and applying it to the improvement of rivers and harbors elsewhere? The true principle is to subject the commerce of every locality, to whatever burdens may be necessary to facilitate it. If Charleston harbor needs improvement, let the commerce of Charleston bear the burden. If the mouth of the Savannah river has to be cleared out, let the sea-going navigation which is benefitted by it, bear the burden.”

The result was that what “improvements” happened were limited to infrastructure, and that was limited to minimal developments which resulted in most “progress” in the rest of the country coming from private investment in such things as railroads and other transportation infrastructure. Politically, anything that might lead to an expansion of opportunity through governmental support was killed by the Southern Party in Congress, where the fact the South was a one-party state where election to office was “election for life” or for so long as the office-hold might wish, guaranteed them the seniority to control the congress. This continued through to the end of the alliance of the Southern Party with the Democrats, known as the era of “The Solid South.”

When the Southernists were gone, much progress happened. In 1862, Congress passed the Transcontinental Railroad funding bill, which ultimately tied the country together as it never had been before and stimulated the creation of “feeder lines” to the main railroad that ultimately brought transportation to every American community. (Think the Inflation Reduction Act and its funding of “the digital divide” to bring high-speed internet service to previously-underserved communities). The Morrill Act created Land Grant colleges, which vastly expanded the opportunity for higher education to groups of people for which such had been far out of reach. Couple that with the Homestead Act, which was the first piece of federal legislation to provide a way to create what ultimately would become 100 years later the largest middle class of any country ever, with the sons and daughters of the homesteaders taking advantage of the existence of those land-grant colleges and universities.

After nearly a century of Jim Crow white supremacy promoted by the Southern Party and made national policy by “Southern Party Democrat” Woodrow Wilson when he became president and re-segregated the federal workforce, the national Democrats broke with the Southern Democrats over civil rights. In 1968, Nixon adopted the “Southern Strategy” and made it clear that the Southern Democrats were now welcome to become Southern Republicans, a process that took 20 more years till the “Reagan revolution” brought about the Great Realignment between 1980-88.

Now the Southern Party is emerging as its own power to challenge what’s left of the power of the old national Republican Party.

What did we hear this past week from the Southernists? We heard how they will use “the power of the purse” to force a public debt crisis, in order to reduce funding for all the government programs they oppose, the same kind of programs their Confederate traitor ancestors opposed.

The price of McCarthy’s capitulation this past week is that it has made half dozen or so of the most extreme members of the House the most powerful players there.

We will find out tomorrow what McCarthy has promised them on the debt limit. We can be pretty sure that some kind of promise has been made, since Ralph Norman - who wants to cause a debt repudiation and made doing to a condition of his support - began voting for McCarthy during the three votes held on Friday. Anyone who thinks these people will not do this today is naïve. Every single one of them who votes to “bail out Joe Biden” and raise the debt limit will be terrified of facing a well-financed primary in 2024.

We also have to remember that the Hastert Rule is still in effect for Republicans. That rule is that

Republicans will only pass bills supported by a majority of the majority.

What is truly frightening was hearing Matt Gaetz saying, after he finally voted for McCarthy on the 15th ballot, “I ran out of things I could even imagine to ask for.”

And finally, do you doubt that maintaining absolute impunity for Trump will be among their highest missions, no matter how much chaos it unleashes?

The Southern Party is now formally back in the House. The parasite has taken complete control of the host. We all know what happens biologically when this occurs.

The parasite kills the host.

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