Conservative Coalition | |
|---|---|
| Prominent members | Harry F. Byrd Carter Glass John Nance Garner Josiah Bailey Robert A. Taft Richard Russell Jr. Howard W. Smith Carl Vinson |
| Founded | 1937 |
| Dissolved | 1994 (see below) |
| Succeeded by | Blue Dog Coalition (1995) |
| Ideology | Conservatism Early phase: Liberal conservatism[A] Economic liberalism Anti-communism Anti-New Deal Anti-labor States' rights Later phase: Fiscal conservatism Social conservatism Reaganism Anti-communism |
| Political position | Center-right to Right-wing |
^ A: Prior to the 1960s, American right-wing referred to themselves as liberals, who opposed Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Liberalism" and called themselves "True Liberalism".[citation needed] | |
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The conservative coalition, founded in 1937, was an unofficial alliance of members of the United States Congress which brought together the conservative wings of the Republican and Democratic parties to oppose President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. In addition to Roosevelt, the conservative coalition dominated Congress for four presidencies, blocking legislation proposed by Roosevelt and his successors. By 1937, the conservatives were the largest faction in the Republican Party which had opposed the New Deal in some form since 1933. Despite Roosevelt being a Democrat himself, his party did not universally support the New Deal agenda in Congress. Democrats who opposed Roosevelt's policies tended to hold conservative views, and allied with conservative Republicans. These Democrats were mostly located in the South. According to James T. Patterson: "By and large the congressional conservatives agreed in opposing the spread of federal power and bureaucracy, in denouncing deficit spending, in criticizing industrial labor unions, and in excoriating most welfare programs. They sought to 'conserve' an America which they believed to have existed before 1933."[1]
The coalition dominated Congress from 1937 to 1963, when former Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency and broke its influence. Johnson took advantage of weakened conservative opposition, and Congress passed many progressive economic and social reforms in his presidency. The conservative coalition, which controlled key congressional committees and made up a majority of both houses of Congress during Kennedy's presidency, had prevented the implementation of progressive reforms since the late 1930s.[2] It remained a declining political force until it disappeared in the mid-1990s when few conservative Democrats remained in Congress.[3] Following the 1994 Republican Revolution, many of the remaining conservative Democrats in congress joined to form the Blue Dog Coalition.
Never a formalized alliance, the conservative coalition, most often appeared on votes affecting labor unions based on Congressional roll call votes. Congressional opponents of civil rights reform, consisting white Southern Democrats and Republicans, despite being an overall minority in both chambers, prevented major congressional action on civil rights during the relevant time period through control of influential committees and by exploiting the Senate filibuster rule. The conservative coalition did not cooperate against civil rights bills however, ultimately enabling President Johnson and Everett Dirksen to convince sufficient numbers of congressional Republicans to ally with Liberal Democrats to invoke cloture and push through the Civil Rights Act of 1964.[4] However, the coalition did have the power to prevent unwanted bills from even coming to a vote. The coalition included many committee chairmen from the South who blocked bills by simply not reporting them from their committees. Furthermore, Howard W. Smith, chairman of the House Rules Committee, often could kill a bill simply by not reporting it out with a favorable rule; he lost some of that power in 1961.[5] The conservative coalition was not unified with regards to foreign policy, as most Southern Democrats were internationalists. Most Republicans supported isolationism until President Dwight D. Eisenhower took office in 1953.
- ^ Patterson, James T. (1967). Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal. University Press of Kentucky. pp. vii–viii. ISBN 9780813164045.
- ^ Mack C. Shelley, "Presidents and the conservative coalition in the U.S. Congress." Legislative Studies Quarterly (1983): 79-96 online Archived 2021-05-14 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Jeffery A. Jenkins and Nathan W. Monroe, "Negative Agenda Control and the Conservative Coalition in the U.S. House" Journal of Politics (2014). 76#4, pp. 1116–27. doi:10.1017/S0022381614000620
- ^ Katznelson, 1993
- ^ Bruce J. Dierenfield, Keeper of the Rules: Congressman Howard W. Smith of Virginia (1987)
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