185: Democrats used to be Republicans - WHAT?

The 2022 Republican Party would have never been able to back Abraham Lincoln as their presidential candidate - except for one tiny detail: Lincoln was a Republican, and espoused the original beliefs of the Republican Party (down to the anti-slavery, committed to equality part).
So how did we get from Lincoln’s Republican Party to today’s Trump political base?

Who were the Whigs?
What do we mean when we say Southern Democrats?
Why does this cycle of money and power keep reappearing on the political stage, over and over again?

If those are some of the questions you have - or even if those are questions you’ve never thought of asking yourself, but you realize that somewhere, someone made some changes to how we define political parties in this country, and it’s important to understand just how far the 2022 Republican party is from those original Republican ideals - then this is the episode for you.

It’s like US History all over again, except more engaging, more relevant, and it includes stuff you’ll actually remember… hopefully long enough to go vote.

What to listen for:

What the two original American political parties were (hint: Republican wasn’t one of them)

Why the Republican Party was formed, and the two ideals that held it together
How the Republican Party and Democrat Party switched ideologies over time, but how it was really Truman and Johnson, two Southern Democrat Presidents, who pushed that ideological change through their pro-civil rights stances (which weren’t even that extreme at times)
What we can do with this information from a practical perspective: go vote, and get loud.

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