Conservative Democrat
Traditionally, conservative Democrats have been elected to office from the Southern states, rural areas, and the Great Plains.
[5][6] The Solid South describes the reliable electoral support of the U.S. Southern states for Democratic Party candidates for almost a century after the Reconstruction era.
The Democratic dominance originated in many Southerners' animosity towards the Republican Party's role in the Civil War and Reconstruction.
[7] In 1896, William Jennings Bryan won the Democratic Party nomination by promoting silver over gold, and denouncing the banking system.
Franklin D. Roosevelt forged a coalition of labor unions, liberals, Catholics, African Americans, and southern whites.
[18] The proclamation by President Harry S. Truman and Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey of support for a civil rights plank in the Democratic Party platform of 1948 led to a walkout of 35 delegates from Mississippi and Alabama.
Similar breakaway Southern Democratic candidates running on states' rights and segregationist platforms would continue in 1956 (T. Coleman Andrews), and 1960 (Harry F. Byrd).
[20] The AIP would run presidential candidates in several other elections, including Southern Democrats (Lester Maddox in 1976 and John Rarick in 1980), but none of them did nearly as well as Wallace.
After 1968, with desegregation a settled issue, conservative Democrats, mostly Southerners, managed to remain in the United States Congress throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
These included Democratic House members as conservative as Larry McDonald, who was also a leader in the John Birch Society.
During the administration of Ronald Reagan, the term "boll weevils" was applied to this bloc of conservative Democrats, who consistently voted in favor of tax cuts, increases in military spending, and deregulation favored by the Reagan administration but were opposed to cuts in social welfare spending.
Most of the boll weevils either retired from office or (like Senators Phil Gramm and Richard Shelby) switched parties and joined the Republicans.
These voters supported conservative Democrats for local and statewide office while simultaneously voting for Republican presidential candidates.
[24] In his 2010 campaign for reelection, Walter Minnick, U.S. Representative for Idaho's 1st congressional district, was endorsed by Tea Party Express, an extremely rare occurrence for a Democrat.
[26][27] Minnick was the only Democrat to receive a 100% rating from the Club for Growth, an organization that typically supports conservative Republicans.
The Washington Post noted the waning influence of the conservative Democratic Blue Dog Coalition voting bloc, losing over half of their previously more than 50 U.S. House members in the 2010 midterms.
[29] In the 2018 House of Representatives elections, the Democratic Party nominated moderate to conservative candidates in many contested districts and won a majority in the chamber.
Manchin refused to abolish the Senate filibuster for non-budget reconciliation-related legislation, but did vote to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court and pass the Inflation Reduction Act.
[43][44] The Blue Dog Coalition "advocates for fiscal responsibility, a strong national defense and bipartisan consensus rather than conflict with Republicans".
