Conservative Democrats

Conservative Democrats
Founded	1932
Disestablished	1972
Ideology	Conservative liberalism Fiscal conservatism Social conservatism
Political position	Center-right

The Conservative Democrats was a faction of the Democratic Party that held conservative (or relatively conservative) views. The Democratic Party's conservative wing was dominant for most of the party's existence, but the populist left-wing of the party became popular during the 1890s as the result of William Jennings Bryan's adoption of the Populist Party's views as his own.

After President Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated his New Deal programs in 1932, the Democratic Party was split between the liberal New Deal Democrats and the Conservative Democrats. The conservative Southern Democrats supported Roosevelt's programs to alleviate the Great Depression while holding social conservative views, and this coalition would remain intact until the 1960s. However, Conservative Democrat senators Harry F. Byrd, Rush D. Holt, Sr., Josiah Bailey, and Congressman Samuel B. Pettengill opposed the New Deal.

The Conservative Democrats broke with the leading liberal faction as the result of Harry S. Truman's declared support for civil rights during the 1948 presidential election. 35 Southern Democrats walked out of the Democratic National Convention in protest against the civil rights plank, with the conservatives supporting Strom Thurmond's "Dixiecrats". The Conservatives dominated the "Solid South" during this time period, and many conservative southern whites were disaffected from the main party as the result of President Lyndon B. Johnson's passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Nevertheless, the conservative faction's presidential nominee Jimmy Carter won the 1976 election, winning 56% of the evangelical vote. It was not until after 1980 that the Republican Party began wooing conservative evangelicals, and the Democrats would not sweep the South again. After 1976, the South turned solidly Republican, and many Conservative Democrats either retired or defected to the Republicans.

During the 1980s, the Conservative Democrats became known as the "Boll Weevil Democrats", and they would formally organize themselves as the "Blue Dog Coalition" during the 1990s.