Which major political party of the late 1950s won the US presidency in 2016? It turns out the 1960 Democratic Party won both the 1960 election as well as the 2016 one.
To illustrate why this is true, I recently perused the 1960 Democratic Party platform and the 2016 Republican Party platform selecting key slices for comparison--links below, but read the rest first. While this is certainly subject to lack-of-context and selection biases, I think it is a good glimpse into a larger truth about the evolution of our politics.
Make no mistake about it, I think this is an overall positive development and not the case of a need to "restore the true Republican Party" etc. As others have pointed out, where Republicans are on many social issues today represents great progress, but the same can be said for Democrats.
Keep in mind as well that a lot of this is a case of the 'more things change, the more they stay the same', 'nothing new under the sun', and good ole 'will it play in Peoria?'--the resonating American themes are largely constant over time. Perhaps most importantly these documents have always been empty rhetoric. It would be a grand and interesting undertaking to go platform by platform through the years to show all the empty promises and outright contradictions when compared to actual pursuits and results.
With all of this considered, read through the two groups of selections below (after the jump) from the 1960 DNC and 2016 RNC platforms and see if you can identify which is which. Both are excerpted in order as written except the very last paragraph in one as identified. That might give some clue as to the prioritization, but then again it might mislead. Incidentally, in terms of prose having myself read both in their entirety, the 1960 Democrats were both much more succinct as well as streets ahead in elegance.