ABSTRACT
Before the 1930s, the focus of red scare fears had been local. The roots of the red scare of the 1950s can be found in the reaction of conservatives to the liberal federal programs that emerged in response to the Great Depression of the 1930s, i.e., the New Deal. Franklin D. Roosevelt himself argued that his radical program called the New Deal was a necessary response to the Depression if capitalism were to be saved. Launching into a remarkable rhetorical offensive against the core claim of Republicans, i.e., that the GOP represented traditional American conservative values against the radical innovations of the Democratic New Deal, Roosevelt went on to assert that, in truth, New Deal Democrats were the true conservators of the American heritage. The "Party of Lincoln" was born as a coalition of opponents to slavery, advocates of federal involvement in infrastructure projects to build the economic strength of the country and anti-Catholic nativists.
