The Birth (and Death?) of the Republican Party

For the life of me, I don't understand the embrace of Ted Cruz by the heretofore "leadership" of the Grand Old Party.  Are we watching a death-wish or just old elephants wandering off to die un-mourned?  Are Republicans 21st Century Whigs  . . . is history repeating itself?

Let's dial back to the Whigs and the election of 1848

Democrat James K. Polk had scored four successful years.  He had settled the border dispute with Britain over the Oregon Territory and welcomed Texas into the Union.  He capped his Presidency with the Treaty of Hidalgo ending an unpopular war with Mexico and ingesting into the United States what is now California, Arizona, and New Mexico.  Expansion West and gold fever fired the imagination.  Polk, like Peyton Manning, decided to go out on a high; he chose not to run for a second term.

The Whigs -- believers in a strong Congress and a weaker Executive, in bankers and manufacturers, in high tariffs and protectionism, and opposed to war and territorial expansion that would weaken the power of Northeastern interests -- those Whigs now found themselves on the wrong side of popular opinion.  Whig senators, forsaking their principles,  had endorsed the Treaty of Hidalgo 2:1.

Polk's retirement left a vacuum.  Democrats split over the issue of slavery in all these new territories.  Lewis Cass took the slavery-tolerant Democrats one way; former President Martin Van Buren took the anti-slavery Democrats, now calling themselves Free Soilers, another.  The Whigs took advantage, turned their back on traditional leaders and ideals, and opted for a popular war hero, General Zach Taylor.  (Read Taft/Eisenhower?)

Taylor won, so the Whigs found themselves in power but with campaign promises that conflicted with their core beliefs.  Further confounding the Whigs, Taylor died half-way through his term, just months before the mid-term elections of 1850.  VP Millard Fillmore, a 19thC Jerry Ford, assumed the Presidency and struggled to straddle the increasingly polarizing slavery issue.  The mid-terms of 1850 were a disaster for the Whigs.

1852

By 1852, the Fillmore administration was in total disarray -- industrialists v farmers and planters; pro slavers v free-Staters.  At their convention, Whigs tossed Fillmore aside and tried the war hero ploy once more, nominating General Winfield Scott, "Old Fuss and Feathers", a 6'5", bloviating military patriot incapable of addressing the issues and principles at stake.  For Whigs, the election was a disaster: Democrat Franklin Pierce won with the most lopsided electoral vote up to that time.

March 20, 1854, The Grand New Party

Disaffected Whigs, intolerant of the compromises re slavery and disheartened with their party mates, convened in Ripon, Wisconsin to found a new political party, incorporating northeastern industrial and mercantile principles along with free-holders' opposition to slavery.  They named it the Republican Party.

By the election of 1856, Whigs had disappeared.  Millard Fillmore re-surfaced as candidate of the new Know-Nothings, an anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic nativist party silent on slavery.  The Democrats, in turn, tossed aside Pierce over his support of slavery in Kansas and a scheme of annexing Cuba as a new slave state.  They nominated James Buchanan in hopes of smoothing over the troubles.

 

Buchanan won with a popular vote plurality, becoming what some historians view as the most incompetent US President.  But the Republicans, just a two year-old rump party, had attracted attention with nominee John C. Fremont, heroic explorer of the West, thus neatly combining pride of expansion with strong anti-slavery creds.

 

1860

In the 1858 mid-terms, the Republican Party gained momentum.  The Lincoln - Douglas debates -- substantive debates -- addressed the real issues.  Two years later,  the six year-old Republican Party triumphed with the election of Abraham Lincoln -- only a plurality, true, but they had captured the White House -- a grand new party indeed.

Dial forward to 2017

Are our Republicans the Whigs of today?  Forsaking Republican principles and kow-towing to populist demagogues?  Embracing an anti-free trade, anti-immigrant, strong executive despite their core beliefs?  Turning their backs on a qualified Governor Kasich to pander with a Trump or Cruz?  Could this be harbinger of a new, radical, fascistic party, Yeat's "rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouching toward" Ripon "to be born?"  Or, if the Grand Old Party suffers the resounding defeat most predict, could this bring about the birth of a reasonable, moderate conservatism dedicated to making government work for everyone, a Dan Evans Republican Party?

In either case, something new will emerge in 2017.  The GOP as we have known it these last 30 years are heading to join the Whigs in the wastebasket of history.