5/26/2023 0 Comments Disintegration of the whig party![]() ![]() What it means for 2016: The Republican split between Taft and Roosevelt is probably the closest parallel to what the GOP may be experiencing now. The movement didn’t outlive its leader, though, and the Republican coalition came back together until the Great Depression. ![]() The prototypical example is Theodore Roosevelt, who in 1912 sought the Republican Party’s nomination in the first-ever presidential primaries but ran on his own ticket after William Howard Taft was nominated at the convention. Party splits have also occurred when a popular figure bolts the party, taking supporters with him (so far it’s always been a him - in 2016 and beyond, who knows?). That infrastructure could help the party weather the Trump storm. ![]() As impotent as the Republican National Committee has seemed at times during this campaign, the GOP has healthy party organizations in most states. That’s not a problem for the 2016 Republican Party. So while the antebellum Democrats, who also encompassed warring factions on the slavery issue, had a strong party organization that helped them keep it together through the sectional crisis and the Civil War, the Whigs lacked organizational strength and fell apart. But they weren’t quite sure about basic functions of political parties such as campaigning. These historical examples also illustrate the role of parties as organizations. So watch what happens when more of these states hold primaries the results may hold clues as to how those voters will react if Trump becomes the Republican standard-bearer. 1 The basis for this coalition is ideological similarity on economic and social issues. Rather, in addition to the South, whose voters seem fine with Trump, the party’s stronghold is the interior West - the Rocky Mountains and the Plains states. The contemporary GOP doesn’t depend on either coast or the more liberal upper Midwest - the areas that find Trump most objectionable - in presidential elections. What it means for 2016: Unlike the durable splits of the past, the Republican Party divide of 2016 (if it happens) may not take place along geographic lines. Some Southern states returned to the Democratic fold to support the candidacies of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, but by 2004, the South had become reliably Republican in presidential elections. Pinpointing an exact date for when the split was complete is difficult. The tensions between Northern and Southern Democrats continued through the 1950s, and there would be one more major Southern defection - George Wallace’s 1968 candidacy - over the course of the long breakup. It captured 39 Electoral College votes, but Democrat Harry Truman still won the election. Aggrieved Southerners formed their own “Dixiecrat” ticket, which was listed as the official Democratic ticket in some states. At the 1948 Democratic convention, Southern delegates walked out in response to Hubert Humphrey’s speech in favor of civil rights. ![]() The second example of a dissolution of a North-South coalition took place over the course of the 20th century with the New Deal Democratic Party. A group of former Northern Whigs, including Abraham Lincoln, organized politically around the idea of preventing the expansion of slavery, and the GOP was born. That divide, in turn, spurred the formation of the Republican Party. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which allowed new states and territories to decide whether they would be slave or free, pitted Northern and Southern Whigs against one another. In the Whigs’ case, the issue was slavery. Step 2: Refuse to take a party position on it. Step 1: Find a major issue that is likely to divide the country along geographic and ideological lines. The Whigs offer a playbook for party disintegration. History gives us two examples of this.įirst, the enigmatic, extinct Whig Party, which competed in presidential elections - with a few victories - across the North-South boundary from 1836 to 1852. Specifically, parties that rely on the South as part of their coalition have eventually fallen apart. If we take a long view of how American political parties form broad, diverse coalitions and how those coalitions fall apart, one thing that stands out is geography. What do these splits look like? What are the warning signs, and what happens post-breakup? What should we expect if the GOP does fall apart? The geographic split But sometimes factions or leaders wander off for an election cycle, or two, or more. It’s an extraordinary moment American parties don’t permanently splinter very often - they are remarkably stable, resilient institutions. As Republican Party leaders split between the #NeverTrumps and those who say they will support Donald Trump - or even offer him their endorsement - the emerging conventional wisdom is that the GOP is on the verge of a significant divide. ![]()
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