The Elephant Grave Yard-What happens when major parties die
Doomed and shattered, Republicans wander into insignificance.
Will Shetterly over at It’s All One Thing commented on the latest bit of Republican insanity-trying to re-name the Democrats as the National Socialist Democratic Party-you know Nazis, wink, wink. Recognizing this was a sign of the pending irrelevance of the GOP Will asked “what happens if the Republicans implode. Our two-party system demands something to replace it,” in a comment to his own post. Good question.
I got carried away trying to answer-way, way too many words. So here’s is a little historical analysis.
Don’t worry this is not the first time a major political party has evaporated. Nature and politics, abhorring a vacuum, find a replacement soon enough.
The Federalists shrunk first to a regional rump suspected of potential treason for trying to create a New England secession movement in the middle of the War of 1812, and then to something that met in Daniel Webster’s fob pocket and lingered only in the wistful memory of the Black Legion (that’s the New England clergy, Unitarians included.) The supposed Era of Good Feelings barely survived the last of the Virginia Dynasty (Monroe.) The tired remnants of the Federalists; western “National Republicans” who advocated for a vigorous Federal program of canal, turnpike and railroad construction; pro-bank (Second Bank of the United States) capitalists; and anti-tariff Southerners cobbled together the Whigs, a horse created by a committee if there ever was one. Soon they were held together by only one thing: hatred for Andrew Jackson and the new the Democratic Party that he transformed from the old Republicans.
Any party whose national leadership was divided between Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun was inherently unstable. None of the big three was able to unite the party behind them and as a result first Webster and then Clay lost their Presidential bids. Instead, the party turned to empty suit military men who were expected to do the bidding of Congressional Whigs while trying to steal the Jacksonian appeal of the uniformed hero. Two of these were elected-William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor-both of whom died in office leaving weak, controversial vice-presidents to finish their terms, both of whom (John Tyler and Millard Fillmore) are rated high on any list of worst Presidents. The biggest hero of all, Winfield Scott, ran and lost when the party was already dying, broken up by internal divisions over slavery, western expansion, and the tariff.
The new Republicans reaped the bulk of the remnants of the Northern and Western Whigs. Southern Whigs held their noses over their distaste for “mob rule” and became re-absorbed into the Democratic Party in defense of the sacred institution of slavery. But the Republicans were not just re-branded Whigs. Their coalition included anti-Jacksonian Democrats many of whom had entered the Free Soil Party in opposition to the extension of slavery, and the briefly powerful American Party (Know Nothings) who were sworn enemies of immigration and “Popery.” After a shaky launch with a third rate military hero as their candidate, John C. Frémont, they coalesced around a program of opposition to the expansion of slavery, the Whig’s old internal improvement program, and high tariffs. Enter an obscure prairie lawyer and add in a Civil War and the rest is history.
It’s been Democrats vs. Republicans ever since with third and fourth parties making brief bids joining the club (Greenback, Prohibition, Populist, Socialist, Progressive, Dixiecrat, American Independent, Reform, Libertarian and Green.) Most of those parties were largely reabsorbed by one of the major parties or had their platforms largely adopted by one of them (Prohibition, Populist, Progressive, Socialist and American Independent (George Wallace.) And over the course of more than 150 years the two parties have made a polar switch on issues as basic as the role of Federal power, the expansion of the franchise, and race relations. Neither Jefferson and Jackson or Lincoln would recognize the parties that claim them.
The Republicans seem destined to most closely track the Federalists into regional party status followed by slow withering. But a new alignment, the shape of which can dimly be perceived, is inevitable. Probably built around a core of the old Republicans plus conservative Democrats, led by some of the current Blue Dogs in Congress, and balanced budget hawks. Because it will need, demographically, not to become the “White” party, it will probably try to appeal to Hispanics by adopting a moderate immigration policy (but this will lead to great tension within the new party) and moderate social conservatism. It will try desperately to distance itself from dominance of the Religious Right, which will spin off on its own separatist orbits. It will largely give up on attempts to reach African Americans and try building a coalition of Whites and other minorities against perceived claims of special treatment for Blacks. It will surely reap some other Democrats who become disenchanted for whatever reason with Obama’s inevitable transformation of his party.
I see a new party along those lines up, running, and challenging by-then entrenched Democratic dominance with in ten years.