Also, the Whigs couldn't apply their founding principles to new circumstances because the Whigs didn't have any founding principles. There were principled Whigs and a Whig agenda, but there was no agreed set of Whig principles. eg, the party's embarrassed incoherence on slavery.https://twitter.com/NateBell4AR/status/1152217017405100033 …
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Republicans are different. Unlike the Whigs, unlike the Federalists, unlike the Democrats, Republicans were explicitly founded around a set of ideas rather than just an agenda or a collection of interest groups. Those ideas have both defined & disciplined the party for 160 years.
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Nobody who knows the history of the Republican Party would claim that it has always been 100% faithful to its founding principles, or that it has been immune to catering to its constituent groups or pandering to baser voter sentiment. But the gravitational force of ideas matters.
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The Democratic Party has veered all over the place in terms of ideology & which voters' resentments & rent-seeking it is catering to at any given time or place. But its history as a collection of interest groups nakedly pursuing their own narrow agendas is the real continuity.
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Republican history is, by contrast, far more consistent over time back to the 1850s - in outlook, culture, and temperament as well as ideas - than is typically acknowledged. What is portrayed as Republican change is often simply the contrast presented by Democratic shifts.
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The challenge in the Trump era is preserving the things that kept the Republican Party constrained by, even inspired by, its founding principles for a century and a half. Elements like Trump were there from the start, but the party's never been led by them.
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Anybody who tells you that Lincoln's party would not have tolerated Know-Nothing nativists in its ranks is historically illiterate. The party forged a majority by doing literally that. Lincoln despised the Know-Nothings, but kept his mouth shut, had an ex-Know-Nothing as his AG.
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That is part of the point of the thread. Coalition politics & practical compromise with voter sentiment have always been part of the package.
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