Carrol
On 6/16/2011 4:04 PM, SA wrote:
> On 6/16/2011 4:22 PM, Shane Mage wrote:
>
>> On Jun 16, 2011, at 10:12 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> [WS:] As opposed to third parties which, as we all know, achieved
>>> stupendous political successes in the US history.
>>
>> Maybe they weren't "stupendous," but the crushing of the Slave Power
>> and the addition of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the
>> Constitution weren't exactly trivial, either.
>
> There's a need to clear up this enduring myth about the Republican
> Party. Contrary to popular belief, it was never a "third party" in the
> modern sense. When we speak of "third parties" today we are talking
> about small parties that confront the entrenched duopoly of the two
> major parties. The GOP never faced that situation. It came into being
> after one of the two major parties - the Whigs - had already collapsed
> for reasons that were mostly unrelated to the GOP's main issues of
> slavery and sectionalism.
>
> At the moment of the GOP's birth, the party system was in a state of
> total flux as a kaleidoscope of alternative parties were scrambling at
> the state and local levels to establish themselves as the
> anti-Democrat successor to the Whig Party. At that moment, the most
> successful was the nativist American Party (the Know-Nothings), but
> the AP was a brand new party with a fatal flaw (it was sectionally
> split). The GOP cemented its status as the defunct Whigs' successor by
> winning this competition.
>
> It should be obvious that this situation has nothing at all in common
> with the position of, say, today's Green Party or Socialist Workers'
> Party.
>
> SA
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