We are entering into the stretch run for the presidency of the United States of America…..the rhetoric, the lies, the pure BS will intensify and then we must chose which liar will lead the country down this path we have chosen…..I pray for the country…..

What political party did the great Lincoln join first?  Republican is the wrong answer.  First he was a Whig then moved on to the Republicans.

What happened to the Whigs anyway?

The Whig party ran, for some years, mostly in strong second place to the Democrats. They elected William Henry Harrison, in the famous “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” campaign of nonsense, copied from the Jackson Democrats, but Harrison (the hero of Tippecanoe) died just days into his presidency, and was succeded by Tyler, one of the anti-Jackson democrats, who showed himself to be basically a firm Democrat, and was “read out of the Whig party”. They also elected Zachary Taylor (another war hero and no politician) who was died fairly early in the term, making Millard Filmore president.

After the Jackson era, the Whig party drifted towards its strongest elements, the national improvements men. That tendency was strongest by far in the North; the South being in those days almost purely agrarian.

In the 1850s when the nation became increasingly divided over slavery, a new Republican party formed, primarily to keep slavery quarantined off in the South, while Southern sentiment was for their right to move, with their way of life, into any new territory. Their methods of agriculture and their best cash crops tended to deplete the soil, so that Southerners were among the most aggressive Western expansionists.

The Republican Party, while it also attracted many anti-slavery Democrats, drew off so many Whigs that they effectively killed the Whig party. The Whigs were also badly hurt by the short-lived Native American or Know-Nothing party, which was primarily anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic. This party was strong in urban areas, which had also been a Whig stronghold. The last year the Whigs had a presidential candidate was in 1856.

One of the main reason for the demise of the Whigs was their demonizing immigrants…..more specific….Catholics.

Although they received the votes of many small farmers, shopkeepers, clerks, and artisans, they appear to have appealed particularly to what some modern historians call distinctive ethnocultural groups: evangelical as opposed to liturgical Protestants; moralists and abstainers; persons unhappy with brutal treatment of blacks and Native Americans.  (starting to see a trend yet?)

More on the demise of the Whigs……

Source: How an Outsider President Killed a Political Party: Zachary Taylor & the Whig Party – POLITICO Magazine

Six years ago I wrote an op-ed about “recurrent cycles”………

Professor’s Classroom

Subject:  Political Theory/Political History

Paper #30

I believe that politics travels in circles…..and so did the Greeks…..wish I could remember which one of the ancient political philosophers came up with the theory….but I do recall he was a Greek dude…..

Okay, the theory of recurrent cycles runs something like this…….the Greeks thought that monarchies degenerated into tyranny, tyranny was overthrown by aristocrats which degenerated into oligarchies that exploited the population, which was overthrown by a democracy, which slid into the instability of mob rule, which brought about a strong individual that set himself up as a monarch…….and the whole process would begin again…

Source: The Theory Of Recurrent Cycles – In Saner Thought

In 2016, is the cycle coming back around for the GOP?  It began by the end of the Whigs…..could the election of 2016 be the cycle repeating itself only the GOP being the big loser this time?

Trump and his minions have done a perfect job at dividing the party…..quiet possibly beyond repair…..

But if you are one of the chosen few that may still have some faith in the American political system then maybe you should check into the “modern Whig Party”…….

http://www.modernwhig.org/

Me?  I am thinking Green!

Ain’t history grand?