Re-alignment doesn't come based on what parties support. They come based on what parties vote for. There are signs that this maybe changing. What killed the Whigs was not what they stood for but the fact that people stopped voting for them.
No the Whigs fell apart because of what it supported... They split because of slavery. Northern Whigs felt that slavery was at odds with their free labor/market ideals, while Southern Whigs were, at best, neutral to slavery, but definitely with a hard pro-slavery lean. Following the nomination of pro-slavery Zachary Taylor for President in 1948, the Northern Whigs split from the Whigs, rejoined when Taylor won the Presidency, then finally split to join the Republican party in the mid 1850s, with the Southern Republicans Whigs merging into the Know Nothing Party...
It wouldn't have mattered what the party supported if people continued voting for them. More correctly realignments come in change periods when peoples opinions or what they consider important changes and the party doesn't. I'm not guaranteeing that a re-alignment is happening but on the other hand anyone can say that a re-alignment has happened after it has done so. Also the type of re-alignment won't be the type when a party disappears but one more like the elections of F Roosevelt and Reagan.
I'm confused. You're not saying what parties support is a completely independent variable from what people vote for? I mean, the last great realignment happened what the civil rights caused Democratic racists to become Republican, and strongly anti-racist Republicans to...who the hell can say what happened to them? I guess they aged out of relevance. Anyway, GOPs won that tradeoff in a big, big way. A ton of black southerners voted in, say, 1972 for the Democrat who hadn't voted in 1964, yet the Dems went from 60% to 40% despite that influx of voters.
This trend had been going on is some some sorts since the 30's. By the end of the 30's both northern blacks and southern whites were voting for the same party. The so-called realignment you are speaking about still allowed state houses across the south to be Democratic until the 1990's. It certainly wasn't the black vote alone which allowed that.
There is a difference between what you push for votes and what your main goal is. The corporatists were what used to pass for intellectuals in the Republican Party. But there is no such thing anymore. The Republicans are now a cult of personality. It is impossible for the Republican brain trust to use Trump for their goals and then turn on him.
Damn typos.. Southern Whigs, but yes.. When the Know Nothings collapsed, they became Southern Democrats, who then became Southern Republicans.
The Know-Nothings aka the American Party was more anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant than any thing else and was strongest in places that actually had Catholics and immigrants like MD.
My point is that the Whigs are a bad example because they quite literally fell apart over what they supported (or didn't support). It wasn't because the people weren't voting for them, it was a matter of the Northern Whig party members leaving the Whig party in the 1854/56 elections and forming the Republican party. For the most part, the people still voted for the same politician, the party affiliation of that politician just changed. A better example of what you're talking about is the Federalist party, who people did slowly stop voting for following the deaths/retirement of Washington, Hamilton, and Adams. The lack of strong leadership to hold them together resulted in a lot of fracturing within the Federalists, which ultimately cost them elections everywhere except in New England. They then hit a short period of resurgence at the turn of the 19th century due to their opposition of the lead up to the War of 1812 and Jefferson's strong arm tactics, but that was short lived as the US ultimately won the war and no one likes a loser.
Agreed. In a later post I posted that the realignment wouldn't be the kind that would lead to the demise of a party but one with major shifts in support being obvious like during Roosevelts & Reagan's presidencies.
Check the 1854/1855 election. The Know Nothings certainly had a strong hold in New England, but the Southern state pick-ups were mostly former Whigs. Also, Maryland was a Southern state up until the Civil War when they failed to join their fellow Southern states in secession.
Sure the US didn’t get Canada, but the British didn’t get what they wanted either and considering the difference between the US and UK at that time? The US viewed it as a victory. We’re also talking about a pretty large swing in fortunes in the final months of the war with the US failing utterly to take Canada to a pretty clean sweep in the Battle of New Orleans, the Battle of Plattsburgh, and the Battle of Baltimore (we won’t mention the sacking of DC).
Since it was a David-and-Goliath war, and a sideshow to the world war, with the US and France not allied and the US and Russia not opposed, it was always more a question of whether the US could hurt Britain badly enough to make the war costly to them, rather than if Britain could hurt the US, which both sides knew they could... There really was no American target the British could attack that would cripple the US; Washington was literally a glorified swamp whose capture got the British not one whit forrader. Meanwhile, the failure to capture Baltimore, which would at least have provided temporary relief from the privateers whose effect on British trade was simply ruinous, really decided the war. Protecting New Orleans preserved the US' future-- but even its loss wouldn't have crippled its present. It was the success of the American privateers that in the end decided the war; Britain even then was absolutely dependent on her maritime trade, and the privateers ruined it-- insurance for voyages rose 600%, trade even in the channel and the Irish Sea was simply a way of turning the choicest things in the empire over to the US-- the Dublin packet was captured five weeks in a row till there was no longer a suitable vessel available to schedule for It, The merchant class of England lobbied parliament for peace at any price, and not surprisingly, they got it.
This is Currant Events without the Politics. I'm wondering if when traitors get the chair if they use alternating or direct currants.
In 1814 we took a little trip. Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip. Me an Johnny Horton we took a little bacon and we took a little beans. And we caught the bloody British in the town of New Orleans We fired our guns and the British kept a-comin' ....
Not technically true. The battle happened after the treaty was signed, but the war didn’t officially end until February 17 when US Congress ratified the treaty. The British forces heard about the treaty at around that time, but only put their plans to attack Mobile on hold until they heard about Congress’s ratification of the treaty when they sailed back to the West Indies. There is also indications that the British wouldn’t have stopped their attack on Mobile if they hadn’t just lost in New Orleans
A false and malignant deception! Truly, you are trying to initiate an operation premised on a mendacious banner! The Battle of Bowling Green was, verrily, a massacre in 1814.