The master of strategy Sun Tzu wrote, "know thy enemy." In order to overcome an adversary, you must first understand him. This is a lesson that the Republicans have forgotten in their effort to conduct a "war on terrorism," but one which Democrats should heed in seeking to overthrow the current dominance of the GOP in the federal government.
Fortunately, we have a master of political history, Professor Lewis L. Gould, to aid us with that understanding.
I consider myself fairly knowledgable about American history; as knowledgable as one can be from taking several courses in the history of American politics and foreign policy. Even so, there were connections I hadn't made and patterns I hadn't seen laid out in Gould's book.
Perhaps the most striking and ironic aspect of the GOP's history is how their ideology has almost entirely swapped places with the that of the Democrats over the course of the 20th century.
The GOP began by coalescing out of the remains of the Whig party and the corpus of several populist movements in the 1850's, culminating in the first convention in 1856 (this year is the Sesquicentennial of the Party's founding) which nominated Abraham Lincoln for President. The Party was dedicated to a nationalist vision of federal power, a stauch opposition to slavery, and the continued rapid industrialization of the nation.
The GOP remained committed to the emancipation, if not the legal equality of blacks, into the early 20th century. The stubborn opposition of the Democratic Party, and the GOP's unwillingness to invest sufficient political capital in racial equality, ended reconstruction well short of it's political goals, and consigned black Americans to Jim Crow and aprtheid. Neither party can be proud of this chapter of its history.
The GOP had several central beliefs they adhered to through the 19th century and into the first decade of the 20th: the protective tarriff as a means of industrial development and protecting American jobs and industry (as such they accomplished the considerable trick of uniting the political interests of both industrial interest and skilled organized labor), support for enfranchisement and civil rights for women and blacks, a largely isolationist foreign policy, and support of an active and powerful federal government.
On the flip-side, of course, the Democratic Party opposed all those positions. I have to admit, that were I alive during the first 6o or so years of the Republican Party's existence, I would likely have been a Republican.
Now, of course, the Republican Party has largely revesed itself on these issues, swapping them for the reactionary positions of the Democratic Party of the time, and an economic orthodoxy of free trade.
There have been several enduring themes in the ideology of the GOP which have not changed much over time, however.
The GOP has always been the party of business, strongly backing the interests of America's largest industrial concerns, even at the expense of other interests in their coalition: this is probably the most enduring feature, and greatest organizational strength of the GOP. They know which side their bread is butter on.
The second major feature is their moralizing tone and support for intrusive policiies to enforce the Christian ethos on society. From the temperance movement and Prohibition in by-gone decades, to the Moral Majority, obsession with reproductive choices, and condemnation of homosexuals of today, the GOP has always used issues of personal morality as a means of garnering votes and allowed itself to be the repository of evangelizing Christian's political ambitions.
Finally, the GOP has generally opposed heavy flows of immigration when they occured, both due to nativist sentiment and simple racism, and the fact the Democrats have generally been much more successful in folding these new citizens into their political coalition. This tendency has reared its ugly head several times in GOP history, the lastest nativist activism within the GOP being only the lastest of a pattern of anti-immigration tendencies.
But beyond these unifying themes, the party which evolved between the 1920s and the 1960's emerged from that transformation into an entirely new and different party. The world wars, the confrontation with communism, demographic changes, and especially the civil rights movement created a party that Theodore Roosevelt would no longer recognize as his own.
The current GOP also seems still to be a party in transition - mainly because it is founded upon a fading demographic base and a number of major contradictions.
Perhaps the greatest contradiction is the espousal, now mainly pro-forma and reflexive, of 'fiscal responsibility' while at the same time espousing as a litmus test of GOP othodoxy the need for ever-larger tax cuts, but without the political will to seriously cut spending. They modern GOP has a great hostility to what they term "root-canal politics". Far easier politically to advocate "supply side" theory and the "starve the beast" analogy to avoid the hard, and politically costly, work of actually balancing budgets when cutting taxes. Better to let future generations pay for their cowardice; the unborn can't vote, even if they must be protected at the expense of women.
For all the GOP's rhetoric over the evils of government regulation and need to shrink government, they continue to pursue moralistic policies that require intrusions into personal freedom that would be unthinkable if their purpose were economic. Their critique of intrusive government power, while at the same time abusing that power for to impose their moral view of the world on citizens, becomes more patently ridiculous every day.
Between these two contradictions the GOP has fostered an ever-more intrusive government, while failing consistently to shink the size of government. These major contradictions are untenable, even to the GOP's own base. They will eventually cost the party its credibility with voters. Rhetoric contradicted by one's own actions cannot long endure.
The demographic changes in America, swiftly creating a more pluralistic society, does not bode well for a party that winks at intolerance and is actively hostile to growing ethnic groups, such America's growing Hispanic population. After some progress by Bush, the nativist elements of the GOP coalitions appear to have set the GOP up for an implosion of Hispanic support on par with that it experienced among blacks in between the 1940s and 1960s.
Finally, the GOP seems to have maintained yet one more thread of consistency in its ideology throughout the years that may prove its downfall. The GOP has long viewed the Democratic Party, due in part to its long-ago association with the losing side in the Civil War, to be traitorous and illegitimate. They seem not to be convinced of the legitimacy of a two party system at all. This tendency has emerged frequently in the rhetoric of the GOP in times of electoral stress, most recently in the constant questioning of the patriotism and motives of Democrats opposed to the Iraq war and President Bush's extra-legal anti-terrorism measures, and even over immigration policy.
I think that the next few years will see the GOP attempting to significantly redefine itself following a major realignment in 2006, 2008, and beyond, when voters demonstrate to the GOP that their multiple contradictions will no longer be tolerated.
First, it is recommended that you have read the book. It is available at booksellers everywhere, both on- and offline. The public library also has multiple copies.
“Religion is under assault by secularism in America.” 
Having started reading a biography of Henry Agard Wallace out of sheer curiosity, I was surprised to find his political biography to be eerily relevant to our current political environment. Wallace was a scientific breeder and farmer whose family owned a popular Iowa farmer’s newspaper. He wrote for and edited the paper and later founded the Pioneer Hy-Bred corporation, which sold hybrid corn, chickens and other produce, which became a multi-billion dollar concern (an entrepreneurial capitalist irony that will become richer as the story proceeds). He was originally a Republican, like his father, Henry C. Wallace, who served as Secretary of Agriculture under Harding. The inaction of the Republicans in the face of the terrible suffering of the Great Depression drove Henry A. Wallace into the arms of more the pragmatic and experimental New Dealers within the Democratic Party.
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