Reply #37: The Republican Party and the Whigs did not overlap. [View All]

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The Whigs were dead as a doornail before the Republican Party got started. Maybe you're thinking of the Free Soil party, on whose grave the Republican Party was built.

If you're thinking that the Democratic Party is as obsolescent as the Whigs were in the 1850s and that the Greens will replace us, that leads to only two possibilities. One, the Greens as second party will continue to pursue the left, get zero electoral votes, and quickly be replaced by the "left" wing of the Republican Party. Or two, the Greens as second party will learn that they have to court the center just as the Democrats did, and will be reviled by the purist left just as the Democrats are now.

There have never been three viable parties at the same time. Think I'm wrong? Who was the Republican presidential nominee in 1856? And who was the Whig nominee in 1860?