Grand Old Parties

HOW DID AMERICA'S TWO POLITICAL PARTIES get to be the way they are today? It’s a long story, for although we think of the United States as a young country, the Democratic Party, dating back to 1832, is the oldest political party in the world; the Republican Party, dating back to 1854, is the third oldest. (The second oldest is Britain’s Conservatives, if you date their beginning, as historian Robert Blake does, to the rallying of Tory opposition to the repeal of the Corn Laws by Benjamin Disraeli.) Nevertheless, over their history the two parties have retained their basic characters. The core of the Republican Party has been people who are considered by others and by themselves as typical Americans—Northern Protestants in the 19th century, married white Christians today—though they have never been by themselves a majority of the country. The Democratic Party, in contrast, has been a collection of out peoples considered by others and by themselves as not typical Americans—Southern whites and Catholic immigrants in the 19th century, blacks and gentry liberals today. Thomas Nast, the 19th-century (Republican) political cartoonist, was on to something when he depicted the parties as two different animals.

Read more: http://spectator.org/archives/2012/11/28/grand-old-parties