Politics is a square dance. Change partners, dosey doe, round and round and round we go.
The Republican Party was founded in Wisconsin in 1854 as a political vehicle for keeping slavery out of the new territories and states and for abolishing slavery altogether. The Southern Democrats demanded that the new territories be given the right to decide for themselves the question of whether or not slavery would be allowed within their borders. The Northern Democrats opposed abolition because they were convinced that the issue would lead to the dissolution of the Union, as it did to the Whig Party. They were right, of course, but their opposition to the abolitionists helped propel the Union into the Civil War. The Republican Party was actually comprised of disillusioned Whigs, Democrats, Free Soilers, Know Nothings, and other alternative political parties that arose primarily over the slavery issue.
It’s possible that disagreement over issues like Syria, illegal immigration, and the war on women may be contemporary “Slavery” battlefront that dissolves the Republican Party and has it go the way of the Whigs. You’ve got the media-made Republican mouthpieces John McCain and Rand Paul going head-to-head over bombing Syria, with McCain in a way siding with Obama while at the same time asserting Obama isn’t willing to go the distance and blast Syria into oblivion leaving only those lovely, unguarded oilfields…
It’s very clear that the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party would back the return of slavery as a states’ rights issue in a hot second, just like the Southern Democrats of old. They would also approve of the Constitutional Article I Section 9 (allowing importation of slaves into the US), Section 2 (slaves counted as 3/5 of a person for representation and taxation purposes), and Article IV Section 2 (slaveowners and their agents could cross states lines to retrieve their escaped “property”, and anyone who tried to stop them or provide assistance to said escaped property were prohibited from doing so). They would skip the 13th Amendment (abolition of slavery) entirely as if it had never been written.
What has stayed the same? Today, it’s the Democrats who are leading the fight to legalize the illegal immigrants for representation and taxation purposes and it’s the Republicans who are trying to stop them. Swing your partners round and round, dosey doe, where she stops nobody knows. Wait a second, that’s roulette. But we don’t know where this all will stop, do we?