Republicans have, since the beginning, been the party of Abraham Lincoln. The Democrats never have been and never will be. But Lincoln’s party was never only the party of Lincoln. The early Republicans professed broad principles that still stir the party, but they were shaped by American nationalism, by Christian cultural conservatism, and by the regional ethos of the Midwest as it matured from the American frontier into the nation’s crossroads. Republican history is one of fusion: between universal classical-liberal ideas and the particular identity of a distinctively American conservatism. Both traditions are more continuous in the party than is …
Something to Consider
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