Sean Wilentz Quotes
When party crackups happen, they usually involve nativism.
He was providing historical perspective to the 2016 Republican Party split in which nativism and anti-immigration was a major factor.
"Campaign Stops: Will the G.O.P. Implode?", The New York Times, May 22, 2016
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Trump, in the 2016, Presidential Campaign viciously attacked not only his Republican opponents for the Republican Nomination, but almost every other Republican leader, the Republican National Committee members and the “Establishment Republicans.” He not only called them names, and ridiculed them and their families, but he lied extensively about each of his opponents and the Republican National Committee. Trump also alienated women, Hispanics, Muslims across the country. The Republican party was fractured and there were great resentments. Many blamed Tump for the Party cleavage. However, what is interesting about this quotation is that Roy admits that there were huge cleavages within the party as the Result of the Tea Party Republicans intransigence before Trump entered the campaign. He just took advantage of it and used it to his advantage. Roy at this time saw the Republican splits and resentments as too deep to be able to bring the party together shortly. The split persevered.
Every sect of Russian communism had an offshoot in America and in other countries as well. When bad blood broke out between sects in Russia, the battle spread to the rest of the world as when Leon Trotsky was assassinated by Stalinists in Mexico and the Trotskyites were viciously and physically attacked here in America. In many cases there was little ideological difference but the split reflected different leadership styles and personalities. Despite Frank’s warning, American communism was a mirror reflection of Russia until Stalin negotiated the WWII pact with Hitler, when anti-Stalin Communists began to be active, and because America was a more open society, American communists were ahead of their Russian comrades in denouncing Stalinism.
This was a new political phenomenon where a President was perceived as more important, more powerful, and preferable to his party. Note that the base of the scale is labeled “Public Opinion”.
Those who did were ostracized by Delay (who was then the Republican Majority Leader) and some other leading Republicans. His extreme and sometimes illegal partisan tactics got him into criminal difficulty and he was a major part of the great Republican Scandal of 2005-2006. He then was convicted of criminal activity for his extreme and illegal political activities.
In 1989 David Duke, a former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, won election to the Louisiana legislature on the Republican ticket. Republicans throughout the country were embarrassed:
Robert Sean Wilentz is the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor of the American Revolutionary Era at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1979. His primary research interests include U.S. social and political history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has written numerous award-winning books and articles including, most notably, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, which was awarded the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
