Reply #54: History shows that the party that implodes can still have their vision of America win

[ShadowLiberal]

Much as I'd love to see the GOP totally implode and a decade or two of democratic/liberal dominance that would result from it, history doesn't show that the vision/agenda of the surviving party will be what America becomes. The perfect example of this is the Federalists short reign, and implosion.

The federalists envisioned a lot of things in the government we take for granted today, like a strong judiciary (their judges claimed the right of the Supreme Court to rule laws unconstitutional, a power never given to them in the constitution), the whole system of how the government borrows money by selling 'bonds' to be cashed in later, a society with a diverse economy, rather then just a nation of farmers like the democratic republicans envisioned.

In the end what did in the Federalists more then anything is the fact that their opponents started to become more and more 'federalistized', and see the value of Federalist ideas whenever it was politically convenient. The federalists were also an extremely pro rich people party, doing stuff like taxing whiskey, a drink of the poor, instead of wine, a drink of the rich, and that didn't help them survive very much either.

Thomas Jefferson probably wouldn't have been remembered as a good president had the Federalists not been so weak and powerless, Jefferson's policies crippled the economy (especially hurting the New England area, dominated by the Federalists), but his party won reelection anyway.