Could the American Whigs survive?

[Lateknight]

I don't much about this so what do you think?

 

[Anaxagoras]

The English Whigs or the American Whigs?

 

[Lateknight]

The English Whigs or the American Whigs?

Sorry I mean the American whigs

 

[B-29_Bomber]

Sorry I mean the American whigs

The problem is that the Whigs were only ever united by one thing: Anti-Jacksonianism. Once that passed they found it increasingly difficult to form a consensus on what the party should be for. Then once they were mostly already in the grave they tried to re-brand themselves as moderates in a time where people didn't want moderation.

 

[kodak]

Having Harrison live would do a lot of good for the party. Tyler was a poor president who supported most of the democratic platform, which did not help the Whigs at all in 1844, the last election that mattered before their certain doom.

 

[Indigo]

If every Whig president elected hadn't died in office that might have helped... More importantly though the Whigs just need to come down on a side of the sectional divide to survive. As it was they only managed to alienate both sides.

 

[ManintheField]

If every Whig president elected hadn't died in office that might have helped... More importantly though the Whigs just need to come down on a side of the sectional divide to survive. As it was they only managed to alienate both sides.

More importantly, it would have to come down on the Southern side. A party that takes the Northern side explicitly is going to have to adopt a program that the Whigs couldn't have lived with as a party (the economic nationalism of the Republicans was significantly watered down by the economic Jacksonianism of the Free Soilers), and the only reason the Democrats survived where the Whigs didn't was because they made peace with the Slave Power and, eventually, became the sectional party of the South, almost exclusively.

This is difficult because, while the Whigs certainly had a constituency in the South, it just wasn't as large as that of the Democrats.

The death of the Whigs was bound up in the rising sectional crisis and their attempt to be 'moderates' (offering compromise, not resolution on the slave issue, B-29 says) becomes increasingly untenable as the passions on both sides increase. You'd need to get rid of the entire build-up to the Civil War to save the Whigs, which is...difficult.

 

[Emperor Julian]

I think having a single solid, actual Whig Presidency, like a Henry Clay presidency, would go a great deal toward strengthening the party, as Clay would make appointments and use his political influence to create a strong partisan Whig presence, in contrast to Tyler's building up his personal following or Taylor's fairly non-partisan method of governing.