There is some anxious debate among Republicans over the
consequences of the looser approach to immigration the Republican
leadership is showing. For at least a century, there's never been a
period when a majority of immigrants did not vote for Democrats.
According to a Harris poll, 81% of native-born citizens think the schools should teach students to be proud of being American. Only 50% of naturalized U.S. citizens do. While 67% of native-born Americans believe the Constitution is a higher legal authority than international law, only 37% of naturalized citizens agree. The two largest immigrant groups, Hispanics and Asians, have little in common economically, culturally or historically. But they both overwhelmingly support big government, ObamaCare, affirmative action and gun control.
Could a prominent political party simply melt away?
Lincoln, a Republican, initially ran locally as a Whig. The other main party was the Democrats. The Republican Party was rising and initially tried unsuccessfully to recruit Lincoln. The Whigs and Republicans were similar--internal improvements by government spending, high tariffs to protect American business--but the Republicans had a strong anti-slavery position. Conflict among the Whigs, North and South, damaged the party as did the rise of the Know Nothing Party that was nativist, anti-Irish and anti-Catholic. By the late 1850s the Whigs had all but vanished.
Know Nothings was not a pejorative epithet, it was an expression of the group's secrecy. A man named William Barker organized the party from a small group of disaffected bigots to an huge group of somewhere between eight hundred thousand and 1.5 million men, most of them skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled laborers or lower-middle-class white-collar clerks. They were sworn to secrecy and "Know Nothing" came from their denying knowledge of the organization. They started by endorsing candidates but eventually became strong enough to run their own candidates, some whom others did not even know were running.
Now, of course, both the Whigs and the Know Nothings are gone.
According to a Harris poll, 81% of native-born citizens think the schools should teach students to be proud of being American. Only 50% of naturalized U.S. citizens do. While 67% of native-born Americans believe the Constitution is a higher legal authority than international law, only 37% of naturalized citizens agree. The two largest immigrant groups, Hispanics and Asians, have little in common economically, culturally or historically. But they both overwhelmingly support big government, ObamaCare, affirmative action and gun control.
Could a prominent political party simply melt away?
Lincoln, a Republican, initially ran locally as a Whig. The other main party was the Democrats. The Republican Party was rising and initially tried unsuccessfully to recruit Lincoln. The Whigs and Republicans were similar--internal improvements by government spending, high tariffs to protect American business--but the Republicans had a strong anti-slavery position. Conflict among the Whigs, North and South, damaged the party as did the rise of the Know Nothing Party that was nativist, anti-Irish and anti-Catholic. By the late 1850s the Whigs had all but vanished.
Know Nothings was not a pejorative epithet, it was an expression of the group's secrecy. A man named William Barker organized the party from a small group of disaffected bigots to an huge group of somewhere between eight hundred thousand and 1.5 million men, most of them skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled laborers or lower-middle-class white-collar clerks. They were sworn to secrecy and "Know Nothing" came from their denying knowledge of the organization. They started by endorsing candidates but eventually became strong enough to run their own candidates, some whom others did not even know were running.
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