May 23, 2013 - Columbus, Ohio. Today a restful day in Columbus after an odd night in Cambridge, Ohio. I have been traveling much of the "National Road" on this section of the trip - US Highway 40 following the old Cumberland Road, called America's first National Road. It was the first major road built and maintained by the country - improved and paved in a way, "macadam" is what they called it, a bonded stone surface that we would think was a country road today. But all of that in the 1830s.
Public works were considered an integral part of America then - part of the debate between Whigs (one of the precursors of the Republicans) and the old Democratic Party. The D's in that day were champions of state sovereignty while the Whig's championed the role of government in fostering economic growth by supporting the new nation's infrastructure development - from canals, to highways, to sewer systems. All of these beliefs, so central to the battles of the 1830s and 1840s, eventually disintegrated in the new alignment built on the debates over slavery that eventually ripped both parties asunder. Southern Whigs, joined with Southern Democrats, Northern Whigs merged into various groups and birthed John C. Fremont's Republican Party. The names have stayed the same since the Civil War - Southern Democrats really the heirs of the state's rights philosophy that had been at the core of the old Democrats, the Republicans championing civil rights and a laissez-faire capitalism.
At the turn of the century (1900's) a new realignment began that was to split the Republicans along "Progressive" and "Capital" lines. In the end the post Civil War version of that party limped into our age only in the New England and Northeastern states where its survivors have increasingly become Democrats. The version that was less interested in a Progressive approach to the world realigned (post FDR) with those remnants of the old Democrats and, in a reversal, that strain of thought was relabeled Republican - a party as dominated now by old converted Southern Democrats as the old Democratic Party had been.
It is odd to follow this history, to watch this evolution of thought - when economic issues are ascendant, these define the alignments, when civil rights issues are invoked they define the movements and realignment. But it seems that it is the social issues that redefine the labels more readily than the economic ones ever have. Opposition to slavery was the issue that truly provided ascendancy to the Republicans - opening the door for a minority movement to gain power and assert power. Civil Rights, the Northern Democratic issue of the 1960's did the same Though it initially forced a realignment away from the Party in the South, it has brought a broader alliance to power - a power that only reapportionment has kept from being fully realized.
I think it fair to say that over time our long-term alignments in politics emerge from these civil rights alignments that pit an old order against a new paradigm. Time will tell what will emerge and how, but as I drive across this country I do see two America's. But the one emerging with a super majority? What will that be? That will be the one built by youth and minorities is in agreement on key civil liberties.
Two battles now - gay rights and immigration - will define this battle. Recently I heard Gay rights activists arguing against the recent Democratic decision to drop references to Gay Rights from the Immigration bill in the Senate. Arguing the unfair nature of this, these otherwise enlightened progressives miss the broader point: all of society can change together if there is alignment between these two views. The Gay rights language added would have led to the defeat of immigration reform and the potential voting impact of that in ten - twelve years. If reform passes, then the Gay Rights movement, if it took the position of support of reform at its short-term expense, could be seen as an ally - something truly important in the demographic battle of voters to come over the next two decades. Without an alliance between these two groups, both lose. Republicans know this. They will increasingly seek to find opportunities to pit both against each other, to define Democrats as cowardly to get D's to eat their own. Democrats should not be drawn into this struggle. There are better things to cut one's teeth on.