I had a conversation recently about the "true" nature of the Republican party. My counterpart insisted that George W. Bush did not represent "true" Republicanism, and that a true Republican would not have spent so outrageously nor violated the constitution so egregiously.
This was smart young man. I can't remember just now with which of my friends I was having this conversation, but I do recall clearly that he didn't seem the least bit lost when I took his "true" Republican argument back to 1801, begining with the premise that the Republican Party (or, rather, the ideology that is today called the Republican Party), and I quote myself, "was founded by George Washington, or rather, founded on the image of Washington, because Washington never wanted there to be 'factions' at all, by John Adams and Alexander Hamilton."
I continued by pointing out that almost always since that time, there have been two tracks to Republican ideology, one represented ably by Adams, the other, frighteningly by Hamilton. He readily agreed. The whole problem with my friend's premise about "true" Republicanism, is that Adams did not want factions either. It was almost exclusively on the engine of Hamilton's callousness that the two party system was formed, and Adams became a part of the conservative faction almost by default, because he needed those rightist votes combined with his centrist followers in order to win the presidency over Jefferson.
Notice that Adams HATED Hamilton, all his life. Notice that with the exception of the height of their policy battles at the turn of the century, Adams and Jefferson were THE CLOSEST high profile friends of the whole congress of Founding Fathers, all their lives. The truth is that the "true" Republicanism argued by my friend, has far more in common with Jefferson and the present day Democratic Party than it EVER had with Hamilton and his monarchist, treasury centered policy. So the "true" Republicanism is actually exactly what we've had for the past eight years. George W. Bush (the Federalist Society's president), is exactly the logical extension of the core priniciples that led to the foundation of the Republican Party.
