Shouldn’t there be something like “originalism” when applied to the philosophy of a political party? If that was the case then the GOP would be full of heretics today. That’s because in the 1860 and 1864 platforms there was a vigorous call for “internal improvement.” You know, like fixing up infrastructure like roads and canals:
[These] platforms inherited the Whig tradition of what were known at the time as “internal improvements” — government investment in infrastructure. For example, the platforms called for government to aid in the large project of constructing a transcontinental railroad, to improve rivers and harbors, and to have “a vigorous and just system of taxation” in order to ensure the payment of the national debt. The 1864 platform also declared: “Resolved, That foreign immigration, which in the past has added so much to the wealth, development of resources and increase of power to the nation, the asylum of the oppressed of all nations, should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy.”
According to Newt Gingrich he’s about to release a campaign platform that Abe Lincoln would have approved of. I’m putting my money on Abe’s spinning in his grave instead.
