How many of you remember from your high school history class the discussion of the Whig political party from the 1830s-1850s?  How many of you can name a Whig elected to national political office?  Show of hands, how many can name a former United States president whose early political years were spent as a member of the Whig party? Oh, and by the way, the Whigs were also called the “White Heads” – for the obvious reason.

It’s an interesting subject of American political history even though the party has not existed since the 1850s.  Formed in 1833 as an opposition party to then President Andrew Jackson in particular, and the Democrats in general, the Whigs supported the supremacy of the Congressional branch of the government.  They saw Jackson as a would be “king” and took great exception to his unilateral actions in removing government deposits from the Bank of the United States without congressional approval.

Among its more prominent members were Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams, the latter of whom was the sixth President of the United States.  Southerners in particular hated President Jackson for what they saw as his power grab during the nullification crisis, the political beginning of the Civil War.

The Whigs supported a more modern, industrial economy in which education and commerce would equal physical labor or land ownerhsip as a means of productive wealth.  They sought to promote domestic manufacturing, a growth-oriented monetary policy with a new Bank of the United States, and vast infrastructure improvements to roads, canal systems and railroads, all funded by the proceeds of public land sales.

The Democrats were of the Jeffersonian political philosophy of an egalitarian agricultural society, believing that traditional farm life bred republican (small “r”) simplicity.  They saw the modernization promoted by the Whig Party as likely to create a newly powerful class of rich aristocrats.  Democrats wanted America to expand westward, while Whigs wanted to grow the socio-economic system by adding more layers of complexity, such as banks, factories and railroads.

Does any of this sound familiar in current terms?  Can you see or feel a little Whiggishness in today’s Republican party?  Support of a powerful class of rich aristocrats?  Maybe just a little?

A young Abraham Lincoln was a Whig, as a matter of fact, in his local politics.  He was also the first Republican elected to the White House.  His local roots, though, were in the Whig politics of the day.

The Whigs began their decline in 1852.   Henry Clay and Daniel Webster both died that year and the party was severely weakened. It had been fractured along pro- and anti-slavery and lost the White House to the Democrats, who won the election by a large margin.  Lincoln, its Illinois leader, ceased his Whig activities and attended to his law business for a time before returning as a Republican several years later.

The fracture occurring today within the Republican party, while not as monumental as the slavery issue of the 1850s, is nonetheless as devisive.  On the one side, we have Limbaugh the Entertainer and Dick Cheney, Gadfly General; on the other, we have former Secretary of State General Colin Powell and others.

This schizophrenic approach to politics today remains bizarre and beyond description.  Virtually headless upon which to place a whig, even,  Republicans wasted last week’s time suggesting a new name for the Democrats – - The Democrat Socialists Party – - when the time should have been spent finding a proper headpiece to wear for itself.

While the party is likely to survive, it is a fun exercise to consider whether the fate of the Whigs is to be shared.  There are some small analogies to be made, separate and apart from the merits of whether it should be the same.

When Saturday Night’s guest host, Will Ferrell, makes more sense in his always humorous portrayal of former President George W. Bush than the Entertainer and the Gadfly do, the party should be very worried.