An irreversible split?

       In today's NYT, Jamaal Bouie makes  a compelling argument using the Missouri Compromise of 1821 as his jumping off point.   He says the nation was of course more factionalized in the early part of the 19th century by the issue of slavery.   Both sides believed they were playing a zero sum game and if one or the other established a preponderance of legislative power their adversary was doomed.   By allowing Missouri to enter the union as a slave state along with Maine as a free state, both sides kept a precarious equilibrium which allowed 40 more years of peace.

      Bouie compares that uneasy peace with the conflict between the newly emboldened authoritarian Republican party and the Democrats who oppose it.  The latest bare knuckled tactic; the evident approval of whomever the president* nominates to fill Ruth Bader Ginsberg's seat in seeming contradiction to the party's stance when Obama faced a similar situation.   

      In both era's, the party of reaction faced a similar demographic decline.   The slave owning south would eventually be numerically overwhelmed by the industrial north.  Similarly, the white nationalists who mostly represent the Republicans will sooner or later be rendered irrelevant by the coming majority of non-white and progressive Democrats.   The south did not go down without a fight, and whether Bouie says it or not, he believes today's Republicans will do the same.   So far, it is a legislative brawl.  Let's hope they don't adopt the other tactic of the Lost Cause.