Lincoln, not Jackson

First, in defending Trump’s various wanderings, the party could begin to argue that words and proprieties don’t matter.

This would be a turning away from Lincoln. A brutal insult artist early in his career, he got more serious. His famous speeches are models of precision, logic and historical knowledge. Certainly, this is how we should want our leaders to speak and think.

Second, there is the factor of new Trump voters. In the 19th century, the different cultural emphases of Democrats and Whigs tracked their different constituencies. The Democrats were the party of subsistence farmers, and the Whigs the party of people most integrated in the commercial economy. Not coincidentally, the Democrats believed in the natural goodness of the people, while the Whigs preached constant striving.

With Trump having won over a white working class that is, among other challenges, beset by social dysfunction, the temptation for Republicans will be to forget their message of personal responsibility — to emphasize what has allegedly been done to working-class voters rather than what they can do to help themselves.