Yesterday in the Palm Beach Post's op/ed 'Point of View' section is a must read in my opinion. Here are two short excerpts. Click title for link. Mr. Harold Buttitta of Boynton Beach opined:
The current national Republican Party faces a very similar problem to that faced by the nascent party that Abraham Lincoln led in the late 1850s. Based on the unexpected election result of (House Majority Leader) Eric Cantor’s defeat, it seems unlikely that the modern version will deal successfully with it.
The party that Lincoln attempted to forge into a winning majority party in the antebellum period was an amalgam of disparate elements that included anti-immigrant Know-Nothings, negro-phobic urban dwellers, anti-slavery groups and devout abolitionists.
Clearly, attempting to mold a unified strategy given such a grouping was extremely difficult, yet Lincoln developed one.
[later]
Unfortunately, the defeat of Cantor by tea party elements in Virginia demonstrated a further erosion of compromise that is crucial to any party intent on winning at the national level. Victories that are based on extremes of the political spectrum, which this result seems to indicate, do not bode well for the GOP in the 2016 presidential election.
![Dr. W. H. Cotton’s ode: “Oh, My Lake Worth, Florida!” [circa 1920].](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yhHyCn84ZIQ/WezjlEL-0tI/AAAAAAAAPZ4/CzkhriK6zpEJJ3d9Je1495d49gIhnMlxACK4BGAYYCw/s1600/LakeWorthPioneers.JPG)
