To know why the Republican Party isn’t dead, one needs only to read the original Republican Party Platform of 1856.
Historian Richard Cavendish explains why the Republican Party was founded:
“The party was born of hostility to slavery. Back in 1820, the US Congress had agreed the Missouri Compromise, under which Missouri entered the Union as a slave state, but slavery was forbidden anywhere else in the Louisiana Purchase north of 36º 30’. However, in 1854 the principle was threatened by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, under which the white inhabitants of the two territories were to decide by referendum whether slavery would be allowed there or not. There were numerous Americans in the northern states who disapproved of slavery, including many northern Whigs and Democrats as well as the Free Soilers, who had sprung from concern over the possible introduction of slavery in territory acquired from Mexico in the 1840s.”
As Cavendish states, slavery wasn’t the only issue driving the formation of the Republican Party, a seen in this excerpt from the original GOP platform:
“Resolved: That the Constitution confers upon Congress sovereign powers over the Territories of the United States for their government; and that in the exercise of this power, it is both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism–Polygamy, and Slavery.”
In short, the Republican Party’s primary purpose was fulfilled once slavery and polygamy were outlawed.
Since then, the GOP has constantly reinvented itself by championing new causes.
The ascension of Donald Trump in the party is the result of Trump offering rank-and-file GOP voters a new cause: America First.
The GOP didn’t die with Trump’s rise. Instead, what died was the power that GOP elites had.
The latter were given opportunity to fulfill the desires of the GOP rank and file but failed to do so. Thus, the rank and file turned to an outsider for help.
Cavendish, R. (2004). The Republican Party Founded. History Today.